Nigerian postgraduate mobility to the UK for higher education: students’ perspectives

In a landscape of higher education in developing countries where students increasingly seek further education abroad, international student mobility (ISM) has become an important phenomenon, with economic, social, and political implications for home countries. Yet ISM is complex and students’ mobility rationales are multifaceted in nature, while the literature presents the phenomenon, somewhat rigidly, in either economic (Zheng, 2014; Ayling, 2021) or social and political terms (notably, Tikly (2004, 2010). In recent years, Nigerians have formed the largest contingent of international students in United Kingdom (UK) universities from Africa (UKCISA Report, 2020; ICF Monitor, 2022) and consistently also from all other countries (Oguche, 2022). A number of previous studies have focused on the motivations of international students (Beine et al., 2014; Levatino, 2017; Kleibert, 2021; Lee, 2022). However, there is a dearth of literature exploring ISM from the perspectives of students who seek further education outside their home countries that are in ‘developing’ regions of the world. Although student perspectives would seem to be a primary concern in any investigation of ISM, the literature has instead privileged the views and preferences of economic and political constituents that are thought to influence students’ choices. This paucity of knowledge of students’ views of, and preferences for, their own higher education has produced an unbalanced view of ISM and its consequences domestically and internationally. This study therefore offers a nuanced perspective of the decisions behind ISM by investigating the rationales of students’ mobility to the UK from the perspectives of Nigerian post-graduate students. The study makes this contribution by reporting on the experiences and perspectives of number of Nigerian post-graduate students in making and implementing their decisions to study abroad. While most studies of ISM account for remain decisions of students from developing nations in economic terms (Naidoo, 2007; Rosenzweig, 2008; 2016; Zheng, 2014; Iwara et al., 2018), this study focused on students’ perspectives and how their agencies affected mobility decisions. In exploring these decisions, the accounts of internationally schooled students offer first-hand information on the factors influencing their post-study decisions. Their rich and diverse narratives illuminate the rationales for choosing to study in the UK and the impact of their decisions on their lives and career prospects, which have largely remained unexplored in ISM. A mixed-methods exploratory sequential design was used and 30 one-to-one interviews were conducted with Nigerian students who studied in UK HE. The principal aim of the interviews was to investigate the main drivers of Nigerian students’ mobility for HE. Findings from the interviews fed into the construction of questionnaires which were distributed for additional data collection. Responses to questionnaires highlighted similar as well as additional drivers for studying in the UK. The thematic analysis of interview data and descriptive statistics from survey data resulted in a proposed conceptual framework which identified ‘becoming’ at the core of educational mobility decisions of Nigerian students who choose to come to the UK for HE. Core findings of the study suggested that Nigerian students view their education in the UK as an investment that allows them to ‘become’ what they aspired to be. Although most studies cite migration as the main driver of student mobility from ‘developing’ nations to ‘Western’ developed countries, my findings suggested that contemporary Nigerian students accounted for a ‘return migration trajectory’ with specific local economic and equality objectives. Finally, the findings have important implications for policy development in HE in both receiving and sending countries. A principal policy implication centres on the relevance of incorporating students' views in the process of developing internationalisation plans and in better understanding why students have been choosing to study abroad.