FACTORS AFFECTING THE MIGRATION INTENTION OF UNIVERSITY LECTURERS IN SRI LANKA (WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO SABARAGAMUWA UNIVERSITY OF SRI LANKA)

Abstract

University Lecturers migration is known as a type of Brain drain. It can be described as moving a country's most talented and educated lecturers to other countries. The migration of university lecturers in a country greatly impacts that country's higher education and hurts the economic growth of developing economies like Sri Lanka. The main objective of this paper is to explore the factors affecting the intention of university lecturers to migrate to Sri Lanka. Primary data collected through direct personal interviews and online questionnaires were used for the study considering the convenience of the respondents. Sabaragamuwa University was selected from other universities using the convenience selection method for this study's collected sample size of 117 lecturers. A stratified random sampling method was chosen to reach out to them. This was performed as a factor analysis considering the migration intention of university lecturers as the dependent variable for the structural equation model. The Factor analysis revealed the effectiveness of Socio-political push factors in terms of attitudes & perceived behavioral controls and Socio-political pull factors on the migration intention of university lecturers in terms of attitude, and subjective norms of the lecturers in a positive manner. The common impact can be seen in the case of Economic push factors regarding subjective norms. Economic pull factors positively influence the migration intention of university lecturers in terms of their perceived behavioral controls. To stop university lecturers' migration, it is necessary to apply policies to improve the quality of life of Sri Lankan university lecturers.