The Gains and Pains of Mixed National Group Work at University

According to a recent report, the top skill that employers are looking for in graduates is an ability to work collaboratively with teams of people from a range of backgrounds and countries. So as universities seek to internationalise, an important question is how successful they are in developing this skill. Both research and anecdotal evidence suggest that it is a challenging task and that universities are struggling to achieve it. In this paper, we report a study on working in mixed national groups and its relation to intercultural skills. A total of 2000 students at a UK university responded to a questionnaire that had both closed and open questions. A range of statistical analyses were carried out on the quantitative data, and the open-ended comments were analysed thematically. The responses were compared across national/regional clusters and our findings indicate that mixed national group work is widely perceived across the clusters as enriching and not particularly challenging. Correlations indicate that students perceive such group work as more important for the development of intercultural skills than cross-national friendships.