Why do our most prestigious and wealthiest Unis accept so many international students ?

Brexit is an issue but for different reasons. Due to Brexit the UK universities have lost a vast amount of ££££ that they used to get as research grants. This shortfall hasn't been filled and has caused issues.

So for all the Nigel Numpties wanting to celebrate the 5 year anniversary of withdrawal celebrate that!!

I've just done a 4 yr undergrad and currently doing an MA in a Russel group uni. On my course there were 1 or 2 international students each module, including the MA. All were extremely bright and capable, regularly attend and spoke better English than me.

The unis need them for the fees. My MA costs 10k for a home student, 25k for an international student. So the 2 students we have are equivalent to 5 home students.

Redundancies and cost cutting measures were announced last year at my uni because they fell out of the top 100, therefore wouldn't attract as many international students. This has included pulling scholarships for PhDs in my department, which I would have applied for and stood a chance of getting.

Its the money. The fees british students pay have been capped for years at a level that's too low. International students keep the uni afloat financially

Universities going under would be pretty shit, actually. It would have the biggest impact on marginalised students/potential students who can't afford halls/need to stay for family support as they're lone parents etc, who can't just go somewhere else.
Also, it would have a massive impact on the local economy. St Andrews, as one example, would be totally devastated. The only other reason to go would be golf, really, which means the town would be as dead in the winter as Blackpool.
I don't get why there's such a downer on MN on universities lately. Nobody is going to make you attend one.

But yeah op it's money.
As well as brexit, the hostile environment in general means policies like the new ban on bringing your partner when you come to study. So it's getting less and less attractive to study in the UK. But oxbridge will always still appeal.

I work in a Russell group university and to answer some of the points -

I don’t agree home and international students are equal when it comes to admissions. My uni are openly saying they need to recruit more international students as any more drop in numbers would be financially devastating. You can thank Rishi Sunak for that as he was so desperate to get visa numbers down that he targeted international students.

I’ve found that not all but lots of the international students can’t speak English well at all. They do get tested but this is done online before they get here so lots suspect that they cheat by getting someone else to sit the test. I run meetings with students and regularly have to get interpreters in as the students have no idea what I am saying. God knows how they understand lectures. Unethical of universities to take their money and set them up to fail.

universities are going broke but I would agree there’s unbelievable money wasted by lots of middle managers being brought in who do sod all work. A bit like the NHS. Also lots of people doing sod all work of any use but it’s impossible to sack incompetent or lazy staff as it’s public sector.

I know people like Corbyn wanted tuition fees to be scrapped but all this means is universities will take more international students and he students won’t get a place. This has happened in Scottish universities so unfortunately you do need to charge fees. Wish they could be lower as lots of degree not worth it but this wouldn’t work.

The same could be said if Tesco went bust

I have B2 French. I certainly wouldn’t be capable of studying for a degree in French.

My DD is doing a masters at UCL. Her course is 85% international, largely Chinese, and a substantial proportion of those students have extremely poor language skills.

She has had to spend weekends rewriting international students’ contributions to group projects, because the level of English was so poor that you couldn’t understand what they were trying to say.

Any rules in place to ensure students have sufficient language skills are not working.

Unless you work at one or live in a community where the university is a major employer...... 🤷🏼‍♀️

I’m a lecturer and do admissions for our postgraduate programmes. One of the top RG unis. It’s because that’s who applies. I assume because they can afford it.

I don’t even know students’ nationalities when I make admissions decisions though you can make a guess based on their names and their undergraduate unis. I would say 70% of applicants to our postgraduate programmes are international, mostly China, Korea, Gulf States.

We aren’t making those decisions because those students pay more (I’m not involved in that end of it). But there just aren’t significant numbers of British students applying. I assume because there is little funding to support them and it’s expensive. Whereas these international students seem to have the funds (family money, government funding?) to pay the fees.

The amount Oxford and Cambridge charge UK students for their degrees is probably less than actually costs them. I think Oxford and Cambridge make their money from Investments rather than just student fees, Also, the UK students in Oxford are probably subsidised more by international students than at Wolverhampton. Oxford is much more attractive to international students and they can charge more.
Most universities are in deficit last year so while you think it should cost less than 9k it obviously doesn't.

There is no prioritisation of international students. If anything, when we see similar abilities, we try our best to balance nationalities, demographic backgrounds, individual circumstances

@nameychangey111 I’ve read that there are contextual offers made to applicants from UK which is obviously fair enough, but how do you discover what are the social and educational backgrounds of international applicants?

I don't know about Oxford but to retain college status Cambridge had to hold £50m on liquid assets and actually "traded" at a loss last year. Just see the number of redundancies at other unis including Durham and other RGs to see why they need international students to remain financially viable. Actually fewer are applying due to Brexit and racism/far right undertones being set in the country and reported in the media.

The bottom line is we have too many universities and if some go under it wouldn't really be the end of the world.

Really, love to know where you got that.

I studied medicine and the international student on my course spoke perfect English. Many of them come from ex-colonies where English is a common spoken language and they where raised speaking it just like us.

I only met 1 person who didn't speak it from childhood (which was in college not uni so doesn't really apply) and she spoke better than most native English people as she was very staunch and proper for following correct language rules.

You aren't just paying for the contact time, you're paying towards facilities, libraries, student support, careers centres...

If you just base value on contact time, an Oxford humanities degree (1 or 2 hours of a tutorial per week, plus maybe one lecture series, but not every term) is a complete rip off. Except it's not, because you have access to an enormous copyright library and the ability to do huge amounts of research from that. You just won't have (and shouldn't need) someone holding your hand throughout.

The fees aren't just for contact hours.

Student support, well being, careers, library, IT systems etc all cost money too.

Post graduate students especially PhDs are often funded from their home country and are not taking places that would otherwise go to domestic students. Others are funded by things like Gates Scholarships (Cambridge) or ERC funded networks where the applicants must be from outside the UK. Cambridge and Oxford are often first choices for the students who are applying for their own funding.

Cambridge at least has quite strict language requirements for admission. We have had students awarded prestigious funding from their home country but were not able to attend due to not meeting the English language requirements.

Undergraduates might be partly/mostly about money but students still have to compete for places.

This

Er, money.

I think you’re right to question it , specifically for Oxford and Cambridge, they have so much land etc etc I’m not sure they really need international students to balance the books, especially as PP said at undergraduate level. which doesn’t really affect the research culture.

Of course many other unis really do need international students to balance the books. And it’s well known that some cheat the language requirements by getting someone else to take the test for them, thst there can be other fraud at the test centres or just an accidental more accessible way of talking by testers who have lived in a particular country for a while even if they are first language English speakers. It’s easier to pass in your home country. Also some unis want a minimum level of English in each of reading, writing, speaking and listening while others/other courses just take the average score for these, so someone could be poor at speaking but better at reading.

It's all about money. It's also a sign the UK really hates itself, any and all investment seems to be overseas which is fine but not at the cost of our own industry and public sectors.

Yes, as I said earlier, my dad is a professor of Chemistry and deals largely with Chinese PhD students. He regularly complains about the fact that many of them have appalling English which is not sufficient to gain a PhD and staff are told they have to spend many hours helping them with this. He does, of course, have very intelligent students with excellent English too.

I'm not sure it's anything to do with Brexit because EU students paid the same as UK students.

I have to say that during my humanities degree, it was incredibly beneficial to everyone on the course that we had students from different countries, cultures and backgrounds. It opened up our seminars and discussions to a broader range of viewpoints, texts and evidence; off the top of my head I have studied alongside Norwegian, Vietnamese, Chinese, French, Swedish, American, and Canadian students, all of whom had cultural knowledge to offer that I wouldn't have known without their input. I learnt a lot from my international student peers, not only on my course but through several student societies; seeing a society of Japanese students perform a traditional sōran bushi dance during an international student showcase event was one of the highlights of my extracurricular experience.

It goes without saying that I never met a single international student who wasn't fluent in English, too. That's just a ridiculous statement to make; every course has entry requirements that must be met, and in my experience that was reflected clearly by the acumen of the students.

International students make up 46% of Oxford's total student body, which is 23% of undergraduates and 65% of graduate students.

Havard has 22.9% of international students in the undergraduate range, so almost identical percentage.

It's not just the UK that attracts international students.