Internationalisation of higher education: Conceptualising the antecedents and outcomes of cross-cultural adaptation

Abstract

The increase in higher education internationalisation has called for finding possible ways to understand and improve its related issues. Despite the financial, cultural, and social benefits that international students bring to host countries’ educational institutions, the challenges they encounter in a new environment are hard to deal with, especially acculturative stress and adjustment problems in a new environment. As international students are at the heart of education internationalisation, it is crucial to understand and address their adjustment issues for a sustainable education management. Therefore, this study develops a conceptual framework to portray international students’ adjustment issues in a host country from perspectives of field theory and cross-cultural adaptation theory. The proposed conceptual model not only considers factors influencing international students’ cross-cultural adaptation in a host country, but it also highlights the outcomes of such adaptation which can provide managerial implications for sustaining higher education mobility growth.