International students cope differently, so support must adapt
Updated Aug 21, 2026
Two students can face the same unfamiliar seminar, assessment, or staff relationship and need completely different forms of help. That is why a new Studies in Higher Education paper by Lina Jiang, Hülya Kosar Altinyelken and Henny M.W. Bos, "Navigating Dutch academia: coping strategies of Chinese female students", matters for UK universities. Its interviews show that international students' responses to academic pressure vary with their goals, confidence, stress, and engagement. For teams acting on international student voice in curriculum and support, the practical warning is clear: silence does not show that adjustment is going well.
Context and research question
International students often have to decode several parts of university life at once. The paper identifies academic language, cultural differences, classroom participation, group learning, and lecturer-student relationships as recurring adjustment challenges. A generic satisfaction item may show that something is difficult, but it cannot explain how students respond or why the same challenge leads one student to seek help while another withdraws.
The authors explored how coping strategies are shaped by students' academic backgrounds, expectations, and levels of engagement. They conducted in-depth interviews with 22 Chinese female students at one Dutch university and used those accounts to examine variation rather than search for one typical response. That focus complements evidence that international PGT support works better when students help shape it, because both studies treat international students as people with different histories and needs, not one uniform category.
Key findings
Students did not use one common coping strategy. The paper's most useful finding is the variation within the group. Similar academic pressures produced different responses depending on how students understood the problem, how confident they felt about addressing it, and how engaged they were with study. For UK teams, this means an international-student average can conceal the very differences that should guide support.
"coping strategies vary across students rather than being used uniformly"
Clearer academic goals and greater confidence were associated with more problem-focused coping. These students were more likely to address a difficulty directly. The abstract does not establish that confidence caused this response, but it does point to a practical relationship: students who can define the problem and see a route through it may be better placed to ask questions, change their approach, or seek specific help.
Higher uncertainty or stress was linked to less visible forms of coping. Students who felt less able to address academic challenges, or who were less engaged, relied more on emotion-focused, avoidance-oriented, or forbearance strategies, including enduring a difficulty rather than trying to change it. Universities should not read these responses as simple personal failure. They may indicate that the available route to help feels unclear, culturally uncomfortable, or unlikely to change the situation. The risk is that students with the greatest uncertainty can become the least visible in conventional feedback and support systems.
Social and institutional support shaped both coping and engagement. The study highlights gaps in academic guidance, career development services, and mental health support. These are not interchangeable needs. A student struggling to interpret seminar expectations needs a different response from one worried about employment or one managing sustained distress. The useful institutional question is therefore not only whether support exists, but whether students can recognise the right route and use it at the point of need.
Practical implications
UK universities should first collect feedback at the pressure points where coping becomes visible. Short open-text prompts after induction, first assessment, group work, and early careers activity can ask what feels difficult, what students have tried, and what would make the next step clearer. This gives Student Experience teams earlier evidence than a single end-of-year satisfaction measure.
Second, teams should analyse variation without turning it into a stereotype. Compare themes by programme level, stage, and other relevant characteristics, but do not assume all Chinese women or all international students respond in the same way. Set minimum reporting thresholds, retain traceability to the source comments, and document how themes are interpreted. A student comment analysis governance checklist helps keep sensitive subgroup evidence useful without making claims the data cannot support.
Third, universities should connect academic, careers, and wellbeing support around the student journey. The paper suggests that coping depends partly on whether students feel able to act. Clear referral routes, repeated signposting, approachable staff contact, and timely follow-up can reduce the amount of institutional knowledge a student must already possess before getting help. The benefit is support that becomes easier to use before uncertainty turns into withdrawal.
Finally, institutions should treat avoidance and forbearance as signals to investigate, not labels to assign. Open comments about staying silent in class, tolerating confusion, avoiding group work, or delaying contact can reveal where formal provision is failing to feel accessible. Student Voice Analytics can group those recurring signals across surveys and cohorts, while direct dialogue with students tests what they mean locally. That combination gives teams a stronger basis for action than either aggregate scores or isolated comments alone.
FAQ
Q: How can a university apply these findings to international student support?
A: Choose three or four moments when academic expectations or support needs change, then ask one focused open question at each point. Review the answers across academic, international, careers, and wellbeing teams, and assign a named owner to recurring issues. The aim is to make support respond to what students are trying to manage, rather than expecting every student to find the right service unaided.
Q: What should institutions keep in mind before generalising from this study?
A: The study is based on in-depth interviews with 22 Chinese female students at one Dutch university. It explains different coping processes within that group, but it does not estimate how common each strategy is or prove that the same pattern applies across countries, institutions, or all international students. UK teams should use the findings to frame local enquiry, then test them against their own survey comments, focus groups, and support data.
Q: What does this change about student voice work more broadly?
A: It shows why student voice must capture response as well as experience. Two students may report the same barrier but differ in whether they challenge it, seek help, tolerate it, or disengage. Questions about what students did next, and what made action easier or harder, can expose where institutional support is genuinely usable. That sits alongside wider evidence that international student wellbeing depends on everyday relationships as well as formal services.
References
[Paper Source]: Lina Jiang, Hülya Kosar Altinyelken and Henny M.W. Bos "Navigating Dutch academia: coping strategies of Chinese female students" DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2026.2717611
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