Academic stress and its sources among first year students of islamic higher education in Indonesia

Research on sources of academic stress among first-year students in the State Islamic Higher Education Institutions in Indonesia has not gained serious attention among scholars. This study aims to describe the prevalence and trends as well as differences in academic stress based on socio-demographics and sources of academic stress. A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 290 students in UIN of Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang, IAIN of Jember, and STAIN of Kediri. Instruments of this study included socio-demographics, open-ended questionnaires about sources of stress, and the Academic Stress Questionnaire (ASQ) with Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.86. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to analyse the data. The results indicated that prevalence of academic stress reached 51.1%, while the trend of high academic stress was only found among the UIN’s students and common academic stress was experienced by the UIN’s, IAIN’s and STAIN’s students. There was no significant difference between the male and the female students in the academic stress score, but the stages of change differed the score. Sources of academic stress were mainly workload (39%), limited times (25%), academic difficulty (14%), teaching relation (12%), and academic pressure (11%). Counselling services through self-development programs in the Islamic universities are necessary to improve students’ psychological immunity and academic hardiness to reduce academic stress during their study