Primary Attractiveness Factors are:
1.Quality of Education. The education process: this broadly corresponds to ‘academic reputation’ and ‘academic and social support’.
2. Employment Prospects: The education outcome: this corresponds to the perceived value of a destination country’s qualifications within the local and global labor markets.
3. Affordability: Students’ perceptions of the cost of living and tuition fees in a study destination. A high performance rating for affordability implies that the destination is perceived as being relatively lower cost.
4. Personal Security/Risk: General perception of safety and security within the destination country. This excludes the concept of ‘cultural security’, which is considered in ‘lifestyle’.
5. Lifestyle: Encompasses factors such as sports, music, fashion, nightlife plus others such as cultural tolerance, acceptance, similarity, or difference. International students’ emphasis will likely vary with country of origin and ethnicity.
so it's visible that, aside of quality of education and affordability (students have already really good access to these informations in the web) aspects connected with culture are also considered as important.
I've found interesting also Rahoul Choudaha article "International student mobility is driven by destination country income, not university rankings"
As regards Universitiers interests, at the Institute for Public Policy Research I've found fresh Alice Sachrajda's articule "The UK can’t rely on reputation alone to attract international students". Author is writing about present highly competitive situation on global educational market. Due to the article if UK want to attract the brightest and best international students to the UK’s education institutions, it have to offer more attracive employment prospects. These include permitting all international students to work alongside their studies and allowing international students six months to find work in the UK after their studies.
