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The purpose of this paper is to examine what impacts university students perceived from their short-term intensive international courses as part of undergraduate multidisciplinary education.

The study design was informed by interpretative phenomenological analysis. Semi-structured interviews explored informants’ views of their experience to elicit key themes of their experience.

The analysis resulted in four major themes: personal development, generic skills, global perspectives and subject-specific matter. Some text segments were coded with multiple themes, which suggests that the impacts of short-term international courses are multifaceted.

Academic topics of the courses substantially centred around humanities and social sciences at a particular university. This paper furthermore primarily depended on students’ self-reported answers, and it is possible that the participants who chose to enrol in the elective international courses may be principally willing to acquire global competence. Therefore, this study did not set out to present the generalised impacts of any short-term international courses.

The findings could be used as a conceptual tool for the design and evaluation of new and existing courses. In addition, the four major themes that this study elicited are useful as a cue for students’ self-reflection about their own learning experiences.

There have been significant efforts devoted to increasing the quantity of short-term international programs, but there has been less focus on the quality of these programs. This study supports the findings of existing literature but also identified one of the potential unfavourable impacts that short-term international courses may have on students’ development.

This study aims to explore the disciplinary characteristics of doctoral students’ generic skills learning experience at a Finnish university.

An online survey measuring doctoral students’ generic skills learning experience was administered to all doctoral students of the university and 1,184 responses were obtained. The study conducted exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, principal component analysis and heatmap analyses.

The results suggested three major trends. First, students’ scores for research integrity skills were consistently lower in the hard sciences, such as biological and environmental sciences, pharmacy, veterinary medicine, science and medicine. Second, students of the law showed a unique trend; their scores for research integrity, leadership and entrepreneurship skills learning were remarkably higher than those in other faculties, but they had the lowest scores for communication skills.

The data represented students at one Finnish university, so institutional and geographical differences fell beyond the scope of this paper. Furthermore, the results could reflect either the authentic levels of students’ acquired skillsets or self-interpretation of experiences governed by their disciplinary values. Accordingly, the immediate generalisability of the findings to individuals and different contexts should carefully be considered.

The findings can contribute to improve doctoral training practices. In addition, the survey results are useful for the further development of inventories, as doctoral students’ engagement in generic skills development has been attracting attention in higher education.

Within a higher education system in Japan that is often regarded as insular, but which is increasingly striving to become more global in its outlook and makeup, we are classified as ‘international researchers’. Shannon entered Japan as a foreign migrant who was raised and educated in Australia, while Yusuke returned to his home country after 12 years abroad. This chapter provides an account of our personal experiences as two early career researchers beginning our academic careers in Japan.

Academic engagement is considered to be a hallmark of an optimal studying experience and a key to academic success for all students, including those from abroad. Accordingly, creating an engaging learning environment for higher education students is among the most pressing issues currently facing universities. This essay first summarises authors’ research perspectives focussing on international students’ engagement in university studies. The authors especially have attempted to understand to what extent international students from different backgrounds engage in their studies and whether the impacts of factors in students’ learning environment on their academic engagement vary between different international student cohorts. Second, we introduce three emerging perspectives: students’ academic engagement in relation to their future self-visions, doctoral education and short-term study abroad programs, which are all closely tied with international education. Third, the essay proposes several gaps in the literature that the authors find important for future investigation to contribute to students’ academic engagement in globalising higher educational institutions.

This article's purpose is to report the findings and implications of a study that explored factors promoting and hindering international doctoral students' academic engagement.

An empirical study sought data through a questionnaire from international students registered for doctoral study at the University of Helsinki. Open‐ended and Likert‐scale survey data were qualitatively and quantitatively analysed.

The students commented most frequently (41 per cent) on the scholarly community as a factor in promoting their studies. Departmental issues had the largest proportion of hindering factors overall (34 per cent). Promoting factors related to the supervision they received and private domain factors were positively related to students' satisfaction with their studies. Considering dropping out was significantly associated with hindering factors related to their supervision and to departmental issues. Also, peers and colleagues were not significantly associated with students' satisfaction with their studies or with their contemplating dropping out.

The article addresses key issues that will be of interest and benefit to universities who wish to retain and attract overseas research students. In particular, it discusses the importance of wider scholarly communities in providing international doctoral students with a favourable study experience which may be enhanced by performing departmental tasks as an important part of enculturation within supportive scholarly communities.

This paper offers a novel way of understanding early career researcher development, as illustrated by doctoral students' academic experiences. It also taps into the under‐ examined area of international doctoral students' study experiences.