Here was the text of the Telegraph article by Allison Pearson from 30 January 2024: "For sale: British university degrees. Top colleges! World-class education in historic surroundings! Knowledge of English is useful but not essential. (Don’t worry, we have poor UK students who can work with you in groups and explain things and lecturers who aren’t allowed to fail you on pain of losing their job. Relax!) Scared of living by yourself abroad? You can bring the family with you. Yes, really. Our special Sunak Flexi-Pass allows relatives to join you and it’s super easy to stay on after you’ve finished your course. A lifetime of generous British benefits can be yours – what’s not to like? Sign up today for the Great British foundation course, you won’t regret it. All major credit cards accepted or please send a large cheque to the vice chancellor, Sir Hugh G Lee Remunerated.
On the morning that I read The Sunday Times exposé about international students buying their way onto prestigious Russell Group degree courses, a friend messaged to say his daughter had been rejected by her first choice and passed to other colleges for consideration, but was not picked by any. Rosie is pretty much the perfect Oxbridge candidate in all but two respects. She’s the kind of sparky girl who would have been cracking codes at Bletchley Park in 1942, a gifted mathematician and linguist who sings and plays two instruments. Exactly the type of brilliant, original and delightful young person our top universities came into being to educate, or so you might think. Female candidates of that calibre in her subject area are unusual, so it was a surprise that Rosie (predicted A star A star A star A star) wasn’t picked from the “pool” which would have allowed a less sought-after college to fish out a student clearly destined for an excellent degree. My friend is sanguine, but really wonders who those colleges chose over his daughter, and why.
Alas, Rosie was burdened by those two clear disadvantages I mentioned. She attends a very good private school and the silly girl also omitted to be Hong Kong Chinese (or another favoured nationality). Even though the Chinese pupils at Rosie’s school are from such fabulously wealthy backgrounds they make Rosie’s middle-class family look like paupers, they still tick a useful “diversity” box for Oxford and Cambridge. Oh, and they’re prepared to pay squillions for the Rolex of higher education.
Discrimination against able British youngsters is now so routine it practically amounts to apartheid. One clever lad I know was offered a daunting A star A star A to study history at Edinburgh. His German classmate was required to get AAB for the same course. Even though the German kid had exactly the same education (and was no brighter), his international status gave him priority over the indigenous teenager.
I will never forget The Telegraph reader, a resident in Switzerland, who told me his son had applied for the same course at the same London university as both a British student and an international student. The “British student” had to get two grades higher than the international applicant.
Undercover reporters found a recruitment officer for Russell Group universities who boasted that “foundation” course pathways to undergraduate courses were much easier than the routes for British applicants because overseas applicants “pay more money… so they give leeway for international students… It’s not something they want to tell you, but it’s the truth”.
It certainly is. For example, to study economics, overseas students needed grades of CCC at Bristol, CCD at Durham, DDE at Exeter and a decidedly unchallenging D at Leeds to be accepted onto a foundation course. By contrast, the A-level grades required from UK applicants were tough – A*AA or AAA. Even if they achieve those grades, the British applicants could still be squeezed out by someone who can pay more. I know a lot of mums and dads who were baffled, infuriated and very sad when their hugely hard-working, high-scoring offspring failed to get a single offer. Now we know why.
The Russell Group estimates that universities in England made an average loss of £2,500 for every “home student” they educated last year. Well, if universities had focused on their core mission (you know, teaching stuff), instead of empire-building with thousands of admin staff and stonking, private-sector salaries for vice-chancellors, then maybe their financial position wouldn’t be so dire. Meanwhile, British “home” kids are betrayed at every turn. Even if their parents can afford it, they are not allowed to offer to pay the international rate for a degree. Why, that would be unfair! It would disadvantage the disadvantaged kids who can’t pay more.
So, instead of filling universities with the cream of our own youth, crucial for future economic growth and prosperity, we import dumbed-down foreign cash cows from competitor nations. Anyone else spot the potential drawback here or is it just me?
Even if your son or daughter is lucky enough to get a place, courses in science, engineering and computing are dominated by East Asian, predominantly Chinese, students who often lack the language skills to engage with the material. I heard of some English-speaking students who flatly refused to participate in “mixed groups”, arguing that the teaching of overseas students was not their responsibility. Bravo, boys and girls! Others suffer in silence with a much-diminished university experience. And don’t get me started on awarding such a huge number of places in medicine and dentistry to foreign students when British applications are so many and so good. Luckily we don’t have a shortage of dentists and doctors, eh?
Our once venerable universities are tarting themselves about like hookers in the cocktail bar of a Knightsbridge hotel at midnight trying to snag a wealthy punter. It’s an obscene and undignified spectacle.
Not, perhaps, the ideal moment, therefore, for Prof Irene Tracey, vice-chancellor of Oxford, to urge alumni to donate to their universities every year. In an interview with The Telegraph, Prof Tracey said graduates should be “giving back” because institutions needed a “vote of confidence” as they were “falling to pieces during a funding crisis”.
Surely, the dear prof is ‘aving a laugh? Universities should be the ones “giving back” to recent students who have accrued over £40,000 of debt and deserve a refund. Many who graduated last year, like my son, had a wretched experience dominated by lecturers’ strikes, lockdown and Zoom tutorials. To cap it all, my boy sweated blood over two 5,000-word papers, only to have them returned with “an average of your scores”. Translation: “Could not be arsed to mark them.” Disgraceful. At least he got his degree. Thousands of young people “graduated” without one because their work hadn’t been graded at all. Universities may act like commercial organisations, but in what other business does the customer pay without getting a product?
The recent fall in international student numbers is to be welcomed, I think. A rotten universities’ funding model, based on encouraging overseas students to buy their way onto highly competitive courses with a handful of paltry qualifications, is both indefensible and unsustainable. Discriminating against our own talented young people is plain wrong. Let’s see some of the worst unis go bust (many are less colleges of education more immigration fast-track) and wean the rest off their addiction to international fees.
Prof Tracey rather gave the game away when she said that one fifth of undergraduates at Oxford are from overseas. That means 20 per cent fewer places for home-grown candidates (it’s an eye-watering 60 per cent at our best science college, Imperial). I don’t think that’s fair. Here’s an irony for you to savour: the top universities have gradually moved to admit far fewer independently educated domestic candidates on the grounds of privilege and elitism. But many of the so-called “overseas” candidates they let in come from those same celebrated schools, and are far, far wealthier than the British kids.
What Prof Tracey and her fellow ivory towerists need to understand is why so many alumni would rather cut off their own ear than set up a direct debit. Scores of my Cambridge contemporaries have already cancelled theirs in disgust. I bet it’s the same story elsewhere. Of course, if you are happy with universities selling your children’s and grandchildren’s places to overseas students; if you’re fine with the cancellation of Western values, the decolonisation of the curriculum (removing much that we treasure) and the hounding of academics who believe in biological sex; if you think “diversity” candidates should always be preferred over majority white children; if you agree that not giving brilliant Rosie a place because she failed to be Hong Kong Chinese or the daughter of a multi-millionaire using wealth not merit to get into Oxbridge, by all means, carry on donating.
But count me out. I stand with the home students. I stand with the best which has been thought and said in this crazy world. I stand with Rosie."