Challenges Faced By International Postgraduate Students In Combining Full-Time Study And Part-Time Work

Background

International postgraduate students encounter cultural and adaptability challenges in their masters or advanced studies degrees in foreign countries especially if it is their first time away from their native countries (Gautam, Lowery, Mays, and Durant, 2016, pp.501-526). Most importantly, the combination of full-time study and part-time work is a great challenge that requires a lot of commitment and dedication amidst cultural shocks, and financial upkeeps for international students. Considering the benefits that come along the part-time work during the post-graduate studies, in essence, the ability to earn some upkeep money that covers up the expenses of living; most students desire to seek for these jobs to enjoy such benefits.

 To understand the challenges facing the international postgraduate students in undertaking both the full-time studies as well as part-time jobs during their study period in Sydney Nepal, Australia. Through the objective, the proposed research would ensure that the topic of the study, which is to identify the different factors affecting the work and education, are examined as well as providing the measures of how the postgraduate students can simultaneously manage both that requires answering of the following research question (Sekaran and Bougie, 2016).

1. What are the factors limiting the international postgraduate students from engaging in part-time jobs during their full-time studies in Nepal, Australia?
2. What are some of the misleading conceptions revolving around the international students in Sydney?
3. What are practices that can be undertaken by the Nepalese community to accommodate the international students concerning societal acceptance that can make them improve their performance on their part-time jobs?
4. What are the critical follow-up practices that would boost the students’ performance on their part-time jobs?

The research is expected to aid in solving the challenges faced by the international students to be able to undertake part time jobs while studying to earn a living in foreign countries as well as being highly productive at the place of work. Moreover, the study would address the controversies about the existing knowledge about the course of study and work for the Nepalese students as it has become a thing to be taken care of as part of the entire process. The proposed design research would motivate the researchers to make a follow-up plan to monitor the progress of the subjects in terms of performances concerning the potential changes that would be made through recommendations of the study (Bell, Bryman, and Harley, 2018). This would put the research in good position of achieving the desired objectives as well as make the results of the study replicable to other similar areas of interests facing the same problem according to (Gast and Ledford, 2018, pp.77-95). The international students being affected all over the world due to challenges of combining both the work and studies would be able to benefit from the findings.

To analyse the aspects concerning the combination of Nepalese study and work by the international students through evaluation of the previous studies and synthesizing of the potential solutions that the previous scholars attempted to put in place. Additionally, the literature aims to sort out the relevant information that can be useful in solving the stated research problem and fulfilment of the outlined objectives. Through the review, the researcher would be able to get a clear overview of the existing state of affairs in comparison to the experiences underwent by the students. Having that in mind, the researcher would be able to identify the starting point and the scope under which the research should entail to achieve the desirable results.

Research Objectives

Once the data would be collected and analysed, there would be a follow up plan to oversee the consistency of the results throughout the test period in an attempt to replicate the findings over and over to determine their validity. Moreover, the action plan is to ensure that the awareness of the challenges among the students is made after the studies so that all the stakeholders deal with the problems jointly ranging from the education sector in Nepal, the employers, recruitment agencies, and the students at large.

The research design is the plan and the structure that can be conceived to obtain appropriate answers or solutions to the established research problem or questions according to (Creswell, and Creswell, 2016). However, the proposed design is the qualitative approach where the field survey would be conducted using the semi-structured interviews in collected all the relevant information to the study. The qualitative approach is preferred over the other methods due to the nature of the non-numeric data that is to be collected. Concisely, using semi-structured interviews during a field survey in implementing the qualitative approach would provide for the collection of insightful information due to the carefully designed questions that do not limit the respondent to the asked information. With the ability to provide extra information relevant to the study, the semi-structured questions ensure that respondents remain within the scope of the topic and the research question.

The proposed qualitative research would take place in the natural context of the participants whereby the focus would be on the mean-making such that the data would be collected without affecting the daily schedule of the participants. The naturalistic setting would enable the researcher to obtain the data from the filled with the semi-structured interviews that would take a minimum time per participant in a way that does not hinder them from carrying out their duties (Merriam and Grenier, 2019). Such settings would be at colleges where the students can be interviewed, their workplaces such as customer services desks, restaurants, and on road trips for those who are drivers among other fields of work. By so doing, it would eliminate the inconveniences that could be brought to the participants which could likely lead to denial of participating in the study.

The proposed participants to take part in the research study would be international postgraduate students and professionals from crucial firms to the study such as the Nepalese Community in Sydney, Job Consultancy firms, and the Australia-Nepal contact committee officials. Such participants would enable the researcher to acquire the relevant data such as that indicating the most competitive jobs, the available jobs, the challenges facing the employability of the international studies, and the cultural difficulties that hinder the performance and productivity of the international students in the region.

Research Design

The research would utilize purposeful sampling technique for selecting and recruiting participants that would provide detailed and in-depth information concerning the research problem (Butler, Copnell, and Hall, 2018, pp.561-566). The technique is highly subjective in determination of the suitable participants who are in position to provide relevant and credible information to the study. The reason of using purposeful sampling is to help the researcher in acquiring firsthand information from the most suitable respondents inclined to the study who are possibly facing similar problems or challenges as stated in the research problem (Karimi and Salavatian, 2018, pp.391-408). To identify and recruit the most desirable respondents for the proposed research, the following criteria would be used in purposeful qualitative sampling.

For a student to be selected for participation, they must be international students who are undertaking their master’s studies from one of the Universities in Sydney, Australia as well as taking part-time jobs in any firm or organization. The student must also be undertaking full-time studies to be considered in the study. Moreover, professionals from employment agencies and consultancy firms would be considered if they are actively employing postgraduate international students in different categories of jobs.

On the other hand, those colleges that do not admit the international students for the postgraduate studies would be eliminated. The firms that have employed less than three international postgraduate students for part-time work would also be excluded from the study. Moreover, the participants who are international students for the graduate programs would also be excluded as well as the postgraduate students who are not international students. The criteria would enable the researcher to collect relevant data that would help in addressing the problem and the research question for insightful solutions.

400 participants will be considered according to the following groupings that are obtained from the above selection criteria. The respondents would be based on categories such as those who have part-time jobs during their studies, those who are looking for employed during their studies, those who could not find jobs while studying, and those who have given up looking for work due to the challenges of being employed. Each purposeful group, in essence, for the students and the professionals from employment agencies or consultancy firms would have at least 40-50 participants for data collection.

After sampling out the anticipated potential participants for the study, the researcher would proceed to seek the consent of participation from the respondents. This would include securing the organisational access to facilitate the recruitment of the proposed participants for the study. Appropriate dates for the data collection would be set by the participants at their convenience within 30 days from the beginning of the study, which would then be communicated in advance for scheduling and planning from the researchers’ side. The aim of seeking access and earlier recruitment before the actual study is to increase the chances of participation thus maximising the rate of responses for the study (Flick, 2018). Those organisations that would not grand access for participation would be replaced. The need for replacement is to ensure at least 95 per cent participation of the proposed respondents.

Sampling Technique

The data would be collected using the semi-structured interviews where the researcher would issue out the questionnaire to the respondent (Le et al., 2018, pp.6-14). The exercise would take place during the breaks such as tea and lunch hours to avoid any possible interferences with participants’ schedule. In cases where the participants are many, the study would take place for an entire week until all the randomly selected participants from the respective groups are interviewed. However, variables such as the challenges in getting part-time employment from the firms would be collected from the students as well as the difficulties facing them in coping with the cultural practices in the region would also be relevant to the study. For the consultancy firms and the employment agencies, the variables such as the availability of the vacancies, the performances of the international students at work, the perception of the customers towards the services rendered by the international students would be of interest in the study. The identification and evaluation of the suitable variables would be thoroughly scrutinised so that the researcher can come up with the most relevant questions that would target the identified data variables. The practice would ensure validity, and higher accuracy is achieved in the results after analysis thus leading to certain recommendations or solutions that would address the problem. Data collection would take place for 30 working days.

The proposed qualitative research would utilise the use of the structured questions during the interviews to collect the data (Le et al., 2018). The interview schedule to be used would be based on the keenly designed questions that do not offend the respondents’ dignity in any way. Additionally, the plan would be friendly to the respondents where they would be allowed to ask for any clarification or explanations regarding the study. As much as the respondents had earlier been informed about the purpose of the study, the questionnaire would not limit them in inquiring about provocative questions they could be willing to ask. Enough copies of the surveys would be printed out for the physically present students whereas, in situations where the participant would request for online participation, the online questionnaires would be available where enough time would be given with follow-ups for completing the poll would be done using phone calls or emails by the researcher. The practice is justified in that it ensures the participants fill the questionnaires willingly at their convenience and comfort. This would precipitate the higher chances of collecting genuine responses from the participants thus contributing to the validity of the data. The proposed design would also cater to the participants who are willing to participate in an oral interview instead of the written transcript. For such cases, the research would provide for audio recording devices where the responses would be recorded on the tape for later documentation and conducting an analysis.

Data Collection

The analysis of non-numerical data or the descriptive data involves measures or the means to identify the captured concepts and opinions from the responses given during the qualitative research. Most importantly, the steps or the measures to be taken in analysing the qualitative data would be precise in determining whether the hypothesis of the study is tested effectively and that the analysis is relevant to the available data collected during the study (Merriam and Grenier, 2019). Additionally, the purpose of the qualitative analysis will be to efficiently organise the data for interpretation, pattern identification, inclining the field data to the research objectives, and forming the basis for informed and variable conclusions. To conduct the analysis, the researcher would deploy the use of deductive qualitative data analysis, which involves analysing the data based on the predetermined structure by the researcher (Yang et al., 2018, pp.815-828). The approach is preferred to the inductive qualitative analysis, as it is easy and a quick method as the interviewer can use the research questions a guideline for grouping and analysing the collected pieces of data as demonstrated in the subsequent section.

The key terms and concepts to be used for qualitative analysis forms a codebook as depicted in the table below.

Key terms and concepts	Definitions
Positive controversies linked to the study	These are the positive believes and misconceptions among the society and the international students linked to the study that the research aims to set the record straight.
Negative controversies linked to the study	These are the negative believes and misconceptions among the society and the international students linked to the study.
Theoretical challenges versus real-life challenges in evaluation of the study	The comparison between the existing knowledge of the challenges facing the work and study among the international students based on previous studies against the actual challenges undergone by the students based on the research study findings.
Inconsistent in knowledge	The gap in knowledge of the factors facing work and study among the international students that has raised concerns.
Action plan	The activities or practices that have been put in place to address the challenges faced by the subjects concerning the research question and objectives and the future follow up activities intended to monitor the progress of the findings.

The research ethics and feasibility are the rules that ensure the transparency and ethical issues are observed throughout the research from planning, designing, and implementation of the research activities. The primary aim of the ethical feasibility is to protect the dignity of the participants from being violated in any possible way by the researcher. Moreover, ethical feasibility is conducted to determine if the research study is ethical or legal that deals with the human conduct of the researcher and the research processes concerning the rightness and wrongness of certain actions or motives (Porter et al., 2018, pp.13-15). Therefore, observing the ethical guidelines is very crucial to the legal accomplishment of research studies.

Thus, it is upon the mandate of the research to follow the ethical feasibility guidelines which dictate that the privacy and confidentiality of the participants be protected during the collection of the data processes. Additionally, any questions that would lead to psychological harm to the participants should be avoided as provided by the ethics code of conduct.  It is also mandatory to give informed consent to the participants about the purpose of collecting the data and the importance of the research as well as the use of the data to be collected in achieving the objectives of the proposed study. That way the participant would be in the position to make informed decisions as for whether to take part in the exercise or not since participation should be voluntary with the provisions to opt out at any stage with or without stating the reasons.

Another ethical consideration is to seek authentication or permission from the relevant institutions to be allowed to carry out the study (Tong, Tong, and Low, 2018, pp.80-97). Ethical clearance is a vital component that could maximise the responses during the data collection exercise, as it would add to the confidence and willingness of the respondents to participate in the study.

Conclusion

The fundamental advantages of using the qualitative research design would be the provision of the in-depth and detailed data collected for analysis (Green and Thorogood, 2018). Using the qualitative approach, the interviewer can record the real-time attitudes, feelings and by extension the behaviours of the participants towards various questions as well as their actual experiences regarding the cultural differences and the challenges affecting them among other data variables. Additionally, the proposed research design would enable the researcher to build up the picture of their various actions and decisions in the country. All the benefits outlined are due to the advantages that come along with the first-hand information or the raw data collected for the qualitative analysis and evaluation.

As much as the qualitative design has the stated strengths, it exhibits several limitations in its implementation. It is essential to appreciate the fact that the qualitative approach could incur a lot of time due to the clearances required for obtaining permissions to interview the participants (Vuban and Eta, 2019, pp.1-23). A significant amount of time is also necessary for conducting the individual interviews, which cumulatively results in a longer time taken to collect the data. Moreover, another limitation could be the minimum rate of completed responses during the filling of the questionnaires. The problem arise when the some sampled participants decided to opt out of the interview, which could likely provide the researcher with no chance to replace the participants thus reducing the sample size that could make the results inappropriate or inaccurate for replication to another population. Another weakness to the study is that the physical presence of the researcher could hinder the respondents from expressing the negative side of their experiences thus leading to biased data as ascertained by (King, Horrocks, and Brooks, 2018).

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