A Phenomenological Study of the Lived Experience of Iranian Students as International Students

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Member of the faculty of the Institute of Cultural and Social Studies of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology.

Abstract

International Student Mobility (ISM) is one of the common strategies of countries in order to achieve the goals of internationalization of higher education. The present article is part of a qualitative research that has been done with a phenomenological approach through semi-structured interviews with Iranian students studying in one of the European universities in order to discover the deep experiences of Iranian students as international students. The findings based on students' lived experience show the advantage of studying at the destination university, including benefiting from the quality of learning, quality of research and academic facilities, and also diversity of international students. On the other hand, the findings contain students' experiences about language challenges, academic challenge and cultural challenge. The results based on the outcomes of student experiences include increasing academic competence, cultural competence, general competence and also increase the chances of a job (as pull factors) and some cultural challenges such as discrimination and inequality (as pull factors). In conclusion, academic planners should be aware that the success of the International Student Mobility Program will only be complemented by the return of students. This goal is achieved by strengthening the pull factors and eliminating the push factors by Iran as the sending country of students.

Keywords

References

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