ISANA

Parvinder Kaur Hukam Singh, Thavamalar Thuraisingam

Abstract: This study sets out to capture the essence of the socio-cultural and academic lived experiences of international students in a private higher education institution as the phenomenon of adjustment has neither been studied extensively nor qualitatively in the South East Asian setting. The narrations of 12 international students from four countries; Nigeria, Korea, India and Indonesia were gathered through prolonged conversational interviews. The interviews were then transcribed verbatim and meaning units identified using the selective and highlighting approach. The formulated meaning units were then arranged into clusters which resulted in five themes. The paper concludes with the discussion of specific implications and recommendations to improve the campus climate for diversity.

Key words: international education, socio-cultural adjustments, academic adjustments, phenomenology, essence.