Effect of Facebook in Influencing Student Intentions to Enroll Foreign Degree Programme in Malaysia

The purpose of this research is to examine the effect of Facebook in influencing student intention to enroll in foreign degree programme in Malaysia. The need for this study arose given the limited or no research done on examining the impact of Facebook in promoting foreign degree programme in private education sector in Malaysia, despite the immense contribution of this academic sector to the personal and national growth. This research focuses on influence of Facebook dimension derived from literature including attitudinal commitment, social influence, information benefit, word-of-world and continuous participation on student intention to enroll. In order to assist in the research five questions were propose and to deepen the research further hypothesis was propose. A sample size of 200 students was conveniently selected from various private education institution, a questionnaire with a Likert-Scale from 1-5 was used to collect the data to determine student intention to enroll foreign degree programme in Malaysia. To ensure reliability and validity of the data set, the sample size only includes student who are currently study in diploma and foundation in private colleges. Descriptive statistics shows that all determinants of Facebook examined are most significantly associated with student intention. Multiple regression analysis shows that there is significant influence of Facebook effect on student intention to enroll foreign degree programme. However, the result show clearly that information benefit, word-of-mouth and continuous participation on Facebook have positive significant influence on student intention to enroll foreign degree programme. The current study contributes to the body of research by investigating the impact of Facebook in influencing student intention to enroll foreign degree programme by using one instrument, in one area setting. Result of research shows that Facebook as social media is very crucial to promote foreign degree programme due to its impact in influencing student intention. Future research should involve large number of sample size to ensure the validity and reliability of the result and focuses on other sector of industry