This article presents the rationale for having a symposium on internationalisation of higher education (IHE) and introduces the collection of articles. It details examples of two universities from Central Europe to illustrate uneven development in internationalisation, including the achievements in and barriers of internationalisation. The paper sets these examples into the context of existing publications on IHE and suggests that teaching faculty members are key for enhancing internationalisation, in particular their teaching abilities and commitment to support internationalisation. It warns that IHE may divide Europe into two profoundly different parts, contrary to the expectation of policy makers and experts. It concludes by recommending academic development as an effective way to increase academic teachers’ competences and willingness to advance internationalisation in higher education.

International students frequently report suicidal thoughts and behaviours, but often do not seek help. We evaluated the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effectiveness of an adapted version of safeTALK suicide prevention training for international students. Eight workshops were delivered in Melbourne, Australia (N = 128; 62.5% female, M age = 23.4). In this single-arm study, surveys were completed pre-, post-, and three months post-training, and 17 participants completed follow-up interviews. The training was rated as acceptable, helpful, and safe. Linear mixed models indicated increased confidence to intervene and stronger intentions to refer individuals to formal help sources, with improvements sustained at follow-up. Suicide stigma showed a small post-training reduction that was not sustained. Suicide literacy only improved three months post-training. Attrition limited inferences about long-term effects. Qualitative feedback supported the training’s value but highlighted the need for further cultural adaptation. Findings support adapted gatekeeper training as a promising strategy for suicide prevention among international students.

This study explored the social policy context for international students in the UK and its implications for social exclusion (an inability to fully participate in society). Within a rapid review policy literature addressing international student experience, forty-two articles from the Web of Science and Social Science Research Network (SSRN) were selected through multiple screenings. Migration and education were the most explored policy areas, followed by inequalities, work, health and wellbeing, security, and housing. Results demonstrated that policy both creates barriers to inclusion (e.g. hostile environment migration/bordering practices) and supports inclusion/adaption to social exclusion-related challenges (e.g. sanctuary scholarships for forced migrants, Graduate visas). All international students to some degree lack equitable participation in wellbeing-relevant provision. Overall, policies are constructed so the state and universities can extract value from internationals without fully including them in British society. Policies abdicate responsibility for students’ inclusion, making it expensive and complicated to build a life there.

While the number of international students attending UK universities has been increasing in recent years, the 2021/22 and 2022/23 academic years saw a decline in applications from EU-domiciled students. However, the extent and varying impact of this decline remain to be estimated and disentangled from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using difference-in-differences (DID) in a hierarchical regression framework and Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) data, we aim to quantify the decline in the number of student applications post-Brexit. We find evidence of an overall decline of 65% in the 2021 academic year in successful applications from EU students as a result of Brexit. This decline is more pronounced for non-Russell Group institutions, as well as for Health and Life Sciences and Arts and Languages. Furthermore, we explore the spatial heterogeneity of the impact of Brexit across EU countries of origin, observing the greatest effects for Poland and Germany, though this varies depending on institution type and subject. We also show that higher rates of COVID-19 stringency in the country of origin led to greater applications for UK higher education institutions. Our results are important for government and institutional policymakers seeking to understand where losses occur and how international students respond to external shocks and policy changes. Our study quantifies the distinct impacts of Brexit and COVID-19 and offers valuable insights to guide strategic interventions to sustain the UK’s attractiveness as a destination for international students.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, our international students were confined to their rooms in a foreign land and were unable to return to their home countries during their semester break due to border closures. A summer internship program, underpinned by Asian philosophies including Confucianism(1) and collectivism(2), was designed to bring them together physically in a COVID-safe environment and collectively develop employability skills. Twenty-five international students across six year-levels and from 11 countries participated in the five-week internship program. Our in-house dietitian presented participants with an authentic nutrition problem, i.e. observable unhealthy eating habits being prevalent amongst the international student client group. Participants were empowered to draw on their cultural knowledge, international student experience, cooking skills and evidence-based nutrition knowledge, in the development of an educational nutrition resource to be used in the dietitian clinic. Employability skills self-assessment was completed pre- and post-program for comparison. In addition, a collective reflection was facilitated at the end of the program to gather in-depth understanding of the unique learnings from the students’ and program facilitators’ perspectives. Thematic analysis was adopted to analyse the narrative data. It was found that the student-participants developed a website with healthy eating information, including tailored to international students’ habits of late-night snacking and suggestions for quick meals during exams. They developed 50 healthy, simple, multicultural recipes with cooking videos. The internship served as an opportunity for the students to work together with a shared purpose. They reported a strong sense of community which was longed for and extended the established friends outside of the internship program. Students were observed sharing acculturative experience and knowledge with one another when socialising together. Upon reflection, students reported feeling challenged by the lack of structure and assessment guide for the internship tasks. However, they were able to develop confidence in their judgement and decision-making skills through this process and work together exploring the uncertainties. Many reported feeling empowered from this internship as their cultural differences and unique international-student-experience were valued and utilised in the resource development. This low-cost education strategy contributed to the development of professional skills and formation of professional identity, and for the students to find their voice in the nutrition field.

The University of British Columbia (UBC) opened Canada’s first International House (I-House) in 1959 after a decade of activism from students and faculty. Students had demanded an I-House to help them find housing, and to ensure that “brotherhood may prevail,” as the I-House motto promised. The I-House campaign received support from community groups that raised the funds to build the UBC I-House. UBC’s administration wanted I-House as a social center that could coordinate fledgling international student services and resisted the residential I-House model. Ultimately, UBC’s administrators won out and the residential component was never built. This paper examines the conflict about building a residence to house international and domestic students together, chronicling the competing visions of international student policy and services that were circulating at one of Canada’s largest universities in the early days of the Cold War.

This study examines the delivery components of inclusive mental health services in higher education, centering on international university students. Through interviews with 32 participants at a state university in the United States, including students, counseling staff, and faculty, six key themes emerged: mental health professionals’ multicultural self-awareness, focus on reparative services, mainstream mental health theories and approaches, professionals’ cultural background, faculty involvement and physical space and confidentiality. These findings underscore the importance of training for professionals, expansive mental health offerings, incorporation of diverse approaches, confidentiality, active faculty participation and suitable physical environments. By addressing these components, universities can enhance the quality of mental health support for international student populations, promoting their overall well-being and academic success.

Increasing numbers of international students enter university education via English language bridging programs. Much research has overlooked the nature of second language reading development during a bridging program, focusing instead on the development of literacy skills of international students who already meet the language requirement for undergraduate admission. We report a longitudinal eye-movement study assessing English passage reading efficiency and comprehension in 405 Chinese-speaking bridging program students. Incoming IELTS reading scores were used as an index of baseline reading ability. Linear mixed-effects regression models fitted to global eye-movement measures and reading comprehension indicated that despite initial between-subjects differences, within-subject change at each ability level progressed at the same rate, following parallel growth trajectories. Therefore, there was significant overall reading progress during the bridging program, but no evidence that the gap between low and high ability readers either closed or widened over time.

While educating international students is celebrated as a means of promoting mutual understanding among nations, American higher education has always been entangled with geopolitics. This essay focuses on Tang Tsou, the Chinese scholar who came to the United States as a student in 1941, eventually becoming the nation's leading China expert and producing knowledge about China for the United States during the Cold War. It analyzes how Tsou navigated a complex political terrain in which his Chinese identity was both a professional asset and a liability. Examining Tsou's personal and professional decisions as well as his response to the politicization of his Chinese identity reveals the (geo)politicization of higher education more broadly.

This exploratory study focuses on international students’ usage of digital tools in order to understand what role such tools play in the transition to their new academic environments and what learning opportunities they provide. Not only do digital tools accompany international students’ social, cultural, and linguistic transitions as they move to France to further their language competence, but their usage also reveals part of the social and semiotic adjustments they have to make in the process. Sixteen international students who volunteered for the study were given a smartphone application with which they could track learning opportunities by taking pictures and writing textual commentaries. The data, collected over a period of five weeks, thus include the resulting entries these participants shared in their mobile multimodal diaries with the researchers, as well as an end-of-project debriefing that was conducted to shed further light on the international students’ digital habits and their attitudes towards self-tracking. This study indicates that digital tools can play an important and pervasive role in facilitating international students’ linguistic development and their dealings with everyday life abroad. It also confirms that self-tracking apps can be instrumental in enhancing students’ awareness of learning opportunities outside the classroom.

Although international students experience lower attainment at university than home students (Morrison et al., 2005), reasons are poorly understood. Some question the role of language proficiency as international students come with required language qualifications. This study investigated language and literacy of international students who successfully met language entry requirements and those of home students, matched on non-verbal cognition, studying in their native language. In a sample of 63 Chinese and 64 British students at a UK university, large and significant group differences were found at entry and eight months later. Furthermore, language and literacy indicators explained 51% of variance in the Chinese group's grades, without predicting the home students’ achievement. Thus language proficiency appears predictive of academic outcomes only before a certain threshold is reached, and this threshold does not correspond to the minimum language entry requirements. This highlights a systematic disadvantage with which many international students pursue their education.

Despite the advantages of international study — to the student, the university, and the local community — studies have reported an increased risk of stress-related psychological problems in international students. We surveyed 384 Asian international students (189 female, 193 male, 2 undeclared; aged 17 to 47 years) attending Australian universities in order to examine whether depressive symptoms in these students are related to their trait maladaptive perfectionism and the extent to which they have experienced acculturative stress while in Australia. Path analyses suggest that maladaptive perfectionism influences depression indirectly by increasing acculturative stress (mediation model) and to a lesser extent by interacting positively with acculturative stress (moderation model). The results reveal ways in which maladaptive perfectionism can affect the wellbeing of Asian international students experiencing adjustment-related stress.

This study explores the assessment preferences of 453 postgraduate business students in New Zealand, Australia, and Thailand using a survey linking motivational and educational preferences. This study compares the needs of Western students (Australian and New Zealand), Asian (Thai) and international students (predominantly Chinese and Indian students) in Australia and New Zealand (ANZAC). One major finding is that students from these three countries who are socially motivated prefer ‘cooperative learning’. Further, the study specifically shows that students from Thailand are more socially motivated than students from Australia and New Zealand (ANZAC) while International ANZAC students have the greatest desire for cooperative learning. It also shows that group assessment poses quite significant challenges for local ANZAC students and therefore, remedial intervention from universities is essential if group assessments are to remain relevant and useful in achieving meaningful teaching and learning outcomes.

Higher education in East Asia is at an important historical juncture where its flagship universities are locked in a race to internationalise. In this restructuring, international students become a critical element in university and national strategies, as a key resource to strengthen university research and to augment the skilled labour force of a country. This article examines the issue of student migration at three scales. First, an idea of the regional magnitude of student movements is determined by examining inbound and outbound movements of students moving out of their home countries to study abroad within Pacific Asia (East and Southeast Asia). Second, by using Singapore as a case study, the paper examines the role of state policy in the internationalisation of higher education. We see how state and university policies shape the new work of flagship universities. And third, by drilling down further and using a survey sample of National University of Singapore international students, the main body of the paper examines the process of decision making, the elements which attract students to Singapore, their adjustment process, and their plans after graduation. This paper argues that the internationalisation of education brings about a powerful set of influences to the host society particularly when there are policies facilitating foreign students and their insertion into the host economy and society. Far from being a small temporary minority locked away in ivory towers, foreign students become the focus of policy, a talent that is sourced, a pillar supporting the economy, the hope of new marriage formation and the arrest the fertility decline, and an essential ingredient in the resultant multicultural society.

International students encounter a range of additional challenges as a part of their tertiary study experience. A qualitative approach was used to understand the challenges faced by international students, coping strategies that promoted their personal resilience and advice they have for future international students. Twenty-two international students from an Australian university participated in four focus groups. The challenges identified by students included adjustment, social isolation, English language skills, academic difficulties, unmet expectations, employment, culture shock and psychological distress. Participants shared their own personal experiences and strategies used by them to cope and identified strategies that future students could use prior to leaving their home country and whilst in Australia to improve their adjustment. Uses of international student stories in prevention interventions are discussed.