Foreign Students

[EmpressoftheMundane]

I was listening to a pod cast where professors wrote-in regarding concerns about foreign students. Reference: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/planet-normal/id1514949294
Discussion starts at 49.20 on podcast. (Earlier is a discussion about lockdowns.)

Professor complained his most recent cohort was 66% Chinese with only 3 UK students. He sited issues with language, cultures not mixing, and him having to dumb down teaching. He pursued the issue and the university basically said, we need the money. He felt the broader issues of this approach were to exclude our own citizens from education, training up our competition, ruining our own reputation for excellence in higher education, and a brain drain of some of our own human capital.

Do you think this is widespread? Do universities really need the money, or do they want the money?

This would explain the bun fights between state and private schools each claiming the other sector had grabbed all the places. It’s actually foreign students.

I haven't listened to it but have had 5 children graduate and twins not so long ago and for undergraduate degrees eg in Bristol it was mostly British home students. However I have no data so do not know if it is becoming a problem for English undergraduates or not.
I think there may be some similar problems in Scotland where English students (who pay) might be bagging places at Edinburgh to the extent that not one single Scottish student who was not from a free school meals family I believe could get a place on law undergraduate at Edinburgh in one year. In other words excluding 100% of middle class Scottish people

It is widespread in Australia (anecdotally anyway). Students fluent in English are basically being used as unpaid tutors in group assignments. It’s been an issue for years. But they bring in the big bucks so….

This article is from 2019

https://www.smh.com.au/national/sydney-universities-hiding-from-the-facts-about-chinese-students-20190820-p52ivl.html

Along with the issues already mentioned, it’s dangerous for one institution to rely on students from one country for income. Can you imagine if China said “nope”!?

I don't have time to comment but some details here (Nigeria overtaking China btw!), and yes as unis have not been able to increase fees for home students for 13 years, they are increasingly reliant on fee from uncapped sources, which includes overseas students. Hence why we now have a dozen or so at risk of going under. https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/where-from

Briefly, as @titchy says, the universities need the money. Currently, most universities make a loss on every UK student they take because their fees no longer cover the costs of what is being provided. Either universities off-set this loss by taking overseas students who pay higher fees or they cut what they provide to all students, so bigger class sizes, fewer courses options and possibly fewer courses, less access to library and computing resources, less pastoral support including careers advice and mental health support, and so on.

How universities manage their overseas intake will vary. At the university where I work, each course has separate pools for UK and international students each with their own quota, so UK and international students don't directly compete against each other for places. The quotas are set depending on the overall capacity of staff and infrastructure and then projections of demand from different groups, applicant quality, and considerations around the experience students will have given the makeup of the course, as well as university and departmental finances.

If we took less international students, this would free up capacity but we would be unlikely to substantially increase the number of places for UK students as this would firstly give us a weaker cohort because we would be taking less strong UK applicants who we currently reject and secondly would have a fairly disastrous impact on our financial viability given the aforementioned loss we make on each UK student.

I personally think the admin functions in UK universities have spun out of control. We should look at the model for running and governing a modern university. (I have a friend working for a uni in London with over 40 procurement people wtf!)

I’m not so sure that people with phDs need a lit of tight management.

I agree that the contributions for UK students needs to rise. Not sure if this should be students, general taxation, or fewer students at uni and more in apprenticeships, etc.

Also agree that Scotland provides an even more extreme example.

Sounds like the science/engineering courses at UCL.
Single figure UK students (probably less than can count on one hand). Pretty shit for the UK students because the international students have plenty of friends from their own countries to hang out with, while the UK students are very lonely and depressed.

yes all due to the international students being worth 3 times as much financially. Fee system needs changing so each student is worth the same to the university no matter where they come from. Maybe fees should be set midway or, as proposed by Labour, scrap upfront fees for UK students, government pays university same rate for UK students as international students, and government gets back money from UK students in form of a graduate tax.

I think I'd prefer a straight graduate tax than having the poorer students borrow more and have more to pay back as currently.

Which is why there are a lot of UK students going to US universities….friends’ kids with swimming, soccer, rugby, rowing and golf scholarships etc. The long summer holidays meant paid jobs options in banking, tech etc.
Though those in UCL and Imperial in STEM mentioned that Chinese, Singaporeans, Koreans kids maths levels are higher due to they way they teach maths in their secondary schools. UK kids do catch up but they spend more hours doing the work.

I'd prefer a straight graduate tax and include degree apprentices once they have their degree.

It’s actually foreign students

and yet @EmpressoftheMundane the HESA tables that titchy linked to would not seem to back that assertion.

the big increase in international students has been seen in taught postgrad numbers.

based on the HESA tables int students represented just under 12% of undergrads in 14/15 and had reached the giddy heights of 13% in 21/22. Just taking the 130 or so unis that appear in the various league tables, at full time undergrad it’s moved from just under 15% to almost 16%.

that of course is not even across the sector or within courses. The top London unis are nearer 50% international at undergrad level. LSE around 51%, Imperial around 47%, UCL 54%. The former two have both increased by around 5 percentage points, UCL has seen a bigger movement.

Bristol 85% Uk in 14/15, 80.3% in 21/22

Durham 83% now 77%

Exeter 79% and 80%

all those have add a lot of UK undergrads as well. Bristol around 13,500 in 14/15, 18,500 in 21/22; Durham 10,700 to 13,400; Exeter 12,700 to 19,000.

Doubtlessly significant differences in course mixes.

the picture is far more complex.

That’s really interesting @boys3 It’s a useful insight. Do you think STEM is more affected?

You may be surprised by how much management people with PhDs can need.

@EmpressoftheMundane I do believe it’s Stem subjects. Plus Economics and some other prestigious courses, eg PPE. Not so likely on classics courses. London is the honeypot. Some Imperial courses have few uk students for example. It’s fairly well known this is the case. However no dumbing down! That is far more likely at universities near the foot of league tables!

I do think we need to reduce the number of degrees offered. We need more emphasis on courses allied to work such as HNC/D in years gone by. We do have courses where grads struggle to get grad employment. So are they needed? Could we restructure within universities to offer practical courses linked to employment? This seems a far more sensible approach to using finite resources.

I’d imagine that is the case. There are figures at course level on one of the uniguide type sites. How completeness or accuracy of that sort of data is another question of course. HESA table 52 provides it by broad subject groupings.

from that in 21/22 Mathematical Sciences; Business and Management; Engineering and Technology all around 23% international student make up at undergrad level.

Education and teaching lowest at 3.8%, not a great surprise.

other single figure percentages

subjects allied to medicine 8.6%

psychology 9.2%

geography, wart and environmental studies natural 9.5% and social 7.7%

historical, philosophical and religious studies 9.2%

combined and general studies 9.8%

these are the overall splits only of course.

Wart should be earth!

At my (London) uni our EU numbers have plummeted at postgrad level, so yes we are taking many more Chinese students

It's actually been a bonus for what I teach but I can see that's not always the case

I don't think they should increase tuition or loan levels, the government should subsidise much more heavily. It's crazy that some countries have free or near-free university tuition and it's so expensive here.

I'm doing an MSc at one of the University of London colleges. I think I'm the only UK student on my course (there are others that do combined, but straight subject, it's just me). As a result, I'm almost elevated to tutor status as PP has said. I have a queue of people at my desk after each seminar, there's a clamour to work with me for a group project, I get WhatsApp messages from people I barely know, and if it wasn't for my contribution in classes, there would often be none at all.

I think my fee is one-third of what international students pay, but so many of them don't seem arsed! I can't understand why you'd pay that much and just do the bare minimum. It's a post-grad, so nobody has to do it. Maybe it's because I'm older than them all that I'm more committed. I try to help out as much as I can because I find it hard as it is, without the language barrier. I draw the line at people who join group projects and don't bother to turn up for meetings and contribute bugger all. I've got a full time job and a family so it's not easy for anyone. But I do wonder why many of them signed up for it.

My daughter is doing an art Foundation diploma next year in London. This is free for domestic students, but can be over £20k for international students.
Two of the bigger, better known, FAD courses are at UAL and Kingston University. Both admit they reserve half of the places for international students. At UAL, if you successfully pass the Foundation year, you are guaranteed a place on the degree program, costing over £23k/year for non domestics students. It is not difficult to see why the institutions actively recruit from abroad.
I went to university in the US, where tuition fees can be astronomical, but I don't think it's any more for international students than for an out of state student (public unis - private universities like Harvard charge the same). Despite what you hear, most students do not get scholarships, they get loans and work throughout their university career.

Generally more in STEM/LEM (Law Eco Mgmt) and higher proportions in London naturally.

The universities need the money - they can't charge more for home students so they rely on the international students to fill the gap. Especially at Master's level, much less so for undergraduates.

Yes, there is certainly waste in the system and some institutions could definitely trim their budgets/cut vanity projects etc but I don't think that alone will provide the solutions. Maybe the Vice Chancellors could take a pay cut too.

LMAO at the idea that academics shouldn't need managing... that's what a lot of them probably think too, but nothing could be further from the truth in my experience.

As a nation, we need to have a proper debate about how we fund our higher education. We need an educated population but we can't load more debt onto individual students. So what's the solution? Heavy dependence on international students as we have right now? Or everyone paying more tax in order to fund the universities properly.

If my local uni is anything to go by, the reason they need the money is people sitting in highly paid admin/suppression jobs doing very little work waiting it out until retirement. And these people are meaning those joining in are demanding higher salaries when they realise John, the guy who been here 35 years doing a job wherr noone is quite sure what they do, is being paid £65k, but on paper the roles are equatable, and the junior staff get bumped uoa few pay grades through some sort of equate scheme.

Support jobs* not suppression!

It isn't just admin/support jobs. There are plenty of academics who are rubbish and just biding their time until they can be put out to pasture.