Norwegian Students at British Universities — a Case Study of the Academic Performances of Foreign Students

Abstract

Bie, K. N. 1976. Norwegian Students at British Universities -a Case Study of Academic Performances of Foreign Students. Scand. J. educ. Res. 20, 1-24. Great Britain has a long tradition of accepting large numbers of foreign students. Generalizations about their academic performances conclude that foreign students do worse than British students. Norwegian students have constituted a large group at British universities and colleges. This study compares their performances with those of contemporary British students in the 1950's and 1960's, in architecture, business administration, dentistry, engineering and medicine at 16 institutions in England, Scotland and Wales. It was found that Norwegian students had a lower failure rate than British, and their final examination results and the means in annual examinations compared favourably with their British counterparts. Statements about foreign students' performances are thus not confirmed by Norwegian students' performances. The question of whether motivation may explain the high Norwegian standard of achievement is discussed. Language difficulties, social adjustment and possible deficiencies in the Norwegian school background do not seem to have seriously influenced Norwegian academic performance at British universities and colleges.

The influence of learning styles, enrolment status and gender on academic performance of optometry undergraduates

“…Other studies investigating the academic performance of international students in comparison to UK home students have found mixed results. Some have concluded that international students have far better academic performance 23,51 and suggested that this may be due to them having greater motivation, a greater level of support from the family and higher expectations of success. Some studies have found that international students did not perform as well as their home counterparts 52,53 and suggested that this may be due to difficulty with English language skills and problems adjusting to a new academic and cultural environment.…”

Researching the performance of international students in the UK

“…Singaporean students reported undertaking a significantly greater amount of private study than that reported by their home counterparts. In an earlier study, Bie (1976) found that, overall, Norwegian students in the UK had a lower failure rate than their UK counterparts and comparable examination results in both annual and final examinations. Bie also commented that previous studies, which looked at the performance of international students as a single group, were of limited use, given the differences between (and within) national groups.…”

Factors affecting academic performance of international students in project management courses: A case study from a British Post 92 University

“…For example, the UK national study by Morrison [2] found that overall, international-domiciled students achieved fewer first class or upper second class honours degrees than did UK-domiciled students and, in multi-level analysis, identified variations by region, country of origin, discipline, and qualifications on entry [3,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19].…”