Introduction
The following is a research essay that focuses on the stress and tension level faced by the higher education bearing international students. It would include all the necessary details and information which would highlight the problems, circumstances, living conditions, and living styles inherited by the higher education students.
Discussion
(Sidhu, 2006) Basically, international students are those education bearers who travel from their homeland to other countries in order to attain and gain higher education with flying colors. There are hundreds and thousands of students who travel every year internationally just to gain higher and quality education for improving their future aspects and to attain their future goals of life. For many years, students have traveled abroad in the search of opportunities to advance and increase their knowledge and educational level. Most of the international students prefer the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and other parts of Asia to have the best quality education providing universities around the globe. This is because of the fact that higher education is considered to be one of the most significant commodities for the international students. Secondly, international students bring a lot to their host universities; such as, diverse backgrounds, assorted cultures, new perceptions, and augmentation of multicultural surroundings within the learning centers. This helps the students to live with different groups of people while gaining education from a single centre point and provides the opportunity to the students to learn helping and to live with other students from different family backgrounds, castes, religions (Sisk, 2009).
(Grünzweig & Rinehart; 2003) Despite all the advantages of gaining education, there is a particular dark side present that generates many of difficulties and problems for international students while living abroad for higher education. The problems and issues are several that affect the learning process and mental capabilities of international students as a whole. problems such as, poor quality teaching, lack of support from the teachers’ side, increasing educational demands, increasing academic responsibilities, new place to live all alone, changes in social and sexual identity, financial responsibilities and issues, difficult peer pressures, and mainly the depression and stress level faced by the international students. Among all these problems, a number of international students have agreed that stress and depression is the main problem they face while living abroad for higher education. It is because there are so many things to do within a short span of time and most of the time, they not only feel alone without their families, but also face financial difficulties and lack of confident support from their teachers in the universities (Liu, 2001).
(Schweitzer et al, 2006) The high extent of stress and depression level faced by the higher education international students gives rise to the use of alcohol intake, drugs and even suicides at times. The extent of stress level becomes so high and unbearable that the young high education students do not fear committing suicide so that they could get rid of all the problems they are facing from their educational side.
(Sisk, 2009) In order to deal with the level of high stress and depression by the international higher education students, it is recommended that these students should be given extra care and attention as compared to the local higher education students. In this way, they would feel that the teachers and the university management care about them. Apart from that, another thing that could help these students to reduce stress level is to run an evaluation of causative reasons and dynamics, discussion of treatment or healing or behavior options, and ruling out any physical grounds. Once the sol problem of the student is diagnosed behind stress, it becomes easier to treat and clarify that particular problem by counseling the student. This may include the short-term or long-term counseling therapy for the international student so that that student could focus on his academics and educational activities without facing any type of problem or stress level.
References
Ravinder Kaur Sidhu, 2006, Universities & globalization: to market, to market; Published by Routledge, p198.
Jennifer Sisk, 2009, Depression on College Campuses — The Downside of Higher Education, Social Work Today Website, Vol. 6 No. 5 P. 17, Web.
Walter Grünzweig, Nana Rinehart; 2003, Rockin’ in Red Square: critical approaches to international education in the age of cyberculture, Published by LIT Verlag Berlin-Hamburg-Münster, p140.
Jun Liu, 2001, Asian students’ classroom communication patterns in U.S. universities: an emic perspective, Published by Greenwood Publishing Group, p2.
Eluned Roberts-Schweitzer, Vincent Greaney, Kreszentia Duer; 2006, Promoting social cohesion through education: case studies and tools for using textbooks and curricula; Published by World Bank Publications, p60.