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International students deserve better from the UK government

September 5, 2012 4:03 pm

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Alice Perry

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International students matter. These students are vital to the financial stability of UK universities – they are worth over £8billion in tuition fees alone. Overall, international students are estimated to be worth of £14billion to the UK economy, creating jobs, advancing research, and providing powerful global connections for business and diplomacy.

The Olympics has been a fantastic showcase for London and the UK. This positive image of the UK is currently being undermined by a visa crisis at a north London university, which is receiving media coverage around the world. The decision by the UK Boarder Agency to strip London Metropolitan of its right to teach international students has left international students, many in their final year of study, unable to complete their courses. Through no fault of their own these students face deportation if they cannot find another institution at which to resume their studies.

The Vice Chancellor of London Metropolitan has continuingly argued that UKBA’s decision damages the reputation of all UK universities. This has been the case for neighbouring City University, whose reputation has been damaged in China due to a translation error, which incorrectly connected the two universities in the Chinese Media.

The threat to UK universities’ global reputations is a very serious one. The recent discontinuation of the post-study work visa has negatively impacted the sector and is linked to a fall in applications from international students, with many universities reporting a 40% decrease in applications.

In addition to issues around visas, last summer’s riots and the high profile murder of India student in Salford have both contributed to making the UK a less attractive destination for international students.

International students from India are particularly important to UK higher education. India accounts for a third of all non-EU students in the UK. Until recently numbers of students coming from India to study in the UK had been rising sharply.

India is an attractive higher education market. Most students learn through English at secondary schools and in higher education. As the new India middle class grows, so too does the demand for higher education. India has limited local capacity. India boasts some truly excellent universities, but competition for places is fierce. Typically, at the top Indian universities there are around 700 qualified students chasing 1 place. To put this in context, at Stanford in the USA the ratio is around 13:1.

UK universities have been working very hard to capitalise on this. They face competition from universities in the other countries, notably the USA, Australia, and New Zealand. India is a lucrative market but one that should not be taken for granted.

Senior politicians have indentified India as a key emerging economy to develop closer links and partnerships with. It is farcical for Cameron to go on trips to India in order to build links for UK business while continuing to pursue immigration policies that undermine this.

In a letter to David Cameron, Eric Thomas, Vice Chancellor of Bristol and President of Universities UK, suggests that “the UK seems to be telling the world that it doesn’t welcome international students.” And this was before the London Met visa fiasco.

International students make valuable economic, cultural and social contributions to the UK. They deserve better from the UK government.

LembitOpiksLovechild

International Students who come to this country to study deserve our support. However there have been well documented cases of bogus students coming to this country, either to work instead of study or to overstay their visas. also illegally. That is not acceptable and should be stopped.

London metropolitan hasn’t been banned from teaching overseas students. They’ve just been banned from sponsoring them, therebye bypassing many of the visa checks otherwise required, because they couldn’t be trusted to ensure that they sponsored were not abusing the system.
jaime taurosangastre candelas

Some of the arithmetic in your text is wrong, from the primary data you supply, and even more wrong if you look at further sources.

The main point you make can only be applied to non EU students, as by definition EU students have a right to study in the UK. So you can therefore only include non-EU students in your data sources. That is the first mistake: you include fees paid, and economic contribution made by all foreign students, not only non-EU students. And that is from your primary source that you reference.The real value for tuition fees is about £2.7B from non-EU students. Not £8B from all non-UK students, the majority of whom have every right to be here under EU rules.

India does not account for 1/3 of non EU students. It accounts for less than 20%, a figure that is declining year on year (while absolutely rising in raw numbers, if slowly, it is more than overmatched by greatly increasing numbers from China). See http://www.ukcisa.org.uk/about/statistics_he.php .

At the current trend, India will be overtaken as a proportion by Nigeria in less than 2 years, and Saudi Arabia in 5.6 years. It takes about 10 minutes to gather the raw data going back over 5 years and to perform a regression analysis upon it. Did you not think to do that before putting your name to such a piece of nonsense on the internet? My version of Excel even has a wizard to guide you through it, although the results are less precise than writing the formulae yourself as in a hand-written analysis you can input additional conditionals.

That should be the real point of your argument: are we comfortable with this? Which foreign countries should we be trying to recruit students from, and what policies and diplomacy should be changed to ensure we get the correct numbers? There should also be an outside perspective: why are Indian students preferring to go to Australia than to come to the UK (>25% year on year increase in Indian applications to Australian universities over the last 5 years). Are the Australians offering better courses, cheaper fees, easier enrolment, easier leave to remain….?

The totally superficial analysis in the article, laced with unthinking partisanship really irritates.
Daniel Speight

London metropolitan hasn’t been banned from teaching overseas students.
They’ve just been banned from sponsoring them, therebye bypassing many
of the visa checks otherwise required, because they couldn’t be trusted
to ensure that they sponsored were not abusing the system.

This isn’t being totally honest. The actual result is that overseas students who were studying at LMU will now have to find another university to sponsor them. This has the consequence of disproving your first sentence. Don’t be mealy mouthed and just stand by your first paragraph rather than add the little bit of spin in the second.
Daniel Speight

London metropolitan hasn’t been banned from teaching overseas students.
They’ve just been banned from sponsoring them, therebye bypassing many
of the visa checks otherwise required, because they couldn’t be trusted
to ensure that they sponsored were not abusing the system.

This isn’t being totally honest. The actual result is that overseas students who were studying at LMU will now have to find another university to sponsor them. This has the consequence of disproving your first sentence. Don’t be mealy mouthed and just stand by your first paragraph rather than add the little bit of spin in the second.
Daniel Speight

So much of the London Metropolitan University case was leaked by the functionaries and politicians at the immigration department to the press beforehand, there was always going to be more spin than truth out there.

The problem we should highlight is the unfairness of the actions taken by the government. Even if we accept some of the leaked numbers that 25% of the 2,000, overseas students were breaking the rules, why should the other 1,500 students in the middle of their studies be punished. Is the immigration department unable to sort out those that need the punishment? Couldn’t they have stopped new arrivals while in conjunction with David Willetts’ university department sorted out any problems at the university?

For a country once considered the inventor of fair play, this whole episode stinks.
http://graduatedoorway.com/ Graduate Doorway UK

Over the last week it’s become increasingly clear that there are some pretty serious questions, about checks on non-EU students at LMU. Questions which of course need answering and resolving. But equally, at a time when the UK economy is deep in the doldrums, you have to question the authorities handling of the whole episode and, in effective, giving a relative star export (international education) a kicking.

Again, we’re certainly not sanctioning abuse of the UK Visa system, far from it. As an international education agent it’s in our interest too for the process to regulated properly.

However, going back to the handling of the affair, it’s clear from discussions within our industry (around the world) that a great deal of damage has been done to A) Britain as a dependable supplier of world class educations, and, B) how the country perceives and treats high paying international students.
williamtheconker

It has been well known that London Metropolitan has been stretching the visa elastic for some time. They got found out.

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