1 International student satisfaction: A new perspective John L. Dennis, Ph.D. Ravichandran Ammigan, Ph.D. Do German students studying in the UK value the same educational experiences as Botswana students studying in the UK? Would you say that the experiences of German international students are more similar or dissimilar from other EU students? And how do the experiences of Botswana international students compare to other African students? For some time now, we have been thinking of new methods and perspectives that enhance our understanding of international student satisfaction. To this end, we explored the international student experience using i-graduate’s International Student Barometer (ISB) 1 , the world’s leading benchmarking tool of international student satisfaction in higher education. The ISB tracks and compares the decision-making, expectations, perceptions, intentions and satisfaction of international students from application to graduation. It enables host universities to make informed decisions to enhance the international student experience, optimize resource allocation and support services, provide strategic input to key investment decisions, and drive successful recruitment and marketing strategies. So, instead of using the international student’s country of origin, we divide the data into two International Monetary Fund defined categories—advanced vs. non-advanced economies 2 . We suggest that perhaps, differences between national contexts, which are many and rather complex, could be analyzed and one way of doing that is categorizing country of origin as either advanced or non-advanced economies. Advanced economies, according the IMF, are those that 1) have a high per capita income; 2) export diversification; and 3) integrate in the global financial system. Only 39 out of 193 countries in the world (about 20%) meet these criteria (see IMF World Economic Outlook 3 for the current list of these countries). In the ISB, about 40% of the international student respondents are from advanced economies. Interestingly, our research demonstrates that international students from advanced economies were more satisfied with their institution than students from non-advanced economies, while international students from non-advanced economies were more likely to recommend their institution than international students from advanced economies (and that these differences were significant). 1 https://www.i-graduate.org/international-student-barometer 2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developed_country#IMF_advanced_economies 3 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2018/03/20/world-economic-outlook-april-2018