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The purpose of this paper is to identify the main students’ motivators for their migration decisions, which can be used by education managers working in the area of career management in higher education institutions of Latvia.

Performed empirical data analysis is based on a survey data, collected from students of various educational programmes in two higher education institutions of Latvia. The data analysis consisted of three steps: initial exploratory data analysis (including testing for sample homogeneity, and sample descriptive statistics), correspondence analysis of student’s answers (including testing for survey reliability, discrimination measures and dimension reduction) and analysis of relationships between survey questions (including contingency tables, testing for directional associations and the logistic regression).

The results of the study show that students’ career motivators are significant explanatory factors for their migration decisions. According to the survey results, the main reasons for migration decisions are better career prospects, a higher salary, new professional experience and share of own experience, new professional contacts, motivating and interesting job, better training facilities and the support of their family members and friends who are working or studying abroad.

First, the sample in this study included two higher education institutions. Second, the same respondents participated in both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the research. Future study with a more diverse student population and the refined scale items is recommended to verify and generalise the findings.

The paper addresses policy makers at the national level and education managers responsible for career guidance activities. The conducted analysis has allowed the authors to provide some recommendations for education managers working in the area of career guidance and counselling in Latvia. However, as education managers in the Baltic states face similar challenges, the results might be also used by managers working in other Baltic states.

The empirical study performed in the paper has attempted to investigate the influence of students’ career drivers on their migration decisions in the framework of career management in higher education institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore some issues related to enhancing the quality of educational services provided by a university in the agenda of integrating quality assurance activities and strategic management procedures.

Employing multiple regression analysis the author has examined some factors that are supposed to have an impact on student satisfaction and student motivation in the integrated educational environment.

The results of the two-phase empirical research performed in two higher education institutions indicate that student satisfaction and student motivation can be modelled on a number of predictors, which are associated with several indicators related to various aspects of the integrated educational environment.

The sample in this study included two higher education institutions. Future study with a more diverse student population and the refined scale items is recommended to verify and generalize the findings.

The research provides useful data for addressing some critical issues in the context of integrating quality assurance activities and strategic management procedures in a university. The results of the empirical study suggest that education managers might carry out regular assessment of their educational environment in the framework of performing strategic analysis, which is aimed at quality enhancement, in order to determine the most significant aspects and associated influences. This would allow them to focus their efforts, time and resources on the issues with the greatest potential for having an impact on the university’s operations, and which may be related to providing qualitative changes in the educational environment in the frame of implementing a number of competitive strategies.

The relevant literature analysis has allowed the author to explore the research topic from a new (holistic) perspective, and to consider both student satisfaction and student motivation in the integrated educational environment, which was viewed as a complicated multi-level system. In this respect, being related to approaches, ideas and findings in the existing literature, the paper presents an attempt to develop these further in terms of adding value to previous research. The obtained information can be of interest to managers working in the area of higher education.