This paper examines a large dataset of questionnaire responses (n=5,321) of international students who have studied abroad (mainly via the Erasmus+ programme). Their acculturation experiences with campus discrimination (an acculturative stressor), academic support (a mediator of acculturation) and academic satisfaction (an outcome of acculturation) are analyzed and compared among five European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal). The measures of acculturation experiences are verified by Principal Component Analysis, which yields three components; Campus Discrimination, Academic Support, and Academic Satisfaction. The components are used as aggregate indexes for ranking the five major destination countries in Europe based on students’ experiences. A country-by-country comparison suggests that experiences from study abroad are most positive in Germany.

The growing numbers of mobile students over the years made the provision of student services a key topic of interest for higher education institutions. In order to offer a better experience for international students, it is important to be aware of and assess their needs in relation to different sets of support services. The data used in this paper were gathered through the ESNsurvey 2016 project, a research venture focused on the experiences of participants in short-term student mobility in Europe. Responses were collected from 12,365 international students, who have participated in a short-term (3-12 months) study period abroad mostly through Europe’s most promoted mobility program called ERASMUS+. For the purpose of this paper, the focus was only on the aspect of host university support services. The comments of 2,012 students about their experiences were analyzed using a probabilistic methodology known as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA).

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