ABSTRACT
International education is an industry currently enjoying considerable growth. A starting point for ensuring that Australia and other destination countries remain competitive is a knowledge of how and why international students choose destinations for education. The purpose of this paper is to provide background information on the topic of international university education, in terms of why it developed and the present characteristics of both the major destination countries of Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States of America and the major source countries of Hong Kong and Malaysia.