Support Services at Spanish and U.S. Institutions: A Driver for International Student Satisfaction

Abstract

Many institutions of higher education are promoting campus internationalization as a core principle through international student mobility and, as a result, have expanded rapidly in enrollment. To effectively serve this growing population, many campuses have had to strengthen their student support services. However, while many have welldeveloped programs for students in general, not all services are designed to specifically cover the needs of international students. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview on research conducted on the topic of international student satisfaction with university support services as a means to ensure a positive student experience. It also provides a new research approach for comparing how support services for international students are structured at Spanish and U.S. institutions.

From Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) to Sustained Remote Teaching (SRT): A comparative semester analysis of exchange students’ experiences and perceptions of learning online during COVID-19

“…However, since exchange students are often always new and have no prior orientation to how ERT courses had been conducted at the university in the Spring, increased Student Support scores for continually new students may be paradoxical. Traditionally this type of difficulty has been present when students start learning online (Hachey et al, 2012) and is potentially an analogous challenge in the life cycle of academic exchanges (see Abdullah et al, 2017;Perez-Encinas & Ammigan, 2016) which may complicate perceptions of ERT. Further, the university does not have a standard ERT course format (see Table 2), generally leaving format and method decisions up to individual instructors.…”

Impact of Academic and Non-Academic Service Quality on International Students Satisfaction in Chinese Universities

“…A student in an institution defines service quality making it difficult for institutions to understand which aspect of the services students consider quality education service (Sharif & Kassim, 2012;Encinas & Ammigan, 2016). Since students' educational experience is subjective and intangible, measuring its quality poses a challenge for higher education administrators (Arrivabene et al, 2019).…”

Commitment to Academic Exchanges in the Age of COVID-19

“…The exchange micro cycle's stages have been described in prior literature as prearrival, arrival, throughout, and after-mobility (Abdullah et al, 2017), as well as before arrival/pre-arrival, arrival, induction and welcome, learning in the classroom, learning a new socio-cultural environment, and home country return (Perez-Encinas & Ammigan, 2016). Intertwined and overlapping all of these stages are various academic, linguistic, and sociocultural challenges that can make the process easier or harder for some students (Ecochard & Fotheringham, 2017).…”

“…Yet the unpredictable nature of the pandemic and constantly shifting/conflicting policies made providing accurate information in this stage of the exchange life cycle nearly impossible. Further, the emergence of state-mandated quarantines illustrated that the conventional academic exchange life cycle's stages or phases (e.g., arrival/pre-arrival, arrival, induction and welcome, learning in the classroom, learning a new socio-cultural environment, and home country return) (see Abdullah et al, 2017;Perez-Encinas & Ammigan, 2016) were incomplete under pandemic conditions. Nevertheless, exchange students were still committed to conducting their exchanges despite awareness of this new requirement, in addition to being the first students en masse to go through the unknown process.…”