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

[Berlinerschnauzer]

So said my son’s dad on learning DS2 failed to be offered a place at Cambridge…
I don’t know enough to confirm whether it’s sour grapes or he actually has a point.
Was looking at figures for Oxbridge and was surprised to find that something like 60 odd percent of students (under and post grads) are international. For undergraduates it’s nearly a quarter.
Likewise Edinburgh has 30% international students and is one of the wealthiest unis.
Unlike lower tier unis which don’t have the same deep financial pockets and have to attract foreign students to survive, surely these unis don’t. They could be attracting home grown, talented students who in years to come will contribute massively to the economy rather than returning to their home countries and taking their skills with them. My question is does ex DP have a point or is he spouting bollocks
as per usual ?

And a high proportion of students from around the world studying at conservatoires and the like.
DS was in a class of American, Spanish, French, Malaysian, Dutch and German students.
Includes Masters in varying music and performing arts, gained through audition.

Their fees are a large amount.

Well you’re wrong about the leaving age. It’s actually 16 and 18 (unless you’re born in August).

Also if you are paying international prices surely you choose to go to the one with the most prestige. Maybe it would be a fairer comparison to see if they still get in despite having lower grades (or not).

The Eton experience doesn't always translate outside the UK, however, so they're going to be aiming for only UK universities but now against stiffer and more competition.

@Onlyonekenobe In 2021 39 Eton leavers received offers from US universities, including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, Columbia, Brown and Dartmouth in 2021/22.
It would be interesting to know how many British students applied for overseas universities.

Because admission is merit based and the international students are often stronger than their domestic counterparts. I’ve done admissions at both Oxford and Cambridge for the last twenty-five years, so I am speaking from personal experience/knowledge.

Nice one.
10 grade 9 GCSEs, 4 A* predicted, achieved A *EPQ, 2nd place in nationwide engineering competition (1st and 3rd place both students from public schools), his state school is in need of improvement, no additional tutoring help. I think he did bloody great to get winter pooled and then rejected. Fair enough he didn’t shine but he’s got 4 offers from unis in the top 10 ten for his subject.

I'm surprised by that. Has that remained the case?

Globalisation has come to its end, it seems. Even on this thread you can see the Chinese being accused of stealing secrets. There is no global competition for talent anymore, I guess...

OMG what kind of question is this? I did a brief Uni course ages ago (over 20 years ago) and it was £600 for home students and £4000 for overseas students. That's the kind of difference we are talking about. Do your maths!

Capybara75 · Today 19:31

Because admission is merit based and the international students are often stronger than their domestic counterparts. I’ve done admissions at both Oxford and Cambridge for the last twenty-five years, so I am speaking from personal experience/knowledge

That must be partly down to the UK students schooling. I mean, intelligence is spread evenly across all nationalities so presumably British people aren’t more stupid than other nationalities.

Oxbridge have always taken a lot of foreign students (Rhodes scholarships for instance) long before funding was a big issue. International prestige and British influence around the world were always considered important. As well as academic excellence.

That’s not entirely true either. More and more Chinese students are seeking to stay.

And if ability to remain post-degree is an important factor, the UK is surely more attractive than the US, where postgraduate work visas are capped at 65,000 a year, and progress towards permanent residency and citizenship is far less certain (there’s currently a waiting time of decades for Indian citizens to obtain green cards, for example).

On paper you are correct. In practice it is easy to cheat for the test. Many international students do not speak good enough English.

Definitely money! My DS is at a v good RG uni and in his halls last year (7 in his flat), 3 were international students who didn't really mix with the rest of them. Funnily enough another international student in a different flat was v friendly and is one of their housemates this year, he's been to our house as he only goes home in the summer holidays so sort of travels around in the other breaks. Lovely guy, his parents must be absolutely loaded cos they have to pay the rent upfront for the whole year.

This. As various pp said international fees are very high

I wonder how German universities manage charging both home and international students the same couple of hundreds euro per semester...
A great mystery indeed! 😂

LOL Tesla, the poster child of Western innovations, uses CATL and BYD batteries (and other stuff developed by the Chinese). So who's using whose research? 😂

At the Russell Group Uni I work at, we are finding it difficult to keep up with essay farms, chat GPT and A.I., all of which we know the Chinese students use, but are finding it difficult to prove.

There's been a lot of nonsense talked in this thread, such as overseas students not attending which is not true due to attendance monitoring, but it us true that the English language level of Chinese students can be terrible.

I think Unis MUST know that English language certificates are subject to large scale fraud at the application stage, bit I'm not sure how much appetite there is to tackle the problem and commit financial suicide by dramatically decreasing their numbers of Chinese students .

So true! I was baffled by the international students (predominantly Chinese) studying on my masters course who didn’t seem to be able to hold a conversation in English, didn’t contribute anything to tutorials but were able to use all the course literature (written in English), read substantial and numerous texts and source material (written in English) and then submit stunning, highly graded essays (written in English) without any difficulty at all.

Not saying there isn't cheating involved but my written French is a lot better than my spoken French! Some of that could be down to confidence levels with the language or just the environment (and I get the sense, based on some junior Chinese colleagues, that the Chinese education system does not encourage participation or taking initiative in quite the same way).

UK students are welcome to apply for this masters course and we do have a handful of UK students taking it. But it's just not a programme that sees many applicants from the UK. Our other masters degrees have a different balance of applicants/students. To a certain extent, the demographic is a self-perpetuating one as the uni sees that the most fruitful market is international, so focuses recruitment and marketing activities for that course in that market as its a better return on investment.

Of course we take academic qualifications into account for admissions. I don't think there was anything in my post that implied we don't.

That’s not completely accurate with the ages. In England and Wales, most kids are 16 when they finish their general education. The only ones who are still 15 were born at the end of the academic year - so July or August. Same story with A Levels - the vast majority are 18 when they sit the exams and all of them are 18 or over when they start university.

it’s interesting what you say about lack of maturity. These days, secondary schools spoon feed children to ensure they get the best grades - schools have to report publicly on this and it ruins their reputation if grades are poor, so the staff are massively incentivised to ensure high grades. Back in my day, we were sent home a few weeks before exams and told to revise. For my DCs, the teachers guided most of the revision and my DCs had to go to school right up until the exams started.

Similarly, I think parents are way more protective these days. Most children have never been on a bus by themselves or been to a shop alone until they go to secondary school. When I was growing up, it was normal to wander far and wide, but it was much safer than now.

I'm surprised by that. Has that remained the case?

@Onlyonekenobe I Certainly when my ds was there 12 years ago a number boys went to university abroad. However, I don’t know about the last 3 years.
Eton has quite a few international pupils so they may apply to US universities and also to universities in their home countries.

I'm surprised they rejected an applicant from a "state school in need for improvement", he would've improved their stats.

Anyway, it's not about grades for English qualifications. You can be brilliant by British standard but nowhere near the standard of international competition. I know this because DC has been competing at national level from 8, but their Asian friends would wipe the floor with them 😂 (and rightly so as their work ethics is exemplary).

@LolaPeony I don't think you are wrong re. the H1B considerations and I am probably unusual but my path was studying at US universities (undergrad + doctorate level postgrad) but ended up choosing to move to the UK to work after to be closer to family (on US pay scale, thank goodness). The H1B uncertainty played a role in deciding to not stay there but hadn't given any thought to the UK's immigration system. But shouldn't the controls be tightened at point, if getting work permits is that easy, rather than limiting university spots?

Mind, had I graduated a few years later, I could apparently have just turned up in the UK for two years without a job offer: https://www.gov.uk/high-potential-individual-visa

All policy choices.