The analysis of data has indicated that there are a number of issues that constitute international postgraduate students’ lived experiences. These included financial issues, difficulties of being in a foreign land, challenges relating to gaining access and staying in the country and many others. In this theme I turn the focus to what the participants suggested the university leadership should do to alleviate their plights. Almost all the participant expressed that university leadership had a role to play, if universities plan and carry out international postgraduate student’s recruitment plans. These participants suggested that leadership in the university
75 should take integration of international students seriously, and show that it has clear plans about how it should happen. The office of international affairs should be tasked with the task of integrating international postgraduate student into the university community. They argued that such an office should do more than just clearing students for registration. That office should, amongst other things run orientation and support programmes. They further argued that it would be ideal if staff of this office have full understanding of the students they deal with and the dynamics that surround them. This is what Participant A said on this issue:
…… I know the university recognises international students. Sometimes, when they try to take decisions that involve international students they should involve international students rather that international office. Currently, the international office is managed by local employees from South Africa who probably, may not fully understand the international students. So I am thinking in making policy they should try and involve international students.
Closely linked to the issue of understanding the needs of international postgraduate students, is the need for leadership to understand the needs of these students and show willingness to support them in handling various issues that government departments want. In other words, they should be prepared to work in close liaison with the Department of Home Affairs for an example. One way in which the university could work together with other government departments, the university leadership could make arrangement with Department of Home Affairs to have the university send them a list of student admitted so as to fast-track the study visa process without compromising the country’s securities. This participant said:
…..the university can equally help if the international office admissions can send the list of admitted students straight to Home Affairs office. Through this, they can be sure that they have access to legitimately admitted students. That makes every person’s life easy, to make system move fast (Participant A).
The other area where university leadership could do more is to ensure that indigenous language module is compulsory for undergraduate students. That will help ensure that these students can access local language as this language is frequently used during lectures, and international students are left out of such conversations. Since the university has a bilingual policy, by having forcing international students to study a module on this language will help entrench the policy and ensure effective implementation of the policy. Participant C had this to say in that regard:
…….I believe as university accepting international students when they are coming I think they should have a programme where they teach them Zulu language to help them to integrate. Remember that they are not just coming to school but they are coming to
76 a society, so they need to understand and be able to interact. Maybe, the first 3 months can be dedicated to Zulu classes so that they learn at least the basics of Zulu so that they could be able to interact……
There is a feeling that university leadership is not doing enough for students who come in as international postgraduate students as the programmes organised for international students are meant for and usually focus mainly on undergraduates. International postgraduate students have needs that are different from those of local postgraduate students, therefore, it would help if the university leadership have an orientation of these students:
….I think there should be an orientation just for postgraduates I believe each year when postgraduates are coming in February have a day for postgraduates orientation they tell them about the structures; the association where everything is if you need to report not just academic orientation as a postgraduate you probably know about the department but the orientation on university life is very important….(Participant C).
This view was also shared by many other participants in the study. Understanding various structures can be useful in dealing with many issues even before they can become a huge problem. Policies and strategies are a key dimension of leadership in internationalisation of higher education. The aim of university leadership is to give all our students the skills to study, Work, live and engage with others across cultural or geographical borders (DHET, 2018).
4.3 Chapter summary
This chapter has presented a detailed discussion of the data that was generated from seven international postgraduate students. Stories generated from semi-structured interviews have been presented using verbatim quotes to support the claims that I have made. In conclusion, it is clear that there are various factors that can assist in providing insights about the lived experiences of international postgraduate students studying at a South African university. The next chapter will present findings drawn from the data presented in this chapter.
77 CHAPTER FIVE