Page 69 - Movers, Shapers, and Everything in Between: Influencers of the International Student Experience

became more negative as their time abroad passed (Klineberg & Hull, 1979; Stroebe, Lenkert & Jonas, 1988).
Data from the 2017 HEPI survey corroborates this: 29% of first year students—including domestic students—were significantly more likely than average to find their experience better than expected. A 2010 study by Peat, Dalziel, and Grant found that that long-term student satisfaction and performance was higher from students who participated in a first year ‘transition workshop’; universities could consider transition workshops, mentorships or buddy programs for international students to offer support, and hopefully bolster satisfaction, throughout their time at university.
Higher education is constantly changing; the COVID-19 pandemic has hastened trends affecting the international student experience in both direct and indirect ways, making an understanding of what predicts student satisfaction even more important. Bean’s (1983) often-cited student attrition model posits that a student’s beliefs are influenced by their experiences at the institution, which become their attitudes about the institution, and, finally, shape their sense of belonging at the institution. There may be an effect on student attrition rates, as students—particularly those already struggling— suffer lower academic performance in online courses (Xu & Jaggars, 2013; Husbands & Day, 2020).
limitAtionS And future reSeArCh
Despite careful methodological planning, this study is not without limitations. First, the analysis does not include demographic information such as student nationality, age, or area of study. It also, albeit intentionally, only considers undergraduate student satisfaction, and so does not allow insight into other levels of study. It also, intentionally, does not include students in short term, study abroad, part time, or online programs. The rationale for this is that the experiences of students in these categories are diverse and distinctive. Because results are limited to undergraduate, full-time, on campus international students, there remains room for future analysis on other
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Factors Impacting Satisfaction
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