Well-being and pastoral care in TNE: Supporting students to thrive across borders
In my previous articles, I have explored why student support must sit at the heart of successful transnational education (TNE) partnerships, why academic support should go beyond providing resources to create equivalent opportunities for students to succeed, and how effective communication creates shared understanding across increasingly complex international partnerships.
This naturally leads to another important aspect of the student experience: well-being and pastoral care. When we talk about student well-being in higher education, the conversation often focuses on mental health and access to counselling or other specialist services. These are undoubtedly important, but well-being is much broader. It encompasses a student's sense of belonging, safety, confidence and connection, as well as the practical, academic, financial, cultural and personal circumstances that can affect their ability to study and thrive.
For TNE students, these considerations can become even more complex. This is something I have seen repeatedly through my own work with TNE programmes and through conversations with students, academics and professional services colleagues across different international contexts. The specific challenges vary considerably, but there are some recurring themes: uncertainty about where to turn for help, differences in expectations around support, cultural barriers to asking for assistance and, sometimes, simply not knowing who is responsible for what.
Well-being starts before the student enters the classroom
For students studying for a foreign qualification outside their home country, the challenges may begin long before they arrive at their institution. Immigration and visa requirements, healthcare arrangements, accommodation, financial pressures, employment restrictions and understanding local legal and administrative systems can all create uncertainty. For students and their families, navigating these unfamiliar systems can be stressful, particularly when they do not know where to find reliable information or who is responsible for helping them.
This is an important distinction in TNE. A student studying for an international qualification in their home country may have many of these practical support networks around them already. A student studying in a third country may have far fewer. For example, a student from one country studying for a qualification awarded by a university in another country, while physically studying in a third, may need to navigate three different national contexts. The academic relationship may be relatively straightforward, but the student's lived experience can be considerably more complex.
In these circumstances, pastoral support cannot simply be an online counselling service or a contact number buried somewhere within a student portal. Students need clear information, accessible points of contact and confidence that someone understands the context in which they are living and studying.
The well-being challenge is not always where we expect it
Some of the most interesting conversations I have had with TNE students have been about difficulties that institutions may not immediately recognise as well-being issues. A student can have excellent academic results and still feel isolated. They may be living away from their family for the first time, struggling to establish friendships, adjusting to a new culture or feeling uncertain about whether they really belong within an international university community.
Language can add another layer. As I discussed in my previous article, language challenges are not necessarily about formal proficiency. A student may arrive with an excellent IELTS score and still struggle to understand local pronunciation, accents, colloquialisms, professional jargon or cultural references. The same can be true in reverse. Students studying in their own language may find themselves working with international academics or professional services colleagues whose communication style is unfamiliar.
These experiences can be frustrating and, over time, can contribute to anxiety, disengagement or a feeling of being an outsider. This is why well-being in TNE needs to be considered in the context of the whole student experience rather than as a separate service.
Cultural context matters
Well-being is not understood or experienced in exactly the same way everywhere. Attitudes towards mental health, counselling, disability, family involvement and seeking professional help can vary considerably between cultures. A student may recognise that they are struggling but feel uncomfortable disclosing this to an institution or seeking formal support.
There may also be different expectations around the role of academic staff. In some educational cultures, students may be accustomed to discussing personal or academic difficulties directly with teachers. In others, approaching an academic to ask for help may feel inappropriate or intimidating. The existence of a support service therefore does not necessarily mean that students will use it. Institutions need to consider how support is communicated, who delivers it, how approachable it feels and whether students trust the people providing it.
Should TNE students receive more support?
This is an interesting question, and one I think institutions should be willing to ask. I would argue that, in some TNE contexts, students may need more proactive support than students studying on the home campus, rather than simply the same level of support delivered differently.
That view comes partly from conversations I have had with students studying TNE in different parts of the world. What has struck me repeatedly is how much students can be expected to navigate independently when they are physically distant from the awarding institution. What may appear to an institution to be a relatively straightforward online support offer can feel very different from the student's perspective.
A student on the home campus can often draw on a wide ecosystem of support almost without thinking about it. They may know where the library is, how to contact their academic adviser, where to access health services, who to speak to about accommodation or how to find student societies. A TNE student may not have the same ecosystem around them. Providing an equivalent email address or online portal does not necessarily create an equivalent support experience. In some circumstances, therefore, equity may require additional or more proactive intervention, particularly during transition points or when students show early signs of disengagement.
Who is responsible for pastoral care?
This becomes particularly important in partnership models. The local partner may know students much better and be best placed to identify changes in behaviour, attendance or engagement. The awarding institution may have specialist well-being expertise, established policies and formal escalation procedures. Neither institution should simply assume that the other is responsible.
In my experience, the strongest partnerships tend to establish clear responsibilities and referral pathways while maintaining a shared understanding that student well-being is a collective responsibility. This does not mean that every partner needs to replicate the full well-being infrastructure of the home campus. It means designing an appropriate support ecosystem for the local context and ensuring that students understand how it works.
Supporting the people who support students
There is also a staff dimension to this conversation. Academic and professional services staff are often the first people to notice that a student is struggling. They may see changes in attendance, engagement, academic performance or behaviour before a student ever contacts a formal well-being service.
Staff therefore need more than good intentions. They need appropriate training and development to recognise potential concerns, understand the boundaries of their role and know where and how to refer students for additional support. This is particularly important in TNE, where the person closest to a student may not be the person with access to specialist support.
I have also seen how much difference it can make when local staff and colleagues at the awarding institution have established relationships and understand each other's roles. When those relationships exist, concerns can be identified and escalated much more quickly. When they do not, students can sometimes find themselves caught between institutions, with each assuming that the other is dealing with the issue.
Staff also need support themselves. International partnership work can involve significant demands, including working across cultures and time zones, managing complex relationships, dealing with difficult student situations and navigating different institutional expectations. Staff well-being matters not only because institutions have responsibilities towards their employees, but because staff who feel supported are better placed to support students. Professional development, peer support, clear escalation processes and regular communication between partner teams can therefore contribute to both staff and student well-being.
Families matter too
Conversations with students have also reminded me that the family dimension should not be overlooked. In many TNE markets, parents and families play a much more significant role in educational decision-making than institutions in some Western countries might expect. For students studying overseas, families may be particularly concerned about safety, accommodation, immigration status, academic progress and employability.
Clear and appropriate communication with families can therefore help build confidence in the institution and the partnership. At the same time, institutions need to balance family engagement with student autonomy, privacy and confidentiality. The role of families should be recognised without undermining the student's independence.
Beyond the support service
Ultimately, pastoral care is not simply a service that students access when something goes wrong. It is an ecosystem that can involve the lecturer who notices that a student has suddenly withdrawn from class, the administrator who follows up after repeated unexplained absences, the local tutor who knows how to refer a student to specialist support, or a partner institution that understands when a change in behaviour represents a genuine concern rather than simply poor academic engagement.
These everyday interactions can be just as important as formal well-being services. Technology can certainly help. Digital check-ins, online counselling, well-being platforms and early-warning systems can make support more accessible and help institutions identify potential concerns. But technology should complement rather than replace human relationships.
Building environments where students can thrive
As TNE continues to expand globally, institutions will need to think increasingly carefully about what well-being and pastoral care mean across different contexts. The answer will not be identical everywhere. Effective support needs to reflect local cultures, regulatory environments, available services and student expectations while still maintaining clear standards and responsibilities across the partnership.
After speaking with students studying TNE across different countries and partnership models, I increasingly think the most important measure of pastoral support is not how impressive the formal support structure looks on paper, but what happens when a student actually needs help. Does the student know who to contact? Do they feel comfortable asking for help? Does the person they approach know what to do next? And, perhaps most importantly, does the partnership have enough understanding of its students to notice when something is not quite right?
Successful TNE is not only about enabling students to earn an internationally recognised qualification. It is about creating an environment in which they can feel safe, connected, supported and able to thrive while doing so.
In my next article, I will explore another important dimension of the TNE student experience: administrative clarity, and why seemingly small issues around information, processes and responsibility can have a surprisingly significant impact on student confidence and satisfaction.
– Dr Suzanna Tomassi is Executive Director of External Affairs at NCUK, a leading UK pathway provider, and Founder of CoachEd Global, a consultancy specialising in executive coaching and global education advisory.
She is a highly experienced strategic leader and board member with over 20 years’ expertise across UK Government and higher education. Her work focuses on internationalisation, governance, risk oversight, commercial growth, and organisational transformation. Suzanna’s career spans the UK Department for Business and Trade and four major UK universities, where she has shaped national policy, strengthened regulatory and quality frameworks, and led large-scale international expansion initiatives.
An expert in transnational education and global operations, Suzanna has driven multi-country growth strategies, co-authored accreditation guidelines, and facilitated major international investments in UK higher education.
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