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.

@blueshoes I think there are a few who are looking for any excuse to call me a racist for pointing out basic facts.

Thank you for your post and yes I agree I'm aware having lived in Asia that the UK born as you say Canada's or US educated or born Chinese select their European or amercian sounding names and don't use their chinease surnames either.

Some of her class have their first English names mostly Brian's, Jeff's and Dave's and some really endearing but random selections.

Sounds exactly like my dds experience

It is not just about lack of ability with English, although we all know that having a GCSE A* for example, doesn't mean my dd can fluently speak German enough to be able to go there and straight off the bat get on with studying at the same level as German nationals.

It's also that teaching and learning styles are very different, and so some students struggle with the amount of interaction and conversations between student/teachers. Again, the ethnically Chinese-origin English students don't have this issue as most have been through the state system, as have those who have been sent here to study earlier in life (e.g. I have had students from PRC/HK who did all their secondary schooling at English boarding schools). It's those coming from a completely different system aged 18-23 and then having to get used to a) the different teaching and learning styles b) function at a very high level of spoken and written English (as you are being marked alongside everyone who has English as a first language from the off). It's pretty obvious this needs more intensive learning support and unis are being neglectful in not providing it, even just on welfare grounds.

They don't have the language skills and they do fail or scrape a pass because so many marks are given for group assignments.

I am dealing with them on a daily basis. It may be different where ever you work but this is my experience. I have lecturing for over 25 years. I think I can tell the difference between someone who does not understand and someone who just prefers to speak in their mother tongue.

Spot on.

Professor here, at a leading university in the UK

I do not recognise what you describe at all

But, what an interesting thread. Almost as though it opens up a discussion on immigration, HE and foreign nationals, hey?

Spot on.

I had a student nurse a couple of years ago, who barely spoke English. I've no idea how she even got through interview.
It's up to DD if she wants to move universities, she's an adult.

It’s not just the UK. I’m in Australia and foreign tertiary students are a huge money maker here and the uni’s can’t get enough of them. Poor English. The uni’s solve this by making all assessments group assignments and putting be native English speaker in each group. That person then pretty much has to do the entire assignment so that they pass and/or get a decent grade. That means the foreign students pass the course and the uni doesn’t get a bad rep for failing foreign students, so more come.

This has happened to each of my kids when going through uni, it’s universal here and can’t be solved by moving courses or uni’s as each is the same. They also can’t complain, as if they do they are gaslighted and told they will have a problem in the workplace if they ‘can’t work as part of a group’, or that they are racist. Seemingly this new normal only doesn’t apply to courses that have practical individual exams, but even then it’s iffy as I have friends still clinically facing in medicine at teaching hospitals and they are feeding back they are getting students through who understand little English who basically rely on others translating for them but yet they are expected to let them loose on patients. Any expression of concern or resistance results in a claim of racism.

It took me 90 seconds to find this (I don't know Chinese, but I do know how to Google)
https://getdocumentschina-co.translate.goog/?_x_tr_sl=zh-CN&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

I get Facebook ads offering to take English language tests and driving tests for me.

That is when people are not aware of actual demograpics of UK and thimk they are bit different to reality. I am an immigrant if anyone said there are lots of mine on a course, I would absolutely think they are not born here because... Logic. 🤷There is probably 0.00001% of population of people with my heritage born in UK.
Iirc there is about 100k British Chinese (born in UK) out of Chinese group, tiny group in 66mil, and age wise there will only be very small minority fitting uni age.
There have been large intake from Hong Kong specifically in recent years as well. I think 100k.

\lol yep I remember one group project we actually had one person drop out of uni and another who did sweet FA. The two of us left handed in work that got an A.

Sweet FA student complained to the uni that she hadn't contributed!

OP

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

Er she is at uni. If she wants to move that's up to her, she's not in school any more.

No idea why there are people on here insisting that the OP is making it up. I know a couple of people who work in universities, and they have both talked about the exact same sort of issues.

We can expect to see more of this; universities are about to see a real crunch in terms of funding, COL means they are reluctant to extract higher fees from home students, they can’t ask for more govt money as the incoming Labour govt will be seriously cash strapped…. Trying to get more foreign students and not being terribly fussy about how good their English is, is how many universities will try to survive.

Definitely recognise this from arts subjects in some unis- students from China are keeping the courses going. I would suggest your daughter approach the module or course leader or even head of dept about the expectations of helping- that's where the issue is, and that's an unusual experience. At the same time, she should use her tutor's office hours to get some more focus on her needs.

No quote

I sent this thread to someone I know who works at Central Saint Martins, (in student services), last night as I was curious whether there’s any truth in it. She’s going to pass it on as it’s a negative narrative about them and feels it’s unfair.

“COL means they are reluctant to extract higher fees from home students”

the maximum home student fee level is set by the uk government and has not increased for years. Universities have no ability to increase this.

I don’t understand why some posters are surprised at the level of English. Passing an exam for which one can study and learn exam techniques, vocabulary lists, verb tables etc is not going to be a guarantee of fluency in vocabulary needed for any specific subject, delivered at normal speed.

I got an A in gcse Italian and then went to Italy for a two week course living with a host. I could speak to her fairly well, but once her friend came over and I couldn’t follow, it was too fast and idiomatic.

When friends of mine moved to Germany for work, their employers paid for small class teaching to move them up in language capabilities, and this went on for at least a couple of years.

Exam passes are not fluency. Fluency takes time.

OP I believe you. I was a (very) mature student doing a masters at a well regarded University and this was my experience.

I also have PGCE and CELTA qualifications. I think most of the overseas students who were on my course had enough English to get on the course but not the confidence to use it. In addition, their English was not academic English, that's a completely different style of English.

Many of the overseas students on my course had bursaries sponsored by their government or through the EU, and I did wonder if some of these places were politically influenced.

Great response...
How about "Will pass it on because it's concerning if this is actually happening so they will look into it"...

This actually sounds a bit like a threat tbh.

So did she say it was true? You post sounds like she doesn't want the truth to be told

Great response...
How about "Will pass it on because it's concerning if this is actually happening so they will look into it"...

The person I know will have no authority to look into it, she only feels it’s unfair and it doesn’t represent the students she works with so said she’d pass it on. Of course if it’s true, it’s very, very concerning.

Not a threat at all, I know nothing about this uni other than someone I know works there. If the OP and her daughter feel her education is impacted, they should speak to them. My son is at a uni that has a fairly high percentage of international students and if he or I felt his degree was being impacted by this or anything else, we wouldn’t hesitate to speak to them. It costs us thousands and his future depends on a good degree.

Your post really conveyed it more as that it will be looked into as public negative narrative rather than "is there a problem?" Which is frankly not doing uni your friend works in any favours. Glad I am not the only one who picked up on the tone

Mumsnet has got worse and worse over the last few years - nearly every thread is now overrun by people trying to prove the OP is lying. It's awful.

It's also interesting to note how many of the same people jump onto the racism bandwagon. It is quite frankly, boring. Pointing out the facts and lived experience is not racism. Pointing out the fact it is hard for an English speaker in an English University due to the amount of students who do not speak English is not racism. It is a university in England ffs and students should be able to speak English well enough to do the degree.

OP I totally believe you and your daughter. I have not long finished a masters at a university that boasts 15% EU students and 25% percent overseas. The language issue was huge on my Masters and it wasn't the EU students that were the issue. This university was not in London. I also had lists of all students on my cohort due to group work etc etc. It's not unusual for a student to have the whole list of names.
Just ignore all the people trying to disbelieve or derail your thread.

Friends daughter is at a top London uni and has this issue where during Covid they temporarily enlarged the course numbers with lots of overseas students, mainly Chinese, some of whom just don’t have decent English skills which has made life hard, especially when doing project work. But you can’t say anything to uni as they don’t care.

I just looked up what the entry requirements are and frankly the Uni is setting international students up to fail. 6.0 in IELTS (the requirement stated here https://www.arts.ac.uk/subjects/illustration/undergraduate/ba-hons-graphic-communication-design-csm#application-process) with 5.5 minimum in each section is not good enough for dealing with complex language in unfamiliar situations (which by definition a program of study is)see an explanation of the banding here https://ielts.org/take-a-test/preparation-resources/understanding-your-score. I used to teach in a department that increased IELTS to 7, the score needed for students to be able to arrive and succeed, and the university we were in insisted we drop to 6 as standard across the Uni. This resulted in enormous frustration for everyone involved: these poor students, whose parents were paying thousands for an education they had limited chance of accessing, teaching staff, who had little hope of teaching basic concepts, and the students' peers who missed out on valuable teaching time as we struggled to communicate basic concepts to their peers who were even more lost than they were. It's not fair to anyone concerned. I feel for your daughter, but I also feel for her peers and teaching staff; this will need political will to change, because as pointed out by a PP, systematic underfunding of the university system has created the problem and only systematic change will fix it.