Abstract:

The international postgraduate campus in Auckland New Zealand had 700 international students per year in pre-Covid 19 time. This number dramatically declined during 2020 with a slight improvement in 2021. However, the main objective of all international students was, and is, a possibility to stay and work in New Zealand. International students’ experiences on arrival into our country include many differences in lifestyle and some serious shocks, which include educational, cultural and social shocks. In addition, students are faced with limited networking support from their families and work as well as a complete lack of knowledge of our industrial environment.

Our mentoring programme has been running at our campus for several years and aims to support all the areas of challenge for our international students. The only part that was not covered was our industry environment and associated culture. We started our research project to identify the key factors that would support our international students in their industry environment. The research objectives were to identify all the needs of international students to achieve a faster and smoother transition from education to industry and the factors that impact students’ readiness to join our work environment. In addition, it explored possible solutions. The method used in this research was qualitative. The students’ perceptions were obtained with focus groups of international students from our Business and Computing departments.

Keywords:

International education, students' perception, transition from education to industry, mentoring programme.