LONDON: UK’s department of education has opened an investigation after a newspaper investigation found that international students are gaining back-door routes to undergraduate degrees at top British universities with far lower grades than their domestic counterparts require as universities are cash-strapped and need the extra fees they pay. Of the Indian students who come to UK, around 30% enrol in undergraduate programmes.
Whilst domestic student fees are capped at £9,250, international students can pay more than £40,000.
The story in the “Sunday Times” involved two undercover reporters posing as parents of international students with poor A level (or equivalent) grades looking for a place at a UK university. They discovered that international students can enter undergraduate degree courses via “international foundation courses”, outside the traditional UCAS (Universities and Colleges Admissions Service) application route.
UK universities are paying millions of pounds to recruitment agents, who have offices in India and China, to hunt out students with poor grades who are prepared to pay to study at Russell Group universities.
These agents run their own mini-campuses on university campuses where they run one-year pathway courses that allow international students to join university courses in the first year, and sometimes they even run the first-year courses. The students simply have to pass an end of year exam, which is just a “formality”.
Universities minister Roger Halfon held an urgent meeting with vice-chancellors after reading the article and asked the department of education to carry out an urgent investigation into bad practice by agents. MP Suella Braverman reacted angrily, calling for the graduate route to be scrapped and the number of foreign students to be capped.
An Indian in the sector told TOI: “China is doing this big time. Indian students are mindful of the extra cost of shelling out for an extra year so less than half come this way. This route tends to attract very wealthy Indians with poor grades who cannot even get into mediocre Indian universities and want to go to a Russell Group university. The problem is UK universities have to survive and domestic student fees are capped.” He criticised British universities for not holding interviews, as happens in the US, for applicants. “It looks like the UK government just want Indians to come to take up part-time jobs and fill labour shortages,” he said.
Sanam Arora, chair of NISAU UK, said she was deeply concerned about the “paranoia in the UK media of making international students enemy No. 1. “They bring close to £30 billion per year in revenues to the UK economy. It is the funding model of universities that the government needs to look at,” Arora said.
Parin Shah, head of corporate relations at INSA UK, said: “International students are cross-subsiding domestic ones and helping pay for their facilities.”
A spokesperson for the Russell Group said: “Our universities are taking steps to address examples of unacceptable or misleading behaviour by individual agents, including reviewing and terminating contracts where they have fallen below the expected standards.”
Whilst domestic student fees are capped at £9,250, international students can pay more than £40,000.
The story in the “Sunday Times” involved two undercover reporters posing as parents of international students with poor A level (or equivalent) grades looking for a place at a UK university. They discovered that international students can enter undergraduate degree courses via “international foundation courses”, outside the traditional UCAS (Universities and Colleges Admissions Service) application route.
UK universities are paying millions of pounds to recruitment agents, who have offices in India and China, to hunt out students with poor grades who are prepared to pay to study at Russell Group universities.
These agents run their own mini-campuses on university campuses where they run one-year pathway courses that allow international students to join university courses in the first year, and sometimes they even run the first-year courses. The students simply have to pass an end of year exam, which is just a “formality”.
Universities minister Roger Halfon held an urgent meeting with vice-chancellors after reading the article and asked the department of education to carry out an urgent investigation into bad practice by agents. MP Suella Braverman reacted angrily, calling for the graduate route to be scrapped and the number of foreign students to be capped.
An Indian in the sector told TOI: “China is doing this big time. Indian students are mindful of the extra cost of shelling out for an extra year so less than half come this way. This route tends to attract very wealthy Indians with poor grades who cannot even get into mediocre Indian universities and want to go to a Russell Group university. The problem is UK universities have to survive and domestic student fees are capped.” He criticised British universities for not holding interviews, as happens in the US, for applicants. “It looks like the UK government just want Indians to come to take up part-time jobs and fill labour shortages,” he said.
Sanam Arora, chair of NISAU UK, said she was deeply concerned about the “paranoia in the UK media of making international students enemy No. 1. “They bring close to £30 billion per year in revenues to the UK economy. It is the funding model of universities that the government needs to look at,” Arora said.
Parin Shah, head of corporate relations at INSA UK, said: “International students are cross-subsiding domestic ones and helping pay for their facilities.”
A spokesperson for the Russell Group said: “Our universities are taking steps to address examples of unacceptable or misleading behaviour by individual agents, including reviewing and terminating contracts where they have fallen below the expected standards.”