The approach

A dedicated project group was established to plan for the new intake, supported by a consultant who visited both campuses to assess what international students would be looking for and what needed to be developed or factored in.

Staff recruitment and development was a first point of action. SRUC recruited an International Student Adviser for each campus, able to work closely with the new cohort. Recognising that the wider staff body would also need support, cultural awareness training from AdvanceHE was organised and opened to everyone. There was considerable enthusiasm across the institution, and the training helped allay staff anxieties around accidentally saying the wrong thing.

Particular attention was given to how late payment of fees would be handled. A single member of the finance team took on responsibility for coordinating payment, working hard to understand each student's circumstances and acting as a consistent point of contact throughout. Although emails came from a generic finance address, every message came from this same staff member, and every student query came back to them, leading to dialogue and relationship rather than an exchange with a faceless department and allowing them to understand the students as individuals.

More broadly, Registry, Finance, and Student Services developed a coordinated approach. Together, they worked on email wording that was clear about the requirement to pay fees while also offering support, keeping communications simple and straightforward and pointing students towards a range of options. Crucially, clear boundaries were drawn between functions: Finance would follow up on fees, while International Student Advisers would provide confidential support. In cases where communications escalated and International Compliance became involved, maintaining those boundaries became even more important. Where necessary, support staff could offer general status updates and indicate when it was appropriate to follow up, but detailed information was not passed on without students' consent, therefore requiring institutional trust in colleagues' professional judgement.

The approach also extended compassion to the staff involved. Anyone named in an email to students was informed in advance, so they were prepared for potential contact. Support staff were equipped to offer immediate practical help, including supermarket vouchers they could distribute. These practical options benefited staff as well as students; frontline staff cannot reasonably be expected to deliver difficult news repeatedly without having something positive to provide, so giving staff a toolkit of support to offer helped avoid a sense of helplessness or compassion fatigue.