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.

Yes, and that creates housing shortages/inflation for locals too. As landlords buy family homes and convert them into student houses and multiple occupancy flats for students. Thus reducing the housing stock for locals and demand lad inflation for the smaller pool of local housing.

Another angle is how the way UK universities clamor for international students form the likes of Nigeria etc impacts local universities in those countries.

Countries like Nigeria now spend way more money as international students in the UK etc annually than Nigeria’s entire education budget covering all levels of education. This just keeps those countries in a vicious cycle where people are desperate to go abroad study while locals universes literally fall to rot.

And let’s not even talk about the brain drain. Same impact on nurses and doctors as the NHS desperately recruits from those countries and now trying to start recruiting teachers as well.

So Bugerudn students don’t pay for themselves? If the Nigerian government pays, are the students not expected to return to Nigeria.

Also, few universities own 2nd or subsequent year’s housing. Y1 only is the norm.

I assume this is in response to me. If yes, yeah the students pay for it themselves but it’s a massive drain of capital out of the country reg with people so desperate they seek their belongings, families polling money together, borrowing money at exhorbitant rates just to pay the international fees.

Universites are not free in Nigeria though obviously way cheaper than studying in the UK as an international student. That’s revenue those universities are losing on top of poor funding from the government.

And tbh many of these students from Nigeria especially this economy for masters degrees see this as an opportunity to move to the UK as coming via the student visa route has been easier over the past couple of years with the UK government encouraging it after brexit but they are now clamping down after seeing the number of Nigerian international student dependents jump significantly and they all need school, doctors, houses etc all putting pressure on infrastructure.

No it's Nigerian (and Indian etc) families that pay, not usually governments. The UK taking wealth that arguably should be spent domestically, increasing GDP, away from developing nations, plus poaching their skilled medics and teachers isn't great morally though is it.

Cross posted. Entirely agree.

Sorry about typos. Wrong glasses on!

I think originally the intention was always that these students went back and enhanced their own countries. However we have a long association with Nigeria and India and their students have been coming for decades. Clearly a lot more now. Might change now dependents are not getting permission to stay. However moving away from Africa will only increase in the future. No doubt we have welcomed Nigerian and Indian employees in the NHS. Many people have reason to be grateful for their presence here.

We are not the USA. We don’t have a giving culture here. Only at the top few unis.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/oct/15/cambridge-university-launch-fundraising-drive-compete-ivy-league
Correct, only the top universities are sitting on sizeable endowments. The rest of the universities are run by well-meaning amateurs who have no vision or ability to see what way the wind is blowing.

The others don’t produce enough wealthy grads!
What's the motivation to earn more if you only have to start repayments on student loans when your annual salary hits £40k? In the US, you start repaying your loans when you graduate, so there's a great deal of motivation to get a good job, get promoted, get a better job...

We cannot put even more money into HE via tax.
You have a stark choice - invest in HE (and the NHS and social housing, etc, etc) or fade away and die.
Nobody is willing to break that news to the taxpayer, unfortunately.

We actually need a cull of courses and unis. We need to re-evaluate what HE should be and how long it should last. This would be a start.
You need a specific vocational sector (see the Irish Institutes of Technology for an example of a net plus in an economy) alongside a university sector.

Repayments start once you're earning £22k @mathanxiety - not sure why you think it's £40k....

Agree vocational education is poor in the UK and needs some serious investment in terms of both £ and esteem.

The “run by well meaning amateurs” is a bit damming.

Worth noting that Columbia has just poached the LSE Director.

Yes the NHS has reason to be grateful for their presence but have you considered the impact on the country’s medical sectors? It’s a huge mess now and brain drain from Nigerian doctors leaving to the likes of the UK play a huge part. Not all of it as the corruption in the system is the main culprit.

To give you more insight into the impact, the UK has 21 doctors per 10k people while Nigeria has 4 and that 4 is fast declining. So if you in the UK think you have a crisis at 21 per 10k what do you think the situation is like for people in Nigeria?

To show how bad it is, Nigeria’s president and other wealthy people fly to the UK for treatment leaving the hundreds of millions of Nigerians who can’t afford it to deal with poor medical facilities and care.

Now apply all that nurses and teachers that we are also trying to poach because our British citizens don’t went to become teachers anymore. instead of dealing with the root cause we poach from countries sho desperately need them.

I went to the LSE for two of my degrees which has a high percentage of international students. I absolutely loved the environment this fostered, which was very globally orientated. Our discussions in class were always so interesting because everybody brought different perspectives and even first hand experience of some of the concepts we were learning. Overall it definitely helped widen my perspectives, helped develop my curiosity about the world, and has been fantastic for networking and making connections all over the world.

I now teach at a university in another country which does not have as high international student numbers and I have to say sometimes the discussions get very insular and are not very diverse because there's not these different perspectives coming into the conversation. I often feel sad my students don't have the same opportunities I had when at uni.

Professor complained his most recent cohort was 66% Chinese with only 3 UK students. He sited issues with language

Indeed.

(A rather unfortunate error.)

@Cantstandbullshitanymore Yes. I absolutely recognise the shortages this leaves in developing nations. However we clamour for a nhs that does everything to maintain the standards we think we deserve. We have always welcomed people from other countries to come here since the NHS was conceived. Should we refuse them entry now?

The “run by well meaning amateurs” is a bit damming.

Worth noting that Columbia has just poached the LSE Director.

LSE is among the leading UK universities, not one run amateurishly, and it's worth speculating about the role of money in the poaching.

I'm not sure where that 40k came from either

Depending on your plan, you start repayments in the April after you graduate and you repay 9% of your earnings over the threshold if your income rises above it, with repayments on an ascending scale tied to income, with some loans simply written off after 25/30 years. This is in stark contrast to the repayment terms for American students.

The loan period will be much longer pretty soon. Also what is the point of quoting the USA? None of us are there. It’s irrelevant.

It's not at all irrelevant, unless you believe the UK is insulated from the general rules of what makes the world go round.

Top UK universities have (albeit late in the game) realised they will not retain their world-leading status unless they are able to spend money attracting the best teachers, the best administrators, and leading researchers. The rest need to get serious about raising funds.

And yet, apart from the US, the UK has consistently had more unis in the world top 500 than any other country, despite its relatively small size for decades...

Exactly. We do pretty well for our size on the HE front. The vast majority of uk students are still educated here. Well educated here.

@TizerorFizz unfortunately nowadays everyone wants you to have a degree. DH's entry level civil service job now wants you to have a degree. Promotion? A degree. And I agree, for other jobs nobody wants to train you. I had heard so many times "oh, s/he has X degree but they are doing an admin job" and I wondered when did they get such this job because they all want full training, in fact, years of experience. I remember reading the other thread about vacancies and why people didn't apply and so many posters said that they want you to have the full training. I have seen myself midday assistants jobs FGS requiring experience with children etc.

Oh yes, I remember reading this but it was more like the polar quartile or whatever they are called. People living on the same street but because the postcode changes they are not classed as living in a deprived area anymore.

This government refuses to fund education but they are fine with people like Sajid Javid having earned millions before he entered government but paid zero taxes on them because he is a dual citizen and classed himself as a non-dom FFS. I don't want people to get taxed even more like do many whine on mumsnet but then you have millionaires who pay nothing. You have energy companies paying nothing while being heavily taxed in other countries.

Students from China don’t tend to need funding. There is a huge amount of wealth there and families can typically pay the full fees. Unlike say pgt students from Africa. It’s a financial decision.

@chocorabbit If the apprentice system
was fully rolled out, Dc could work their way up to degree level or professional level via employment and part time qualifications. Some professional qualifications will always be via degree. Others do not need to be. I have to say the civil service always took grads into roles where they didn’t need to be grads. Very much so in university cities where grads wanted to stay. Employing a grad is also a short cut - avoiding having to sift at 18 and train up.

The other big issue is that employers are wondering what good 18 year old employees are around as so many go to university. So they dodge that by asking for grads. Whether needed or not!