Introduction

This paper aims to unpack Chinese students' experiences in an international joint university located in China - Xi'an Jiaotong Liverpool University (XJTLU). International joint university is one of the types of transnational higher education (TNHE), and the latter is defined as "the mobility of an education program or higher education institution/provider between countries” (Knight, 2016, p. 36), which is considered as an important symbol of the internationalisation of HE in China. Other types of TNHE are mainly unilateral establishments (Wilkins, 2018). Therefore, joint universities have equal parent institutions and potentially more space for internationalisation to be negotiated and constructed without being prescribed. Compared to joint universities, these unilateral institutions potentially have more limited space for students to participate in constructing internationalisation. However, there is limited research on students’ motivations and engagements in an internationalised environment where they have the space for co-construction. This study examines the reciprocal relationship between an institution-constructed internationalised environment and students’ agency, enriching understanding towards the dynamics in which internationalised aspects could be perceived and utilised.

Current literature mainly focuses on the particular type of TNHE, namely, the international branch campus. The individual situations of students are mainly examined from their relatively, and rather unexpectedly, low performance in Gaokao (Chinese national entrance examination), which prevents them from getting admitted to their first choice. Low performance in Gaokao acts as both a forceful push from domestic institutions and a pull from TNHE entry standards (Liu et al., 2021; Li, 2020). TNHE also attracts these students as a stepping stone to regaining entry to elite Chinese institutions (Fang and Wang, 2014), as well as a second chance to “make up" for their failure to obtain an undergraduate degree at one of China's top universities (Xie, 2022). However, such connotations of stepping stones and compromise may contradict with the more or less elite positioning of TNHE in China, therefore, this study attempts to link the personal motivations to the possible influence of institutions’ construction of internationalisation.

In terms of the internationalised encounter, current literature has examined the provision of English-medium instruction (EMI) in TNHE since the trend of teaching non-language subjects in English has become a significant indicator of internationalisation. EMI is defined as “​the use of the English language to teach academic subjects (other than English itself) in countries or jurisdictions where the first language of the majority of the population is not English” (Macaro et al., 2018, p. 37). In reality, teaching and learning in a non-native language can cause considerable, and often unnecessary, challenges to both teachers and students. Besides, with the overall tendency for research on TNHE examining EMI, there is an overlook of other internationalised aspects, e.g., the intercultural environment (Xie, 2022). Gu and Lee (2019) talk about how students strategically navigate learning resources but are still confined to language aspects. Therefore, this study brings these aspects together and explores how Chinese students actively manage expectations by engaging with various international aspects of TNHE.

This study selects XJTLU as a case to examine its students’ engagement in internationalisation. Since the study focuses on students’ engagement, XJTLU’s emphasis on the ongoing construction of internationalisation is perceived as a meaningful lens to examine the students’ receptions of and their interactions with institutional construction. XJTLU, therefore, is hypothesised to be a negotiated space which allows students to have more opportunities to co-construct internationalisation. This study aims to answer the following research questions:

1. How does internationalisation influence Chinese undergraduate students’ decision to study in a joint venture institution?

2. How do Chinese undergraduate students’ lived experiences of internationalisation in a joint venture institution (mis-)match with their initial expectations?

I have adopted a focus group approach. Compared to one-to-one interviews, the homogeneity that is contained in each focus group allows participants to agree or disagree with one another with justification, as well as allows them to build on one another. Therefore, the focus group approach allows students to discuss their internationalised experiences and me to explore their interactions with the institution, as well as their peers, which also constitute an important part of their social fabric. I recruited 29 current or newly graduated Chinese XJTLU undergraduates as participants. My first step is to conveniently sample, i.e., search my social network to identify potential participants. Secondly, I send the invitation to these potential participants and engage in a snowball sampling. These two steps help me identify 31 students who responded positively. My next step is to divide them into 8 groups with either a group of 3 or 4 based on their availability, which further eliminates 2 students whose availability does not fit in any of the proposed time slots. Therefore, 8 online focus groups, with a total of 29 student participants were included in the dataset. Upon the author’s university’s ethical approval, participants have been provided with an information sheet and consent form and all the focus groups have been audio-recorded, when presenting the data, participants’ confidentiality was protected by using a pseudonym. The focus groups were all conducted in Chinese and lasted around 60-90 minutes, moderated by myself. Focus groups were conducted virtually via WeChat video call, recorded, and automatically transcribed with manual grammatical edits. The focus group questions were semi-structured, developing from the literature review and research questions. Students were first asked to reflect retrospectively, about their prior ways of getting to know XJTLU, their motivations for attending and their expectations towards an internationalised environment. When asking about students’ lived experiences, the questions are designed to be specifically filtered to the two internationalising aspects: the 100% EMI provision and its student-centredness, according to the overview statement provided by the official website of XJTLU. These two aspects are the defining characteristics of XJTLU as a TNHE institution in China, therefore, it is hypothesised that students’ experiences revolve around these two traits. By asking about students’ expectations and engagement, this study aims to unpack the potential (mis-)match between their prior feelings which are largely linked to institutional positioning and promotions, and the actual experience on the enactment of internationalisation.

I investigated the reasons for students choosing XJTLU and discovered that internationalisation plays an important role which has shaped by the institutional promotional strategy, where the latter emphasises its uniqueness because of the exclusive instructional usage of English. Such a strategy has been legitimised as an essential step for students who want to study abroad afterwards, as well as framed as symbolically superior in a non-English-speaking country. However, besides this outcome-oriented expectation, students also anticipated an internationalised environment, for example, more international teachers and classmates, more flexibility and independence, as compared to non-TNHE universities. Students’ engagement sometimes disappoints them in terms of the 100% EMI being compromised by adding preparatory sessions in Chinese, nevertheless, most of them started to appreciate the pragmatic value of a non-application of institutional policy and positively experience the student-centred environment, where they actively involved in the co-constructing process of internationalisation and manage the implication on them, in turn, make the most out of the internationalised environment. While an overwhelming majority of students aim to study abroad upon completion of their study in XJTLU, there has been a mis-, or partial recognition among students regarding how their aim could be achieved. Therefore, this study adds nuance to the understanding of the potential discrepancy between a structured and legitimised way of accumulating capital, and a discretionary space where individuals can make the best out of the environment. In this study, some gradually come to the realisation that they need a more practical form of capital - the institutionalised form as in credentials - to get them into the next step of postgraduate education. The 100% EMI environment, in contrast, has been too challenging and time-consuming for most participants to effectively accumulate linguistic, and institutionalised capital at the same time, which inevitably leads to EMI becoming an end in itself.

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