Internationalisation and the Global Citizenship of University Graduate Students

This paper is based on the quantitative findings of a mixed-methods research that explored the effect of internationalisation of higher education (IoHE) on the global citizenship (GC) of graduate students. Specifically, the study sought to find out the effect of internationalisation of academic staff, curriculum, and the student community on the GC of graduate students at Makerere University in Uganda. Using the sequential explanatory research design, data were collected from 180 respondents via a partially-adapted self-administered questionnaire and analysed using appropriate descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings showed, among others, that the IoHE in terms of academic staff (R=0.236; R2=0.056; p=0.01), the curriculum (R=0.250; R2=0.062; p=0.01), and student community (R=0.202; R2=0.041; p=0.007), all had statistically significant positive effects on the GC of graduate students. These findings reinforced the earlier belief that the more internationalised a university is, the more likely its graduate students would become global citizens; thus, significant efforts need to be made to internationalise these, and other aspects of university operations. Indeed, this work presents to university management aspects of IoHE that greatly impinge on the GC of graduate students. No earlier works had similar results in the context of the global south where IoHE has not yet taken root.