The influence of academic and social integration on academic performance for international and local students, a cross-institutional comparison

A common belief among educators is that international students are insufficiently academically and socially adjusted to higher education. Recent research has found a mixed picture on whether international students underperform in academic and social integration and academic performance. Therefore, Morrison et al. (2005) argue that research should extend its focus to understanding the underlying reasons for these performance differences of international versus local students. In a cross-institutional comparison among 958 students of five business schools in the Netherlands, we investigated the differences in academic performance amongst local and international students by focussing on academic and social integration. Students’ academic integration was measured with the Students’ adaptation to college questionnaire (SACQ), while students’ social integration was measured with a newly developed and validated questionnaire, the social integration questionnaire (SIQ, 4 factors, 15 items). The results indicated that students with a non-Western background are less integrated than Western students, have considerable lower academic and social integration scores and have (marginally) lower GPA and ECTS scores