Uni and foreign students would you say anything?

[thebraispink]

My DD is at uni doing a creative subject and basically she is having to help and support all of the foreign students with their work.

The uni have taken on so so many students who don't speak English over 60% of her course and put no translators in place, so my DD is having to help explain everything to those poor students who have broken English at best.

The uni has literally just taken all the money, it's making my DD course really dumbed down and keeping her back, it's not great for the foreign students as they are pretty out of their depth and miserable.

From my stance we are paying a shit ton for this course, and its teaching is poor and the overall experience is a bit shit.

All of these students will leave after 3 years, and take this education to their countries which is great but it leaves the UK students with a sub standard experience and shitty degree.

Should there be a limits on how many students can be from overseas? Should the uni have to provide interpreters? Is anyone else's kids in the same situation?

We are considering moving her from the uni on these grounds as she spends more time helping her peers than she does being taught.

Finally, I'm surprised the OP's daughter had access to the register
Our intranet had accessible register list for out cohort. I am pretty sure most have it?

GDPR does not require that no information is shared ever!

It is a reasonable use of personal data that students who need to contact each other can do. Probably there is an opt in for this in the t and c of joining the uni somewhere.

DD probably shouldn’t have shared it with her mum, but I can’t see a reason why DD wouldn’t have it.

Yes of course it's about staying afloat. But the universities set a level of English they know is too low for foreign students to meaningfully be able to access a university level education, to ensure they make it as easy as possible for foreign students to attend. They are not innocent victims in this situation. They are enabling a racket to run because it fills their coffers. They are in a very difficult situation financially and I know it's desperate times and desperate measures and all that. However, as someone who has dedicated my career to teaching young people and giving them the best start in life I can, I find it morally repugnant that UK universities are willingly selling themselves off to the highest bidders and turning themselves into corporations rather than focusing on their true remit - which is providing an education to people to enable them to enrich and improve their lives. The reality is there are too many universities in the UK and too many courses that offer little real-world value to people, and little quality of education. There needs to be a wholesale reassessment of what the Higher Education sector is for, a huge reduction in the number of students going to university needlessly, and a move towards technical qualifications and a move away from companies requiring degrees for entry level jobs. The government should not be subsidising mediocre education for people who don't really want or need to be educated to HE level, which is the case for a significant proportion of students these days, I'm afraid.

For heaven's sake, it's not a breach of GDPR to have access to the class list of your own class. What a ridiculous thing to say!

@RampantIvy my misunderstanding then. We’re on the same page.

International students with next to no English do enrol on Uni courses, are accepted (for the money they bring in), then struggle with the course and bring down the level for others as well. This Tory Government is such a disaster for all and turning a blind eye to Chinese money in HE, as they did to Russian money in property. UK for sale. (I know this makes me sound like an unhinged UKIPer, or whatever their current iteration.)

@EnidSpyton and what would you have universities do in the meantime whilst we wait for the government sort the funding landscape out? Which as far as I know they aren't planning to do any time soon.

I didn't say it was a data breach for the daughter to have access to the register (though I was surprised by that). I said it was a data breach that she shared it with her mum.

i fully believe OP.
have observed much of this locally.
however, whyever, it is definitely happening.
on a large scale.
throughout.
those who doubt it are either out of touch, or deluding themselves.
or have some other agenda.
maybe.

Yes the money from the foreign students subsidies the British ones, as £9250 of fees (an amount set by the government and basically unchanged since they were introduced, what, a decade ago?) does not touch the sides of teaching most courses, especially those with a practical element.

Maybe for an Art course the standard is English required is lower than for an academic subject where most of the assignments with be written?

@ludocris how about failing the students? As in not giving them passing marks? Do a proper job and don’t turn a blind eye to sub-standard work. All degrees will become Mickey Mouse degrees otherwise.

And quite a number of us who work in universities are saying that in our experience it very much is a problem.

Obviously I can't speak for other universities so maybe there are some universities where it is not a problem.

Because it is important that discourses and views are countered, argued and properly debated. It’s also generally how forums (and conversations) work. Otherwise we all just live in echo chambers and filter bubbles.

Debates need language. Which some of these students don’t have. Do you see the problem?

@OchonAgusOchonOh I agree with you. The quote I thought I had linked to disappeared. I don't know why some posters are giving the OP a hard time because the problem she has highlighted is very real.

Oh yeah good idea. Bring them in to keep themselves afloat and then fail them all. That would help.

@ludocris fail those who can’t attain the expected grade.. “All shall have prizes” isn’t working.

They do fail students who don't achieve the required grades.

Foreign students pay huge fees that are keeping universities afloat. I have worked in China and found that the problem is that they are not taught English by people from England but by fellow Chinese so they just pass on bad habits and bad pronunciation. All foreign students have to pass an English test but in my opinion the bar is set too low. In my PhD group we had a German student who could cope with the readings but was lost in group discussions and eventually dropped out. Your daughter and her fellow students should be permitted to get on with their own work and concentrate on their own learning.

@ludocris Obviously not enough robust systems in place. I can tell you some of these students are not even at kindergarten level with their English. I don’t think they can follow a simple cooking recipe on how to boil an egg, let alone a Uni degree.

Just like a workplace

I can't understand what the foreign students would get out of the course if they can't understand what's going on . How will they graduate if they can't do the work because of the language barrier?

I remember many years ago a wealthy foreign student was in my group at college and because daddy paid his college fees he was allowed to get away with punching a girl after she objected to him opening her bag and helping himself to get stuff and various other misdemeanours . It's all about £££££ and filling courses .

That's annoying. Technology😖

Obviously there may be universities where it is not a problem but I don't know of any.

Some of you will be delighted to hear that the numbers of students coming to the UK from China are decreasing. Indeed the UK is becoming increasingly less attractive as a destination for international students. So you may well see some universities going bust in the next few years. Sadly that's not going to do much for your hopes of universities increasing their entry requirements.

It's the government you should be focusing your frustrations on. They were the ones who set out to commercialise education and create a competitive market for universities.

I think it was New Labour who was Education x 3 and 50% into a degree. It’s possible to be angry at that government and angry at the individual institution at the same time. Sometimes they aren’t too far apart.

And at the same time it’s possible to understand that if it wasn’t for these changes “our” children may not be at Uni.

I'm sorry OP you seem to be getting a hard time about a perfectly valid concern.

It's one of the reasons I don't want DS to apply for Edinburgh - I had a wonderful uni experience there, but the ratio of foreign students is so high that it's no longer anything like that.

In the case of Edinburgh I can blame the Scottish government for making Scottish universities fee free, but not paying the universities enough for the place.

In any event it's certainly not the learning and growing opportunity you want - and in your case are paying for - for your DD. Its difficult to know what to do though, maybe have a word with the lecturer and say she is concerned that acting as a translator is stopping her learning and absorbing the course properly.

This is B2 level which is the equivalent of a GCSE.

GCSE MFL in the UK is generally below B1. GCSE is taught quite differently to English Language courses.