Integrating International Students: The Missing Link in Portuguese Higher Education Institutions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32674/jcihe.v11iWinter.1110Keywords:
Student integration, PortugalAbstract
This paper analyses the strategies employed by two Portuguese institutions to integrate international students as well as these students’ perceptions of their social and academic integration, based on semi-structured interviews with institutional top and middle managers and focus groups with international students. Our findings suggest that institutional strategies are still scarce, ad-hoc and misarticulated. The analysed measures are not sufficiently coordinated and efficient in ensuring a positive experience for international students. The creation of an international unit to cater for their needs stands out as a critical step to take. Surprisingly, language emerges as an issue for the integration of students from Portuguese-speaking countries, who need to become ‘visible’ in terms of institutional measures. The paper reflects on some practical implications for institutions in order to improve the social and academic integration of international students.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
The findings, interpretations, conclusions, and views expressed in Journal of Comparative and International Higher Education (JCIHE) are entirely those of the authors and should not be attributed in any manner to CIES, HESIG, or the sponsoring universities of the Editorial Staff. These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License. Readers are free to copy, display, and distribute articles that appear in JCIHE as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and JCIHE, it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. All other uses must be approved by the author(s) or JCIHE. By submitting a manuscript, authors agree to transfer without charge the following rights to JCIHE upon acceptance of the manuscript: first worldwide serial publication rights and the right for JCIHE to grant permissions as its editors judge appropriate for the redistribution of the article, its abstract, and metadata associated with the article in professional indexing and reference services.
