International News

Letter from London Importance of being foreign The announcement by Oxford University that it is planning to cut the number of UK and EU (European Union) undergraduates from 10,400 to 8,500 to expand its non-EU overseas under-graduate intake from 825 to around 1,400 per year, has prompted screaming headlines in Britain’s notorious tabloid press. ‘Oxford axes Britons: cash-strapped colleges will hand more places to foreigners’, screamed The Daily Mail in a headline guaranteed to rivet eyeballs, especially in an election year. Such headlines have made vice-chancellors from other universities wary about revealing their plans, although almost all are likely to follow suit. Although the advantages of admitting foreign students in British universities are well known, it does, of course, boil down to money. Despite the introduction of top-up fees next year, home grown and EU students will still be taught at below cost price. It is the new non-EU students paying high fees upfront who subsidise the whole system, and the challenge for all universities is to get the balance between domestic and full-fee paying foreign students right. Comments Prof. Steven Schwartz vice-chancellor of Brunel University: “One of the great advantages of going to university is getting a wide range of experience. We don’t just learn from books and professors, we learn empathy and understanding from the people we meet.” Acknowledging the increasingly important role of foreign students in British higher education, he insists a larger intake of foreign students is a positive development. “A lot of the courses for which we have in the past struggled to find British students, like maths and engineering, are very popular with overseas students, so they are ensuring that we are able to maintain a diverse range of subjects,” adds Schwartz. Since 1997 the number of overseas students studying in the UK has soared. Most university staff agree that they bring different views and experiences to student life which enhances everyone’s learning. Others complain that academic standards are compromised as admission authorities accept students with less than the highest qualifications and English language inadequacies, to balance the budget. Recently the intensity of the scramble to attract foreign students, who often pay four times more than their UK counterparts for the same study programmes, was highlighted by a Higher Funding Education Council report which predicts a 20 percent increase in overseas student numbers in the next three years, compared with a 4 percent increase in domestic and EU-based undergraduates. Universities have budgeted a 44 percent rise in aggregate income from overseas fees from £1.125 million in 2003-04 to £1,621 million in 2007-08. However the danger of universities relying so heavily on overseas students is that they become vulnerable to unpredictable political and economic changes. A recent announcement from the home office that the cost of a visa will increase from £155 to £400 could well put off some students, and a further rise in the value of the pound could make the UK prohibitively expensive. Besides, there is growing competition from European universities, many of whom are now offering…