Foreign Students’ Adjustment in Early Days of Their University Education: The Stress and Strains

The study purported to understand the experiences of foreign students on their early days of their university education. A lot has been done to ascertain how students generally fare on university campuses but little research attention had been paid to how people from different socio-cultural, political and economic backgrounds fared when they settled to commence their education in a foreign land, and how they managed the challenges. The qualitative study used 26 international students from five countries pursuing undergraduate education at the Catholic University College of Ghana. The study unveils that the international students in the University College experience some social, academic and economic challenges in their early days on campus. The study has brought to the fore the inadequacy of the measures that the authorities put in place to enhance international students’ adjustment on campus. The university authority needs to have special and intensive orientation for its fresh international students to ameliorate, if not to eradicate, the hardships such students encounter when they gain admission and commenced their study. The knowledge gained from the study is key to tertiary institutions in formulating effective orientation and strategies for institutions that admit international students.