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The Impact of On-campus Employment on Chinese Undergraduate Students in the U. A dissertation presented to the faculty of The Patton College of Education of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy Mengwei Su May 2018 © 2018 Mengwei Su. All Rights Reserved. 2 This dissertation titled The Impact of On-campus Employment on Chinese Undergraduate Students in the U.

by MENGWEI SU has been approved for the Department of Counseling and Higher Education and The Patton College of Education by Laura M. Harrison Associate Professor of Counseling and Higher Education Renée A. Middleton Dean, The Patton College of Education 3 Abstract SU, MENGWEI, Ph., May 2018, Higher Education and Student Affairs The Impact of On-campus Employment on Chinese Undergraduate Students in the U. Director of Dissertation: Laura M.

Harrison The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of part-time, on-campus employment on Chinese international undergraduate students’ integration and development on American campuses. In doing so, I focused on exploring how Chinese undergraduate students learn English, make friends with the domestic students, shape identities in the workplace, and at the same time, how they balance study and work. Gaining a deep understanding in those areas could help determine whether on-campus employment could be utilized as an effective means to enhance Chinese undergraduate students’ learning outcomes and overall satisfaction with their overseas educational experiences. In this study, I adopted a qualitative research methodology and used phenomenological inquiry to collect detailed information from a sample of 12 Chinese undergraduate students who had at least one semester's relevant work experience on campus.

I conducted an approximately 30-minute, one-on-one, semi-structured interview with each participant in our native language, Chinese. I also used techniques such as member checks, adequate engagement in data collection, researchers’ reflexivity, peer review, thick descriptions, and maximum variation to increase the validity of the research findings. 4 Findings resulted from thematic analysis of the rich in vivo data are in accordance with the hypothesis of the study that taking on-campus employment improves Chinese undergraduate students’ overseas educational experiences. Participants reported that they had improved ESL learning, exposed to more intercultural contacts, and built new personal identities in the workplace.

I, therefore, made policy recommendations on supervising Chinese international student employees to university administrators, and suggested a guideline of optimum maximum work time for future student workers. 5 Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my mother, Juzhen Su; to my wife, Jinyi Liu; and to the wonderful people of Ohio University. 6 Acknowledgments Upon the completion of this dissertation, I would like to express my great appreciation to the faculty of Ohio University Patton College of Education. They provided me with the rigorous academic training that shaped me to be a fellow researcher that I am now.

I am particularly grateful to my supervisory committee members: Dr. Laura Harrison, Dr. Peter Mather, Dr. Gordon Brooks, and Dr.

Lijing Yang, who have supported me robustly in this intellectual quest. The constructive feedback I received from them helped me improve the research design and strengthen the validity of the research findings. Above all, I give special thanks to Dr. As my academic advisor and dissertation committee chairperson, she navigated me through every step of the research process and devoted numerous hours to reading and revising every draft of my dissertation.

Additionally, she has been encouraging and motivating to me through the entire dissertation process in the past two years. I am blessed to have her mentorship and will continue to cherish it after graduation. 7 Table of Contents Page Abstract. 6 List of Tables.

11 Background of the Problem. 12 Purpose of the Study. 15 Learning English in natural settings. 15 International students’ friendship patterns.

16 Student identity development theories. 17 The work time issue in student employment. 20 Significance of the Study. 21 Maintaining enrollment growth.

22 Informing future Chinese parents and students. 23 Definition of the Terms. 23 Chapter 2: Literature Review. 26 International Student Mobility.

26 Four Driving Factors for the Influx of Chinese Students. 30 The side effects of the Chinese higher education reforms. 32 American universities’ expansion in international recruitment. 34 Improve English Language.

36 Undergraduate students versus graduate students. 36 The efficacy of ESL courses. 42 8 Establishing Relationships with Host Nationals. 44 Interpersonal relationship vs.

44 Benefits of connecting with host nationals. 46 Barriers to connecting with host nationals. 47 Call for a meaningful relationship. 54 Student Identity Development Theories.

56 Psychology-oriented perspective. 57 Environment-oriented perspective. 58 Race and ethnicity-oriented perspective. 59 Impact of Student Employment.

69 A Qualitative Research Design. 69 The suitability of qualitative inquiry. 69 The suitability of phenomenological inquiry. 74 Overview of study participants.

86 Transcribing and translating. 99 Individual Case Description. 168 Cross-case Analysis. 173 Taking part-time work for non-financial reasons.

173 Improving ESL learning in natural settings. 177 Building positive relationships with the host nationals. 181 Making progress in identity development. 185 Managing to balance work and study.

189 Achieving job satisfaction. 194 Chapter 5: Discussion and Implications. 196 On-campus employment as a means of ESL acquisition. 197 On-campus employment as a means of socialization.

200 On-campus employment as a means of identity development. 205 Implications for Policy and Practice. 215 Supervision of Chinese international students. 216 Dispelling the myths about on-campus employment.

219 Implications for Future Research. 226 Appendix A: International Undergraduate Student Enrollment in the U. 249 Appendix B: Inbound Internationally Mobile Students, Both Sexes (Number). 250 Appendix C: Semi-structured Interview Guide (bilingual).

251 10 List of Tables Page Table 1 Participant Demographics. 78 Table 2 Participant Work Experiences. 79 Table 3 Thematical Categorizing of Analytical Codes. 90 Table 4 Participants’ Initial Motives to Work.

175 Table 5 Participants’ ESL Improvement. 178 Table 6 Participants’ Relationships with the Host Nationals. 182 Table 7 Participants’ Identity Development. 186 Table 8 Balancing Work and Study.

189 Table 9 Participants’ Job Satisfaction. 192 Table 10 Maximum Work Time Guideline. 221 11 Chapter 1: Introduction Perhaps the most visible change on many American college campuses since the global economic recession in 2008 is the expansion of the Chinese student population. The tuition revenue generated from the Chinese undergraduate students served as important income to supplant the diminishing government funding (Bartlett & Fischer, 2011).

However, the high concentration of an international student population from one country causes new integration and student development problems. Many Chinese undergraduate students find themselves surrounded by their countrymen on foreign campuses and are thus not challenged to improve language and cultural understanding during their time of studying abroad. Because the lack of integration results in attrition, higher education administrators and scholars are seeking effective solutions to solve such problems and maintain enrollment growth (See Appendix A for more information). This study is designed to examine the efficacy of on-campus work as an approach to help Chinese students integrate and develop on American campuses.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the research and is organized in the following sections: (a) background of the problem, (b) problem statement, (c) purpose of the study, (d) theoretical framework, (e) research questions, (f) significance of the study, and (g) definition of the terms. Background of the Problem The outbreak of the world financial crisis in late 2007 aggravated the integration and development problems of Chinese students on American campuses. The higher education sector was among the first group of victims to face budget slashing in public spending by the state legislatures. According to the United States Government 12 Accountability Office (2014), between 2002 and 2012, state funding for all public colleges and universities decreased by 12% overall while the mean tuition rose by 55%.

This statistic indicated a shift of higher education institutions’ revenue from state funding to tuition. To secure tuition revenue growth, more and more American colleges and universities began to seek international students from foreign countries. China, boosted by its high-speed economic development in the past 30 years, became a lucrative overseas market for American college recruiters. Chinese students soon grew to be the largest group of international students studying in the U.

within two years after the onset of the economic recession (Institute of International Education, 2017a). Among them, the proportion of full-tuition-paying Chinese undergraduate students increased exponentially. Compared with the 2006/07 academic year, a year before the economic recession started, their enrollment had skyrocketed by more than twelvefold in the following 10 years (See Appendix A for more information). The continued surge of the international students from one country on campus poses new challenges for both the Chinese undergraduate students and the host institutions.

Problem Statement International students face far more difficult challenges than the domestic students in adjusting to college life. Many of them suffer from acculturative stress that is normally incurred by language barriers, academic struggles, lack of social support, financial problems, and so on (Melnick, Kaur, & Yu, 2011; Sherry, Thomas, & Chui, 2010; Tung, 2011). Coming to a new world, they find the U. academic system new and 13 confusing and the faculty members and classmates difficult to communicate with.

To make it worse, international students must cope with the adjustment to American campuses without recoursing to families and friends in their home countries. As a result, it is not an unusual phenomenon that international students become an isolated population within the host country and sometimes even resent the host country’s members (Hail, 2015). Compared with other international students, Asian students are particularly vulnerable. A survey of 141 international students from different American colleges and universities found that Asian students demonstrated higher levels of acculturative stress than do European students (Poyrazli, Kavanaugh, Baker, & Al-Timimi, 2004).

Another comparison study between East Asian students and North American students found that the former student group has a higher correlation with depression due to a combined effect of perfectionism and acculturative stress (Hamamura & Laird, 2014). Perfectionism is a result of unrealistic high expectations that students place on themselves or perceive from others (Hewitt & Flett, 1991); acculturative stress is a physical and mental uneasiness of moving to or living in a new culture (Sullivan & Kashubeck-West, 2015). Asian international students’ cultural beliefs subliminally direct them to internalize or even conceal the problems they encounter in the new environment in order not to either impose burdens on others or stigmatize themselves (Li & Lin, 2014). Chinese students are the typical example.

Both quantitative data and qualitative data of Chinese international students in the U. have confirmed that their overseas higher 14 education experiences are crippled by stressors associated with language and culture assimilations (Bertram, Poulakis, Elsasser, & Kumar, 2014; Wei et al. Purpose of the Study A very promising approach to facilitate Chinese international undergraduate students’ integration and development is on-campus employment. Researchers have indicated a positive relationship between on-campus work and American college students’ development (Astin, 1993, 1999; Casella & Brougham, 1995; D.

Cheng & Alcántara, 2007; Pascarella, Edison, Nora, Hagedorn, & Terenzini, 1998; Salisbury, Pascarella, Padgett, & Blaich, 2012). In this study I posited that on-campus work could also benefit the Chinese undergraduate students by providing an ideal environment where international students could engage in language and cultural exchanges. I used a phenomenological research inquiry in this study to find out the efficacy of on-campus work as an instrument to aid Chinese undergraduate students’ transition and development. The inquiry method is suitable for the purpose of this study in that “[p]henomenological research studies in educational settings generally embody lived experience, perception, and feelings of participants about a phenomenon” (Yüksel & Yıldırım, 2015, p.

Understanding Chinese undergraduate students’ descriptions of their on-campus work experiences and how they make meaning of those experiences is the purpose of the study. Using a phenomenological research framework, I collected qualitative data from 12 Chinese international undergraduate students who had on-campus work experiences in American colleges and universities.