This paper presents the perspectives of current undergraduate students enrolled in the Business English baccalaureate programs at West (pseudonym) University Business School in China. This study explores these students’ perceptions of their educational experience focusing on what they see as the biggest challenges they face, and the most significant achievements they have accomplished in learning.
This research is ontologically qualitative, and used demographic questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Students were selected for participation using a four-stage non-proportional stratified purposive sampling procedure. The interview protocol design was structured as an episodic interview (Flick, 2008). All interviews were open, axial, and selective coded by using NVivo 12 software (2018).
The biggest challenges identified by the 24 student participants focused on learning English in business context, learning business content in English, quality of faculty performance, and business practices. The achievements focused on broadening their educational and career horizon, cultivating international thinking paradigm, and developing practical business and language skills. The findings also focus on student-identified links between the challenges they encounter to their achievements. In understanding the results, the student-learning concepts found in Maslow's hierarchy of needs (1943), Bandura’s student self-efficacy (1986) and Duckworth’s grit (2007) provide potentially fruitful insights. The findings of this research provide valuable references for the university administrators, Business School and program leaders in maintaining the program in order to improve students learning and outcomes. More importantly, the findings have instructive implications for the administrators in determining how student challenges should be coped with to generate positive student achievements.
 

higher education, business English, challenges, achievements, hierarchy of needs, student self-efficacy, grit, China