Internationalizing Malawian Higher Education: towards more benecial academic mobility.

Aim: This study investigated the intentions, opportunities, and barriers to engaging in a meaningful internationalization of higher education in Malawi. Methods: This was cross-sectional research that was done between June and October 2021. Using a purposive (judgmental) sampling, we recruited 212 respondents from various institutions of higher education in Malawi. Multilinear regression analysis was used to analyze the factors with the P-value set at 0.05 level of statistical signicance. Results: The results indicated that the majority of the respondents were males (63.7%) who fell into 30 years age bracket. Further, the results from the multilinear regression analysis indicate that Institutional collaboration (ß=0.326, p=0.000, CI=0.27—0.383), clear Policy on Mobility (ß=0.146, p=0.0.004, CI=0.047-0.246), experience (ß=0.083, p=0.117, CI=-0.021-0.186), academic rank (ß=0.114, p=0.000, CI=0.069-0.159) were positively statistically signicant variables, whereas on the other hand, Occupation (ß=-0.131, p=0.002, CI=-0.213-0.49), academic qualication (ß=-0.106, p=0.013, CI=-0.19-0.023 and mobilityImportance (ß=-0.116, p=0.022, CI=-0.215-0.017) were negatively signicant variables respectively. Conclusion and Recommendations: institutions need to invest in international and inter-institutional collaboration, clarify policy direction regarding academic mobility, keep track and linkages with mobile faculty, create a conducive social and formal institutional culture that attracts back mobile faculty, and reduce staff turnover.


Introduction
The number of mobile students has been increasing drastically. Increasingly more students want to study outside their home countries at universities that rank highly (Robert Morse and Juan Vega-Rodriguez, 2020). Therefore, it is very important to make institutions visible across the region and beyond. Higher education is undergoing tremendous changes in response to the national global dynamism (Hazelkorn et al., 2014). The way institutions carry out and comprehend, interpret, and respond to ranking differs with differing institutions (Hazelkorn et al., 2014). While some universities rank higher each time, and others get introduced to the ladder, others are ousted.
While developed countries compete to develop as many world-class universities and those in developing countries build research-intensive institutions (Dembereldorj, 2018), it is not clear whether Malawian universities as a system among the newly developing economies feel that ranking matters (Dembereldorj, 2018). It has not made it into either the top 1000 global QS World University Rankings (2021) or Africa's top 53 non-academic universities ranking by UniRank (2020) for the past ve years.
There is a general outcry as to whether it is worth funding institutions whose academic products cannot address the desires of their society including in Malawi. Other criteria for registering such visibility are institutional research and publication productivity (Smyth and Mishra, 2014), institutional linkages, quality and quantity of publications, and citation rate (The_World_University_Rankings, 2021;Times Higher Education, 2021).
Academic mobility and academic inbreeding impact scienti c publication productivity in many ways (Smyth and Mishra, 2014). Researchers like Fernandez et al. found that academic mobility enhances social capital (Alipova, 2017). It is a vehicle for knowledge circulation (Bäker, 2015). Internationalization through academic mobility provides an opportunity for broadening faculty perspective (Alipova, 2017), better networking, and research collaboration which may impact publishing productivity (Fernández-Zubieta et al., 2015). Institutional collaboration enhances scienti c research quality (Rogers and Brittle, 2014;Lathabai et al., 2021) and publication productivity (Smyth and Mishra, 2014;Horta and Yudkevich, 2016).
On a non-academic UniRank league table, the University of Malawi is ranked the 171st (Top 200 Universities in Africa | 2021 African University Ranking (4icu.org)) out of the top 200 African universities in 2021. UniRank produces a rank of top 200 universities in Africa based on "valid, unbiased and non-in uenceable web metrics provided by independent web intelligence sources rather than data submitted by the Universities themselves" (Top 200 Universities in Africa | 2021 African University Ranking (4icu.org)).
Regardless of the stages of development to improve their higher education systems, there is a need to increase the institutions' internationalization. Strategies for this include academic mobility, employment of international teachers, and internationalizing curricula while achieving quality learning experiences are some of the critical priorities of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) O'Brien et al., 2019). Investing in quantitative and qualitative development of higher education includes investing in knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to create greater productivity and highly add value, and of which the human capital is the crucial factor (Damoska . Many HEIs invest in academic mobility to increase competitive advantage in the higher education system (Damoska Tanhueco-Nepomuceno, 2019). There is an increase in the global mobility of students attending higher education (Hepple et al., 2017). Academic mobility may take the form of long-term or short-term mobility programs, which, among others, bene t the participants on cultural exchange and professional development (Hepple et al., 2017).
Various HEIs develop academic mobility programs to improve their systems in different forms (Hepple et al., 2017;Arunasalam and Burton, 2018;O'Brien et al., 2019;Tanhueco-Nepomuceno, 2019). For example, domestic students have mixed with international students in a classroom setting, where among others, they reported that they bene ted in developing awareness, connecting, and sharing cultural knowledge (O'Brien, Tuohy et al. 2019). In other institutions, academic mobility involves having faculty from abroad to teach students in their home country, which has both positive and negative impacts on both students and faculty (Arunasalam and Burton, 2018;Huang et al., 2019). Some institutions embrace international exchange programs for students and faculty, which in uences their literature and functional value in terms of having a contextual value of studying abroad (Gallarza et al., 2017) and promoting cultural self-awareness and professional development (Hepple et al., 2017). Nonetheless, it remains a challenge for the institutions dominated by these inbreds to harness new experiences from abroad.
Despite the global competition on achieving quality higher education, the higher education sector in lower-income countries, such as Malawi, is still struggling to achieve quality (Scienti c-Methodological and 2020). Many talented students in these countries are pulled by higher-income countries to acquire higher quality education abroad, thereby maintaining the brain drain from the low-income countries (Campbell 2017). There is an outcry about delayed completion of programs and persistent dropout rates. Therefore, it is necessary to consider academic mobility to improve higher education (Arunasalam and Burton, 2018). However, as noted by other institutions, this approach has positive and negative impacts on mobile individuals and the host and home institutions (Gallarza et al., 2017;Hepple et al., 2017). Hence, we are raising these questions: If Malawian Higher Education System is to improve quality by considering students and faculty mobility, what could be the opportunities and the setbacks?
Are there signi cant relationship independent factors with the Quality of Higher Education in Malawi?
In the end, we will aim at achieve and give recommendations about the Quality of Higher Education in Malawi based on the study's ndings.

Methodology Study Setting and Design
The authors conducted this study in Malawi, a country located in the southern part of Africa bordering Tanzania, Mozambique, and Zambia (Millington and Jepson, 2008;Munthali and Xuelian, 2020). Malawi is one of the developing countries in Africa where the majority of its citizen depend on agriculture (Xuelian, 2020) and education to enhance a better life within a society. Education has been at the heart of the policymakers with help from other local and international organizations (GoM, 2013). After the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) accreditation, public and private learning institutions operate in Malawi. This overall body accredits and supervises the higher education quality, which has helped promote the quality of education in Malawi. This study focused on institutions of higher learning education in Malawi. The study design for this study was a cross-sectional survey conducted using a population-based representative sample.
Variables are collected for several sample units at the same points in time (one time shoot), just the data collected from the respondents directly at a particular time.

Sampling And Population
Public higher education system in Malawi is still far from massi cation. As such, it enrolls meagre numbers of applicants. In all the institutions sampled, established posts are always higher than lled posts, rendering the institutions heavily understaffed, thereby relying of adjunct faculty.
It was against this reality that purposive (judgmental) sampling was performed for this study. It was a non-probability sampling method. The commonest uses of purposive sampling is in studies based on very small numbers of areas or sites. Researchers employ this technique when the elements selected for the sample are chosen from the total population by the researcher's judgment. Researchers often believe that they can obtain a representative sample (n=212) by using sound judgment. The approach has the advantage of saving time and money, without signi cantly compromising result generalizability. In some way, 212 of the population of interest without sampling at random.
Ministry o cials and human resources from various higher learning education institutions. Strati cation aimed at data collection triangulation to get a richer understanding of the study targets. The population was strati ed as students, faculty, and academic leadership. The students' strata were undergraduates, masters, and PhDs. Faculty comprised two strata: deans and heads.

Development of an instrument
The instrument had two parts. The rst part captured the social demographic characteristics of the respondents, whereas the second part captured the measurement of assessed variables.

Source of Data
We used primary data by designing a questionnaire form. Primary data refers to the data when researcher collects data directly from his observations and experience (Elman et al., 2016) Validation and Pretesting The researchers pretested the instrument through a pilot study with 15 Masters and 15 Ph.D. students in Malawi. They further sent the instrument to ve individuals for expert advice on the instrument. They calculated the Alpha Cohn bran for internal instrument consistency.

Study Variables
The variables considered in this study were based on earlier studies at the global and national levels. As discussed in the literature review, socio-economic, demographic, and related characteristics are essential for our work. The dependent variable for this study was the Quality of Higher Education (QOH). QOH is a complex concept, relative and contextual, which must be understood within the interplay among culture, politics, and economics (Gayef and Hurdag, 2014;Haseenav et al., 2015). It embodies national and global relevance of curricula and the related academic and administrative processes, staff development strategies, quali cation of faculty, and the processes leading to the training of the same, the physical, social (Kercher, 2018) and academic environment, and abilities, skills, attitudes, and knowledge the students can demonstrate on successfully going through an academic program (Benson, 1977). Quality of education has various indicators, including levels of exibility and ability to embrace change in light of scienti c research, the composition of faculty, students, time of graduation, retention rates, quality of student support systems, external examiners' reports, infrastructure, extra-curricula activities, graduate employability, quality and quantity of publication, indexing, and citation rates, and ranking (Haseenav et al., 2015).

Data Analysis
Data were analyzed using SPSS version 26; descriptive data were presented; after that, we ran a multilinear regression model with a statistical P-value at 0.5 level of statistical signi cance.

Statistical Model
Multiple linear regression required that the dependent variable be continuous and the independent variable is discrete, continuous, and categorical.

Multiple Linear regression model (LR)
Where; is response variable is constant parameter , are unknown parameters.
were explanatory variables is the error term Assumption of Multiple linear regression model 1. Multiple regression models should be linear. The parameter should enter the model in linear form (Linearity) 2. Errors have a normal distribution with mean vector zero (Normality) 3. The variance of the errors at each xed value of the independent variables is constant that is (Homoskedasticity) 4. There is no correlation between successive error terms. That is corr( ) (non-autocorrelation). Autocorrelation occurs when the residuals are not independent of each other.
5. There must not be signi cant relation between the independent variables. In other words, is a matrix of full rank (no Multicolinerity). It occurs when several independent variables correlate at high levels with each other.

Ethical Consideration
Participants were informed in advance that the study participation was voluntary, and they could withdraw at any time without any problem and that their con dentiality would be kept.
Beijing Institute of Technology issued a letter of introduction and a covering letter of identi cation and clearance to conduct this research. Since data were from the public academic institutions in Malawi, this study was approved by the Ministry of Education with reference number EDU/HE/21/95 dated 11 May 2021.
The study followed the procedures under the Helsinki Declaration of conducting a study involving human beings.

Social-Demographic Characteristics
The study assesses the demographic characteristics of respondents-the demographic makeup on improving higher education through faculty mobility-opportunities and challenges. Data were collected on gender, age group, occupation, academic quali cation, academic rank, and the number of expatriates. A total number of 212 participated in the survey representing. Table 2 presents the respondents' social-demographic characteristics. The study results show that most respondents were males, representing 63.7% (n = 135) while the females were 36.3% (n = 77). The majority fell within the age bracket of 30 years, representing 42.5% (n = 90), followed by those within 31-40 years, representing 33% (n = 70), while those above 40 years old, representing 24.5 % (n=52). Furthermore, on the occupation, the results reveal that the majority were students, representing 48.6% (n= 103), followed by o cers, representing 25.5% (n = 54), lecturers representing 24.5% (n= 52) and alumni representing 1.4 % (n=3). On academic quali cation, the results reveal that the majority of the respondents had been studying towards BA, representing 37.3 % (n=79), followed by MD representing 35.8% (n = 76), BD representing 17.9 % ( n = 38), and those with Ph.D. representing 9 % ( n=19). On academic rank, the results demonstrated that the majority were lecturers representing 35.8 % ( n=76), followed by students representing 34.4 % ( n=73), Dir. Prof. Mg. etc representing 20.8 % ( n=44), high school teachers representing 8 % ( n=17) and senior lecturer representing 0.9 % ( n=2). In terms of experience, the results reveal that the majority of the respondents were not yet employed, representing 39.6% (n=84), followed by ve years plus representing 37.3 % ( n=79) and those less than ve years representing 23.1 % ( n=49). Lastly, on the number of expatriates, the result reveals that the majority of respondents were less than ve, representing 45.8% ( n=97), followed by those above ve representing 39.2% ( n=83), and those above ten representing 15.1% ( n=32). F-test also revealed that this proportion of variance is statistically signi cant. The overall model is statistically signi cant for the data. All the assumption of regression analysis was satis ed. Due to formal tests and diagnostic plots, normality, constant variance, absence of Multicollinearity, linearity, and absence of autocorrelation were satis ed.
The results in Table 3 revealed that the model is adequate (good tted the data), implies that 49% of the variability in the Quality of Higher Education are explained by the variability of the independent variables in the estimated regression and while 51% explained by other non-explained factors out of our determined independent variable in the study. From Table   3. Durbin Watson test revealed the absence of autocorrelation for the assumption of multiple linear regressions. Errors must be uncorrelated.

Discussion
The current study investigated the intentions, opportunities, and barriers to engaging in a meaningful internationalization of higher education in Malawi, which included study, institutional collaboration, international visibility through ranking, abroad experiences, enrollment in foreign universities, student and faculty exchange programs, and the enrichment of curriculum with foreign languages and subject matter through international and area studies programs. Many of these actions, of course, continue and have accelerated. Several new methods and techniques have also emerged (Maringe and Foskett, 2012). These include increasing student and teacher mobility, international curriculum content integration, growth of inter-institutional collaborations and partnerships (Lathabai et al., 2021), and trans-border educational services such as the construction of branch campuses and distance and online learning (Kreber, 2009;Pandey et al., 2021).
Precisely, respondents' demographic characteristics, intentions, and sociodemographic variables on improving higher education through faculty mobility, opportunities, and challenges were measured. Our population characteristics indicate that most of the participants were students (48.6%) with more males (63.7%) studying towards their rst degree (37.3%); hence their work experience characteristics showed that most of these students (39.3%) were not yet employee. This characteristic has an important bearing on the data.
We can con dently postulate that students as the main clients in education could make good evaluators of the goods and services offered by education. Therefore, their opinions in this study were of paramount importance. There were more males among the participants (63.7%), indicating that there are still imbalances in the education system despite a rmative action policies regulating admission. We attributed the disparities to the fact that it is a long way from basic education to higher education for girls with social vulnerabilities. Nonetheless, the disparity seems to be narrowing.
The ndings suggest academic quali cation is signi cantly correlated with improving the quality of higher education in Malawi. On this variable, most respondents (35.8%) were studying towards a rst degree.
Being students, they that well quali ed academic members of staff should take them through their course work. Students feel con dent if they know that some authority is responsible for their academics. They will, therefore, prefer to be handled by a highly quali ed member of faculty because they believe that such individuals have the expertise in their discipline to take them through research guidance (Khozaei et al., 2015). Scholars postulate that many students will not perform well when their teachers or professors do not possess adequate expertise, knowledge, skills, and attitudes (Khozaei et al., 2015;Singh, 2020). This quali cation encompasses formal certi cation and credentials, and all psychosocial and linguistic aspects (Gobel et al., 2013;Sidhu et al., 2014) that enhance effectiveness and e ciency since student success is a result of the quality of the process of teaching and learning (Revisi and Lamas, 2015). Scholars such as (Wen et al., 2018) cite inadequate language pro ciency, inadequate student-faculty interface on campus, and snags in sociocultural adjustment as impediments to quality education. Research posits that a feeling of relatedness with the faculty makes students develop healthy study habits coordinators, which ultimately positively impacts academic achievement (Haahr, 2005).
The study found that academic rank (p=0.000) signi cantly impacts the quality of education in Malawi. Most respondents on this variable were faculty members (35.8%), followed by students (34.4%). Fall factors held equal, faculty and students are better placed to comment on the importance of higher education institution's ranking. Students think that an institution ranking high is more credible than those off the rank. Such institutions give them a sense of assurance for future academic and career prospects.
Similarly, faculty associated with high-ranking institutions are more likely to engage in inter-institutional collaboration and international scienti c joint projects. Institutions with high academic rankings will attract more international students (Dembereldorj, 2018). Such institutions are likely to realize more revenue for funding academic programs and research. Such investments bolster the quality of curriculum innovation, implementation, and delivery of quality services.
Our result agrees with what is in extant literature. Much as it is complicated to de ne clearly how institutional rankings affect higher education (Hazelkorn et al., 2014), institutional ranking impacts the quality of higher education in various ways (Dembereldorj, 2018). Scholars found that academic ranking serves in a way as a reliable source of information for decision making both by prospective students and institutional management for marketing purposes, benchmarking, decision making, choice of host international institution (Dembereldorj, 2018), and for lling relevant operations gaps (Hazelkorn et al., 2014).
Cross-border comparisons and competition is inevitable and will only keep intensifying. (Hazelkorn et al., 2014) such that opting out of the race is only anti-global and not in line with the expected internationalization of higher education (Dembereldorj, 2018). As such, institutional sustainability will be possible through joining the healthy competition and improving institutional research capacity in today's knowledge-driven economy (Dembereldorj, 2018). Although there are lots of criticisms against the criteria used in national, regional, and global rankings (Dembereldorj, 2018), the process remains an indispensable tool for maintaining standards in higher education (Hazelkorn, 2013;Hazelkorn et al., 2014), holding institutions accountable to the society (Hazelkorn et al., 2014), and helping institutions judiciously, guardedly and tactically underpin institutional development.
Besides, the study revealed that a clear policy on mobility has a signi cant positive impact (p=0.004) on university education quality. A clear policy on academic mobility would signi cantly impact the quality of higher education in Malawi. The institutional operational policy sets a general blueprint and framework that directs employees towards desired outcomes and rational decision-making as it enables planning in advance and related resource mobilization for quality service delivery (Haseenav et al., 2015). Organizational management theories advocate timely and relevant communication for the success of the organization. Leadership and management should formally communicate the goals of the organization. This is the shared view about the direction the institution is supposed to take. Therefore, the clear policy provides this direction as enshrined in the institutional strategic plan, stipulating the intended goals. Shared policy formulation and dissemination facilitate implementation by faculty to attain the institutional goals with excellence (Huo et al., 2018;Bao et al., 2020;Peter and Pandey, 2020). Written policies save much institutional prime time, preventing confusion, legal confusion, role con ict, and other chaotic operations because they indicate universities' best practices and enable institutional process reuse (Altbach et al., 2007). Besides impacting ethical conduct, the policy ensures guidance, consistency, accountability, clarify, and e ciency. This nding is consistent with extant researches of Spencer et al.
(Spencer-Oatey and Dauber, 2019). The irrefutable evidence of the positive impact of a clear academic mobility policy is manifest in the outcomes of the Bologna Process (Maynard and Parfyonova, 2013).
Institutional collaboration was reported to impact higher education quality positively signi cantly (p=0.000). This is because institutional collaboration enhances synergies in pedagogy, curriculum, scienti c research, and policy development among the collaborators. This explains why institutions with strong ties with others have higher academic output and quality programs than those excluded from the network fabric (Betru and Hamdar, 1997). Our ndings correspond well with international practices such as those between Mexico and the United States of America signed during President Obama's time to enhance the quality of education between the two countries while enhancing stronger bilateral political ties (Baker et al., 2014). Our results are consistent with volumes of literature on expected outcomes of institutional collaboration (Deng et al., 2019). Nonetheless, some literature also reveals a critical negative impact of institutional collaboration due to implementation aws in the program (Mihut et al., 2016).
Academic mobility signi cantly negatively impacted the quality of education. The more students and teachers get involved in international mobility, the more they are involved in permanent migration resulting in brain drain. As a developing country, Malawi loses a lot of its brains to the developed countries, where pull factors for highly skilled and highly quali ed human resources are prevalent (Mazzarol and Soutar, 2002;Yu et al., 2021). Such creates inconsistency between the production of rare talents and pro tability from the same. There is an incredible mismatch between the demands for such skilled and highly quali ed rare talents needed to improve university education and their availability for improving university education standards. These ndings concur with preceding studies which reveal adverse effects of permanent human resource migration from developing to developed countries (Odhiambo, 2012;Docquier, 2014;Artuc et al., 2015;Cañibano and Woolley, 2015;Hussain, 2015;Muthanna et al., 2017). Similar studies indicate that if academia migrates permanently and does not remit anything to their country, the practice adversely impacts their families and the nation's education system (Djajić and Vinogradova, 2015). Temporary migration enormously positively impacts home institutions (Bertoli and Marchetta, 2015).
A competing branch of the literature reveals that permanent migration per se does not impact the home institutions negatively unless the home institutions do not maintain linkages and collaboration with the mobile academia. When the migrant academia joins faculty in their destination, it can present an excellent opportunity for research collaboration. This is in line with extant literature (Yan et al., 2015). If home institutions and the host institutions engage in institutional linkages and enhance collaboration, this migration would signi cantly bene t the donating institution (Choi et al., 2016). Besides, if the migrant faculty remits to the home country, such funds may bolster research activities in the donor institution (Licuanan et al., 2015).
On the other hand, the study's ndings revealed that occupation (p= 0.023) and academic quali cation (p=0.027) present signi cant setbacks on faculty mobility in HEIs. The higher the quali cation, the lower the impact they have on the learning of the students. This result agrees with the expectations from the extant plethora of literature. For instance, some scholars report that overquali ed faculty performs better at managerial positions than at handling coursework. Inopportunely, since formal and bureaucratic organizational structure follows the pyramidical shape, the university setup will not accommodate all highly quali ed faculty in leadership positions.
Consequently, perceived over quali ed faculty feel less satis ed with their job (Erdogan and Bauer, 2009). Those overquali ed feel frustrated when they perceive that what they get is lower than what they deserve, be it in monetary rewards or responsibilities entrusted to them. Therefore, the institutions need to constantly assure the highly quali ed faculty that they value them a lot. Any be tting incentives should be given to them, following institutional incentivization policy (Deardorff, 2016).
Literature posits that employees who feel overquali ed for their job or doing a job that even less quali ed colleagues are also doing feel less satis ed with their job, have less organizational commitment levels, and tend to be associated highly with job turnover (Culbertson et al., 2011). Much as discipline experts are advantageous to students as they can easily guide the students (Gube et al., 2017) through a milliard of relevant research literature instrumental for successful completion of a program (Gube et al., 2017;Gao, 2019), well-quali ed faculty renowned academicians are more involved in research and international consultancy work, making them less available for the student's research supervision and coursework than the lower quali ed faculty. Many studies justify this nding (Khozaei et al., 2015;W. Kramer, 2020). This makes faculty-student contact less effective. This is also evident in the delayed completion of students pursuing graduate and postgraduate programs conspicuously evident in the Malawian higher education system. Literature attests that 45-50% of graduate students complete their course work yet fail to graduate due to supervision-related challenges (Gao, 2019). This is consistent with the previous research that emphasizes a time-based con ict when employees overprioritize one role over another (Culbertson et al., 2011). Notwithstanding this, underquali ed faculty may also be deleterious to student progress as they lack the skills and competence to correctly direct their students to appropriate literature that can help the students comfortably handle their research (Gao, 2019;Singh, 2020).
Furthermore, highly skilled human resources and rare talents quickly drain their home institutions for greener pastures. This makes the home institution lose out through brain migration. Such mobility negatively impacts the continuity of learning.

Conclusion And Recommendations
This study explores and establishes some of the key determinants that bolster and encumber the quality of higher education in Malawi. Referring to our data analysis, there is strong proof to propose that the qualities of higher education in Malawi are statistically signi cant and positively in uenced by clear policy mobility (such as the institutional operation policy), institutional collaboration, and academic rank. Besides that, our study has revealed that academic quali cation is signi cantly related to enhancing higher education quality in Malawi. On the other hand, the study results have established that the quality of higher education in Malawi is statistically signi cant and negatively impacted by Occupation, academic quali cation, and mobility importance.
Our study recommends that in Malawi, higher education institutions need to regain the lost glory and bounce to the regional, continental, and global university rankings. They need to realize that the nation will keep lagging regional ranks unless they work as a single uni ed system. The national competition will be necessary only if it aims at benchmarking and not at outdoing each other. Since each institution has unique discipline-based strengths, the entire national higher education system needs to upgrade collaborative efforts in the related research activities.
The universities and colleges need to develop a clear academic mobility policy and disseminate it among faculty to guide and inform institutional decision-making. Faculty need to balance attention to their mandates such as research, teaching, training, and outreach not to compromise student academic performance. They need to make their vision clear and strategies set to register their availability and presence on the regional scene. Secondly, they need to prioritize institutional linkages and collaboration, capacity building, skills, and professionalism within the country and the region to improve research output and quality.
The government should consider policy development that enhances collaboration between home institutions and the migrant faculty. Besides, the government and the academic institutions need to synergize in making the mobile faculty too long to return home.
The renowned countrywide institutions should gear up to help the relatively higher education institutions play a commendable role in improving education. Due to high staff turnover, Institutions should x a transparent staff nancial incentive scheme policy and promote a salary increment policy. Besides that, we believe that good planning and an effective supportive culture will help to improve the quality of higher education in Malawi. Institutions should work on peer coaching. Using peer coaching with international students can reduce cross-cultural communication issues and solve the problem of loneliness in the work environment. Experience 1=Not Yet Employed, 2=Less than 5years, 3=Above 5 years 7 Experience No= 1=Less than 5, 2=Above 5 less 10, 3=above 10 8 Likert Scale 1=SD,2=D,3=N,4=A,5=SA Table 2 Descriptive Characteristics of the Respondents (N=212) Figure 1 Showing the Study Area of Malawi