The Importance of Higher Education Quality for Mobility Intentions. Evidence from a Western Balkan Country

ABSTRACT

The Western Balkan region confronts a pronounced brain drain phenomenon, as its highly educated youth seek enhanced opportunities abroad. Grounded in the Social Cognitive Theory, this paper explores the decision-making process of Macedonian youngsters and scrutinizes how personal, social, and educational factors shape their mobility intentions. The findings driven from a survey encompassing 1150 university students, obtained through descriptive analysis using Python 3.7 and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling via a high-level SEM tool for R, reveal valuable insights that describe the complex interplay of students’ expectations, subjective norms, higher education quality, and professors’ availability, crucial elements in mitigating brain drain trends. The implications delineate explicit obstacles to developing higher education quality, accentuating the importance of tailoring university services to students’ needs in terms of a better understanding of the higher education system’s potential. The conclusions identify indicators that can assist in describing the youngsters’ mobility intentions, contribute to monitoring the brain drain process through higher education attributes, and highlight strategies for facilitating the system’s competitiveness.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education quality
• mobility
• Social Cognitive Theory
• students’ perceptions
• subjective norms
• Western Balkan

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Informed consent statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

Institutional review board statement

Approval was obtained by the ethical committee of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant 101006279.

Notes on contributors

Nina Petreska

Ms. Nina Petreska holds a Bc in Computer Science from the University Ss Cyril and Methodius in Skopje, Macedonia. She has been working as a back-end developer while passionately pursuing research in human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence, with a particular focus on the higher education context. Her interest in machine learning has inspired her to publish original studies that explore students’ perceptions of the quality and resources provided by higher education institutions. As an innovative and proactive individual, she has actively contributed to the creation and development of educational apps, leveraging her expertise to enhance learning experiences. Ms. Nina Petreska continues to be a driving force in the tech and education sectors, seeking to bridge the gap between cutting-edge technology and academic excellence.

Jana Prodanova

Jana Prodanova, PhD is a researcher at the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts and an associate professor of marketing at the University American College Skopje, Macedonia. Her primary research is related to the electronic and mobile environment of service provision, studying the difference between online and mobile channels, and the advantages and disadvantages that each of them holds. She focuses on the challenges and possibilities of using ICT in selling services, and the behaviour and personality of the consumers involved. She has published her work in national and international journals of repute, such as Nature Medicine, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Technology in Society, IEEE Access, and Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, and won several awards for her research. She is likewise a reviewer for international journals and conferences and has participated in several research projects.

Ljupco Kocarev

Ljupco Kocarev, Phd is Professor emeritus of Computer Science and Engineering, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Macedonia and Director of the Research Center for Computer Science and Information technologies at the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. His scientific interests include networks, nonlinear systems and circuits, dynamical systems and mathematical modelling, machine learning, computational biology and social sciences fields, such as economic and educational challenges in society. He has co-authored more than 150 journal papers in 40 different international journals, ranging from mathematics to physics and electrical engineering to computer sciences. His research has been supported by the Macedonian Government, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ANSO), USA (NSF, AFOSR, DoE, NIH and ONR), Industry (STMicroelectronics), EU (TEMPUS, FP6, FP7, Horizon 2020), UNDP and agencies from Germany (DAAD, DFG). According to Google Scholar his work has been cited more than 22000 times.