Global Perspectives on International Student Experiences in Higher Education

Tensions and Issues

Krishna Bista

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138080508
• eBook ISBN: 9781351625074
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Vergleichende Erziehungswissenschaft

Global Perspectives on International Student Experiences in Higher Education examines a wide range of international student experiences empirically from multiple perspectives that includes socio-cultural identities, contextual influences on their learning experiences, their wellbeing experiences, and their post-study experiences.

This collection sheds light on the over five million students who cross geographical, cultural, and educational borders for higher education outside of their home countries. This book consists of nineteen chapters spread across four sections. Throughout the book, contributors question the existing assumptions and values of international student programs and services, reexamine and explore new perspectives to present the emerging challenges and critical evaluations of student experiences and their identities.

Offering a rich understanding of these students and their global college experiences in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and Americas, this book offers research-based strategies to effectively recruit, engage, support, and retain international students as they participate in higher educational settings around the world. This book provides resource material to benefit educators, policymakers, and staff who work closely with international students in higher education.

1 Exploring the Field

Understanding the International Student Experience

Krishna Bista

Several blind men approached an elephant, and each touched the animal in an effort to discover what the beast looked like. Each blind man, however, touched a different part of the large animal, and each concluded that the elephant had the appearance of the part he had touched. Hence, the blind man who felt the animal’s trunk concluded that an elephant must be tall and slender, while the fellow who touched the beast’s ear concluded that an elephant must be oblong and flat. Others of course reached different conclusions. The total result was that no man arrived at a very accurate description of the elephant. Yet each man had gained enough evidence from his own experience to disbelieve his fellows and to maintain a lively debate about the nature of the beast.

(Puchala, 1972, p. 267)

Although this universally known ancient Indian parable of “The Blind Men and an Elephant” has appeared in sociocultural and political discourses, this is also a powerful metaphor that helps explain the international student experience. In the story, the blind men describe their partial experiences of the elephant as they touch and feel different parts of the elephant. The story further illustrates that our subjective experiences can be true, but that they are limited to each individual instance, which presents a need for shared information concerning different perspectives of the international student experience.

The support for international students, which is well documented in international education research, has certainly grown with increasing institutional interest in improving revenue, diversity, and internationalization. But, as in the parable of the blind men and the elephant, different professionals specializing in different areas of support usually have partial pictures of the students’ experiences, needs, and strengths. The research commonly tends to view these students through a deficit perspective, only addressing student struggles with limited English language proficiency, cultural adjustment, student dissatisfaction, social integration issues with domestic students, and a lack of preparation to meet Western educational expectations (Brown & Jones, 2011; Heng, 2018; Bista, Sharma, & Gaulee, 2018; Huang & Turner, 2018; Jones, 2017; Marginson, 2013). For decades, colleges and universities have focused on building English Language Centers, delivering week-long orientation seminars, lecturing on local cultures and university expectations, and providing students with a list of dos and don’ts—all designed with the assumption that “they” need to learn about education “here” so they too can be successful. Most institutions offer a number of services geared towards developing language proficiency and helping social and academic transitions of international students. Jones (2017) explains:

It is important to recognize that fluency and language competence do not relate directly to academic success. Training in academic writing, in particular, would be of benefit to many native speakers, just as it may be for some international students. While we may pay insufficient attention to heterogeneity among international students, we can also fail to recognize commonalities between international and domestic students. For example, just as we should not assume all international students are studying in a foreign language, neither should we imagine that all domestic students are native speakers.

(p. 935)

In substance, however, most institutions are barely scratching the surface, and hence are far from forming a true picture of international students’ lived experiences from admission to post-graduation.

International students (also called foreign or mobile students) often move internationally to pursue a college degree. Many leave their countries of birth to escape the hard realities of life, and others study abroad for a different perspective, while yet others do so in order to experience new places for fun and adventure. While the general trends show that many international students simply seek upgrading to places with less poverty, greater job prospects, low corruption, better infrastructure, increased safety, and an overall better quality of life, the scenario is becoming more and more complex with the cultural and political changes our world has been witnessing lately (Bryla, 2018). The journey of international students is riddled with a spectrum of both positive and negative experiences (some of them life changing and transformational). The international student population is not a single, uniform group; rather it is heterogeneous by nature, and that requires a greater nuance in service delivery and a comprehensive approach towards diversity and sociocultural inclusion (Jones, 2017). Thus, for any institution of higher learning that attracts international students, it is important to understand these experiences so that they are better able to serve the international student population. Some fundamental questions to understand are: What does it mean to be an international student? What are international students’ social, emotional, and academic experiences? What constitutes their successful stories of social and academic transition? What are their post-study experiences at home or abroad?

This chapter serves to introduce this book, which collectively answers the aforementioned questions within four thematic areas of scholarship about international student experiences—social identities, academic experiences, personal wellbeing, and post-study experiences. Each contributor explores unique issues and experiences of international students from multiple perspectives. The book paints a holistic picture about different areas of student support vis-à-vis their needs, experiences, and success while situating these issues in light of global/local disruptions in higher education and international education due to dramatically shifting geopolitical and economic dynamics.

Numbers, Mobility, and Research

The enrollment trend of international students has been constantly increasing—led by the United States on top, then followed by the United Kingdom, Australia, China, and Canada as leading countries among many other emerging destinations. More than five million students have become international students pursuing a degree program outside their country of birth. According to the Institute of International Education Project Atlas (2017), the top host destinations of international students were the United States (24% of 4.6 million), the United Kingdom (11%), China (10%), Australia (7%), France (7%), Canada (7%), Russia (6%), Germany (6%), and other countries (23%). In the 2015–2016 academic year, 325,339 American students became “international students” participating in credit-bearing study abroad programs (Institute of International Education, 2017).

The United States alone hosts a record high of 1.08 million international students in various degree and/or training programs, making $39 billion in revenue. The majority of international students in the U.S. live and pursue their studies in California, Texas, and New York. Nearly 9% of 1.8 million international students attended American community colleges during the 2016–2017 academic year. Since President Trump was elected in 2016, the United States has become less attractive to international students because of his sharp political rhetoric, more restrictive views on immigration, travel ban on some Muslim countries, and proposals of stricter laws making it harder to stay and work after graduation (Bista, 2018; Sá & Sabzalieva, 2018; Saul, 2018). However, this political atmosphere has given international students a second chance to choose other higher education destinations including Canada, Australia, and other English-speaking countries (Bista, Sharma, & Gaulee, 2018).

Along with the global growth of international students and the changing global marketplace, colleges and universities are restructuring and strengthening their support services. Institutions of higher education proudly announce their “global vision” by promoting foreign student recruitment, international faculty members, exchange programs, Fulbright programs, and other study abroad activities. These global ambitions are primarily focused on recruiting students from nontraditional destinations such as Saudi Arabia and Brazil, particularly to tap into the scholarship programs offered by their governments. Non-English-speaking countries including China, India, Japan, and South Korea have also strategically aligned with this global ambition to recruit international students from foreign countries. For instance, the fast-growing Chinese economy has transformed its higher education image into an “international education hub” with an enrollment target of 500,000 international students by 2020. China has strengthened its regional ties under its One Belt, One Road initiative and has widened its visa policies to attract the best and bright international students (Grove, 2017). Today, colleges and universities have become more “international” both by choice and by necessity (Cole, 2017).

A Google search currently pulls 13.6 million results in 0.50 seconds while using the keywords “international students.” On average, every month at least eight dissertations and theses, dozens of research articles, and 200 reports are published on international student issues (Bista, 2016). There are also approximately 12,000 journal articles and 1,400 dissertations related to international student topics. While there is a plethora of research, the majority of these publications focus on international students’ cultural adjustment issues, their academic writing and linguistic challenges, retention practices, counseling and mental health issues, global engagements, social identities and discriminatory issues, teaching assistant resources, and college choice and mobility trends (Bista & Gaulee, 2017). Scholars have constantly re-defined, re-modeled, and re-theorized the stories, experiences, and challenges of international students. There is research and resources, yet there is not enough innovation and new ways to look at the bigger issues of international student experience. “The Blind Men and the Elephant” parable also illustrates the elusive nature of reality and the work of primary scholars, practitioners, and stakeholders of international education who have presented a partial picture of the international student experience.

Student Experiences and Complexities

Regionally and/or internationally, students have always moved across borders—physical, political, socioeconomic, cultural, and others—and their movement has been amplified by advancements in the means of travel and communication (Bista, Sharma, & Gaulee, 2018). International students move for survival, for opportunity, and for learning depending on push and pull factors of mobility in higher education. Whether we call it “study abroad” or “overseas study,” students are constantly pursuing their dreams of studying in a foreign country—because of its culture, or a scholarship or a relationship. International students and scholars are real people with real life experiences that encounter issues and challenges while staying and studying in another country whether they are of Asian or European, African, or American origins. Studies suggest that despite being real people who have a real impact on higher education in their host countries, international students are still not given the same human treatment as domestic students (Hayes, 2018 this volume; Marginson, 2013; Tran & Vu, 2017; Velez-Gomez & Bell, 2018). Unequal treatment of international students was intensified by national attitudes that situated international students in the eyes of the “host” communities as “deficits” who had “a set of identifiable and correctable problems” (Lee & Rice, 2007, p. 338). Instead of considering this diverse group of students as a valuable source of alternative knowledge, it was rather perceived as a trait to be corrected by the host society (McKay, O’Neill, & Petrakieva, 2018). Marginson (2013) also presents a similar scenario in Australia of the national prescription to correct “the foreign students”:

It is assumed that the host country culture normalized by this prescription remains unchanged. The international student “adjusts” to the host nation but not vice versa. Adjustment is “successful” to the extent students discard their beliefs and adopt values and behaviors of host-country norms. The idea of one-way adjustment implies the host culture is superior, fitting popular prejudices.

(Marginson, 2013, p. 12)

Whether they are called “foreign students,” “alien non-immigrants,” “non-resident aliens,” “mobile students,” “study abroad students,” or “international students,” they are known as the “Other,” and the local policies and programs are structured in such ways that they are “special people” who need treatments for corrections—in language learning, adjustments, understanding campus values, and becoming “normal” people. Few people in the host institution know that international students pay exorbitant fees, undergo complex administrative processes, may live in austere conditions, and still try to adopt the local values while pursuing their dreams. There is no consistency in the way these students are defined and evaluated, and hence the kinds of support services they receive depend on how they are perceived in their host institutions. Hence, there is a vast difference in the understanding and the support services rendered to them from institution to institution. Any semblance of consistency across the countries is just a far cry. The position of host countries in the international education market usually dictates political, economic, and educational approaches to international students (Teichler, 2004). Such issues related to international student identities and their sociocultural experiences are explored in the first eight chapters of this book. In recent decades, the mobility of international students has been perceived as one of the indicators of campus diversity, internationalization, and a prime source to boost the revenue of the institution of higher education in major destinations. There are certainly complexities in understanding international student experiences and their contribution in higher education as the blind men were in understanding the elephant. In the parable the blind men did not see the whole elephant, no one said it was an elephant, no one asked the elephant, and they did not ask each other’s views about the animal. While one uses a holistic approach in understanding international students, these students also must be treated fairly by the simple logic of reciprocity: international students are “international” in the host countries in the same way as study abroad students will be “international” by default in the receiving countries.

The ratio of international students and the support services is never balanced as the majority of campuses and universities have limited resources; office personnel and faculty members are often busy with regular schedules; and most importantly the programs and resources are structured from the perspectives of colleges and universities (what they want to offer) rather than what international students would actually need or benefit from in order to live, study, and work when they are overseas. As in the parable of “The Blind Men and the Elephant,” the partial reality of understanding of the international student is reflected in the limited resources and programs put in place aiming to address the much larger and complex issues of international students (which are never fully understood by the so-called stewards in place). The magnitude of each international student experience varies based on personal educational differences, social integration, help-seeking approaches, friendship development, funding issues, different communication styles and customs, career choices, and other soft skills. Most importantly, the human aspect is often ignored, and what they bring to the table is minimized. Hence, at the human level, international students should not be seen as being different from their local counterparts—as they are real humans, and their college experiences are as real as their counterparts’ experiences are (Jones, 2017)....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Editor
• About the Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• 1 Exploring the Field: Understanding the International Student Experience
• Part I Sociocultural Experiences: Recognizing International Student Identities
• Part II Contextual Influences on International Student Learning Experiences
• Part III Rethinking International Student Wellbeing Experiences
• Part IV International Student Post-Study Experiences
• Index