NANA AKUA: How greedy and hypocritical of our universities to encourage foreign students to game the system at the expense of Brits
There will be a mixture of cheers and tears today as school students the length and breadth of the country receive their A-level results.
And the tears won’t just be shed by those who have done worse than expected, because many who achieve good grades will find themselves denied a place at the university of their choice.
This is because many of our leading seats of learning have adopted a policy that can only be described as breathtaking in terms of its greed and hypocrisy.
Institutions that publicly declare themselves champions of ‘inclusion’ and ‘fairness’ have been urging overseas students to ‘get ahead of the crowd’ by applying for places through ‘clearing’ – the process by which prospective students who haven’t already got offers obtain places after they have received their exam results.
Yes, you did hear that right: British universities are tipping the wink to students from abroad to game the system at the expense of domestic applicants.
There will be a mixture of cheers and tears today as school students the length and breadth of the country receive their A-level results [File image]
It’s easy to see why. With the level of tuition fees universities can charge homegrown students frozen during a period of high inflation, deep-pocketed international candidates suddenly look very attractive indeed.
While British students pay a maximum of £9,250 a year, their foreign classmates can be charged anything from £11,400 to £38,000, with the average cost estimated to be around £22,200 a year.
As a result, the proportion of places at prestigious Russell Group universities in England taken up by international students has risen from 16 per cent to 25 per cent in the past six years.
READ MORE: Tens of thousands will miss out on university places, expert says
At two universities, University College London and the London School of Economics, overseas students now make up more than half of undergraduate admissions.
And at the rate things are going they will soon be joined by many more, as British undergraduates are becoming increasingly cash strapped.
It’s all very well to cap tuition fees, but what about the myriad other expenses the contemporary student has to cover? Expenses that are spiralling by the month.
Rents on student halls of residence at Russell Group universities have been hiked by up to 19 per cent for the next academic year (and accommodation is in increasingly short supply).
Durham University, for example, is planning rent rises of 10.3 per cent across its college accommodation, which means students will pay £9,156 for a 39-week stay in a catered college.
This at a time when maintenance loans are set to rise by just 2.8 per cent, despite the fact that the average student’s income falls short of covering their living costs by £439 a month, according to the National Student Money Survey.
British universities are tipping the wink to students from abroad to game the system at the expense of domestic applicants [File image]
When I was a student at Sunderland University in the early 1990s, I worked as security at various university clubs, did a stint as a bar maid and, at a nightclub called Annabel’s, even danced on the bar – like the girls in the movie Coyote Ugly – to make ends meet.
In those days, however, we got grants rather than loans and I didn’t graduate burdened by a debt that it would take me years to pay off. If things carry on like this, universities will become even more the preserve of well-heeled Brits and wealthy Americans and Chinese students.
How would that outcome fit in with the socialist narrative trotted out by so many right-on vice-chancellors?
They’ll remove a painting from a common room wall on the grounds that it offends foreign students, but the best interests of domestic students come a distant second to the demands of their bean-counters.
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