Journal of Studies in International Education

Despite extensive research on Chinese international students in North America, there is a lack of studies that compare students’ choices between the United States (U.S.) and Canada. In this study, we conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 55 Chinese international undergraduate students in two case institutions in the U.S. and Canada. Drawing on the Push-Pull model and the Purchase Intention model, our study explains how the intense Chinese education system under Gaokao (National College Entrance Examinations) pushes students to pursue higher education abroad. The findings also reveal factors that attract Chinese students to foreign countries and institutions, such as the superior position of the U.S. (高大上 gaodashang), the welcoming culture in Canada (包容 baorong), and the institutional reputation (名气 mingqi). Theoretical contributions and recommendations for scholarship and practice are provided in the article.

This study examines how international students from different cultural groups perceive their International Learning Environments (ILE) in three institutions located in the Netherlands, Türkiye, and Malaysia. Data were collected from 292 international students pursuing bachelor's and master's degrees using the standardized MILES survey, with 31.8% of responses from the Netherlands, 34.9% from Türkiye, and 33.2% from Malaysia. We used the Kruskal-Wallis Test and ANOVA for quantitative data analysis, and content analysis for the qualitative data. Results indicate that, across the three universities, international students scored highest in the goal direction domain and lowest in the relationships domain. No significant differences in goal direction or relationship domains among the three institutions or by cultural groups, but variations were found in supporting services. The main differences lie in the English proficiency of support staff. The study contributes to developing support services to enhance the ILE.

Moving the analysis beyond the usual stay/return dichotomy, we examine the career implications of further mobility for internationally degree-mobile tertiary students together with factors that increase or decrease the probability for mobility after graduation. Besides those who stay in the city of their studies and those who return home, we distinguish international students who are nationally or internationally mobile post-graduation. We find that studying in one's native language is universally connected to a lower likelihood of post-graduation mobility. Graduates from small cities had highest odds for further mobility while graduates from universities in major cities were less likely to move nationally or return home. By 2020, graduates who graduated in 2018 or earlier and moved to another country generally had higher-paying and more prestigious jobs than graduates who remained in their place of study.

Fostering transversal skills is important for adapting to an ever-changing world. This study aims to evaluate the socioemotional skills of undergraduate university students participating in semester-long international mobility programs. To this end, an initial sample of 128 students from a public university in Spain participated: 49 mobility students and 79 non-mobility students. The results indicate that students who participate in mobility programs have a different socioemotional profile from their peers before starting mobility, with higher levels of self-concept and empathy. In addition, after the stay, mobility students improve their empathic skills, social skills, and resilience. It is also observed that students who maintain friendships at their destination with national hosts develop empathy, resilience, and social skills to a greater extent than those who do not. These results shed light on the socioemotional skills of international mobility students and the changes they undergo after mid-length stays at other universities.

As intercultural perspectives assume a greater emphasis in higher education internationalization, “interculturalization” is gaining prominence. This study builds on a critical incident study where cultural identity experiences related to race, ethnicity, and national origin as well as experiences of ability, education, sexuality, socioeconomic status/class, gender and spiritualty/religion were documented in the globally diverse classroom. This exploratory study examines intercultural processes in the international classroom by asking university instructional faculty to discuss the importance of intercultural learning outcomes as a graduate attribute, describe cultural diversity of the student population at the research site, and validate the critical incident analysis from previous research, thereby investigating local internationalization of the curriculum in a domestic context. The findings indicate that students’ cultural identity experiences provide for opportunities of interculturality. However, domestic students may not see their own internationally connected families as global, which suggests that there is a particular role for international students.

Missing data are inevitable in quantitative research, yet the issue of missing data does not always receive adequate attention. Unless researchers report missing data, research consumers are left to assume default software protocols handled missing data—protocols that are frequently inappropriate, risk compromising a study's conclusions, and needlessly discard data shared by participants. This study reviews missing data reporting practices within the internationalization of higher education literature to determine how often researchers address missing data due to survey item nonresponse and which methods they used. Among the 35 sampled studies from the literature, only 37% explicitly addressed missing data and only 3% used a modern method endorsed by missing data researchers, signally the need to improve missing data reporting practices. To that end, this study concludes with a discussion on guidelines for reporting missing data, how missing data can be used to researchers’ advantage, and areas for future research.

Despite a growing body of research on the post-pandemic academic labor market crisis and its impact on potential turnover issues involving Western international faculty members (IFMs) in mainland China, far too little empirical research has been conducted regarding their contract renewal strategies. Thus, this study underpins the conceptual map of institutional habitus, transnational academic capital, and professional identity and adopts an exploratory qualitative method, which helps interpret relatively unknown issues and events by conducting semi-structured interviews with individuals who all experienced the same social phenomena. Accordingly, this study promotes scholarly conversations about three primary themes therein: (a) Backup Plans: Global Academic Social Network Chains and Information Sharing; (b) Collaborative Teaching and Research Networks in Institutional Capacity; and (c) Social Service: Academic Supervising and Mentoring and Extracurricular Activities. The study focuses on increasing a more in-depth theoretical and practical understanding of transnational academic capital mobility patterns in mainland China and beyond.