a growing experience - Student Services - University of Melbourne

HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTSrelation to some other aspects of living in Melbourne. This finding is supported byother research (Daroesman et al., 2005). Students on the whole are significantly lesssatisfied with the adequacy of their finances than they are, for example, with theirliving arrangements.Students do worry about whether their finances are or will be sufficient for their needsthroughout their courses. In fact, more students worry than need to, if their judgmentabout their financial situation is accurate. Although there is a negative relationshipbetween perceiving resources to be adequate and level of worry, it is not a perfectnegative correlation. There are still students who say they are sure their financialsupport is satisfactory but who record a high level of worry about their financialsituation. This seems to have more to do with their general levels of depression,anxiety and stress than with their finances, as the strong and significant positivecorrelations between these psychological dimensions and worry indicate.Another possible indication that worry about finances is not based altogether onreality is the link between students’ financial concerns and their involvement in paidwork. If more funding is needed, one would expect that students would like to spendmore time in paid work. Students who worry most are significantly more likely thanothers to want to increase their hours of paid work, but once again there is not a oneto-onerelationship between worry and wanting increased work. It is possible this isaffected by other factors such as course requirements and permitted work limits. It isalso possible, however, that this is another indication that worry is not quite alignedwith reality.In fact only 27.4 per cent of students in the sample are engaged in paid work; thosewho are average 10.7 hours of work per week. First year students have a lower rate ofinvolvement in paid work than the average: 24.1 per cent work for an average of 10.6hours per week. This is consistent with the findings of Krause and colleagues (2005)concerning first year international students across Australia in 2004: 23.3 per centwere involved in paid work for an average of 11.6 hours per week. These ratescontrast markedly with those of first year domestic HECS students, 58.7 of whomwere in paid work in 2004, working an average of 12.45 hours per week (Krause etal., 2005). Students in the sample who are already undertaking paid work are muchmore likely than others to want to increase their number of hours of work.Students draw their funding from a variety of sources: family, own and/or partner’ssavings, paid work, scholarships from their home countries, from Australia or fromorganisations of a different kind, and from other sources such as loans. Most studentsrely on multiple sources rather than one alone. The source that is most frequentlyused by students is the family. Some 84.6 per cent of students are supported whollyor in part by their families. This is a two-edged sword for students. They have theassurance of financial support from a well-disposed, personally-involved source. Atthe same time, students feel a great obligation to meet family expectations, anobligation that creates considerable stress for them. These students give asignificantly higher rating than those not dependent on family financing to the notionof being stressed by the need to do well for the sake of their family.Of the 828 students who are supported by their families, there is one small group of86 who are quite different. These are the students who are wholly financed by theirfamilies; this is their sole source of funding. Their level of well-being seemsconsiderably greater than the well-being of others. They are significantly moreRosenthal, Russell & Thomson, 2006 140