Evaluation based on inspector and academician opinions of the needs of preservice teachers in cultural adaptation process Sec ¸il Besim 1 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract This paper was planned with the purpose of displaying the cultural dimension of problems experienced by students who come to Northern Cyprus universities for higher education from abroad. Different from student opinions, the opinions of higher education inspectors and academicians were also consulted and effort was paid to ensure that the existing situation is determined through these interviews. The purpose of this study is to determine the cultural needs of all university students who come to Northern Cyprus from abroad and laying the foundations of cultural adaptation programme taking into consid- eration these needs. The study is a qualitative one based on case study design. In the end of this research which includes the examination of interviews with descriptive analysis, ‘‘language’’, ‘‘traffic’’ and ‘‘adaptation to traditions and customs’’ were among the most frequently emphasised cultural elements which were indicated as problem by interviewees. Keywords Higher education Á Multi-culturalism Á Cultural adaptation 1 Introduction Beginning university is a very exciting experience for many young people. This beginning mostly overlaps with the ‘‘first adulthood’’ stage especially between adolescence to adulthood. This stage coincides to the period between 18 and 25 ages which expresses a period when the individuals have the roles and responsibilities of neither adolescents nor adults (Kacur and Atak 2011; Mercan and Yıldız 2011). In this period when knowledge is carried from local areas to international areas, and shared accumulations are turned into quality with competition, scientific borders are rapidly disappearing, and difference is on the agenda and labelled as richness, education is & Sec ¸il Besim secil.besim@neu.edu.tr 1 Ataturk Faculty of Education, Curriculum and Instruction, Near East University, Northern Cyprus, Mersin 10, Turkey 123 Qual Quant https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-018-0702-0