More than 3 million students study outside their home country, primarily at a Western university. A common belief among educators is that international students are insufficiently adjusted to higher education in their host country, both academically and socially. Furthermore, several groups of international students experience considerable amounts of stress while adapting to the culture of the host-institute. Several researchers argue that studies on adaptation of international students should widen its focus to the underlying mechanisms that leads towards this ''misalignment''. In a cross-institutional comparison among 958 students at five business schools in the Netherlands, differences in academic performance between local and international students were identified by focussing on their levels of academic and social integration. Students' academic integration was measured with the Students' Adaptation to College Questionnaire (SACQ), while students' social integration was measured with a newly developed and validated -011-9468-1 questionnaire. The results indicate that the degree of academic success of international students is multi-faceted. International students with a (mixed) western ethnic background perform well on both academic and social integration, and also attained higher studyperformance in comparison to domestic students. In contrast, international students with a non-Western background are less integrated compared to other international students. Nevertheless, they have a similar study-performance. Finally, academic adjustment is the main predictor of study-performance for Dutch, Western and Mixed-Western students. Social adjustment was negatively related to study-performance. The lack of fit for predicting long-term study success of non-Western students indicates that their academic and social integration processes are more complex and non-linear.123 High Educ (2012) 63:685-700 DOI 10.1007/s10734

International traineeships appear to provide good opportunities for students to meet the requirements of globalisation as well as some of the generic objectives of undergraduate medical education. The tentative findings of this study need to be confirmed by further studies.

An increasing number of students choose to study at a university in a foreign country. A common belief among educators is that international students are insufficiently academically adjusted. Recent research has found a mixed picture on whether international students underperform in academic integration and academic performance. Therefore, Morrison et al. (2005) argue that research should extend its focus to understanding the underlying reasons for these performance differences of international versus local students. In a cross-institutional comparison among 871 students of five business schools, we investigated the differences in academic and social integration amongst local and international students. International students value their faculty and educational system more than local students. However, international and local students have limited social contact with each other and spend their private time differently. Finally, students with a non-Western background are less integrated than Western students, have considerable lower academic and social integration scores and have (marginally) lower GPA and ECTS scores. Institutes with small classes and collaborative learning settings seem to provide a more favourable learning environment for international students.