RG Selling Places for International Students with Low Grades

[Bratnews]

Published this evening in The Times. Hope this share token works :

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/c19d0459-e4dd-4380-98b1-1765db01aac2?shareToken=420162fcf72c4322d1c9a1588a180492

There are many international students who studied in UK secondary schools for GCSEs or A levels, so the data needs to be more precise about the type of courses and the type of international students. USA or Canadian students are international but they should be able to convers on their subject in English.
There are some students whose English seems basic but as they doing Maths or STEM where essays are not required it may not be an issue in their course. They may have enough English for Chemical Engineering but asking them about an ethical viewpoint or history may require Vocabulary not in their scope.
For example, a computer science undergraduate from Singapore would be fine in their course but asking them to discuss in class or write an essay on AI and ethical parameters may stretch their English.

@flusterbluff but if they're only advertising to international students then you can't compare that with what they would accept from UK students. They may well have gone as low as that with students who were holding conditional offers, and who missed their grades. What's on the website is aimed at people who haven't applied previously to that university. So say a course required ABB, the university may have decided to accept BCC, and have had a number of UK students holding conditional offers who hadn't met the grades required but had BCC. The university would have accepted them already without needing to advertise spaces. So they may have met their target for UK students but not for international students, who are applying in much smaller numbers than UK students to UK universities.

Clearing is a time when theae differences become very visible, especially as ucas doesn't distinguish, so if you search for, say, clearing places for biology at Exeter - yippe - it's in clearing! But then if the candidate clicks on it they find that there aren't actually any U.K. places at say AAA but there are places for internationals at ABB. Not being experts in uni finance, the candidates tend to be upset that they aren't deemed good enough for a place when others who achieved less are. Hence this topic ofteb coming up in August.

A lot of wha’s seen in Clearing may not be as sinister as it looks to some here. As PP have said, most units of admission have separate Home and Overseas admissions targets. Much thought will have gone into each and into the balance between them. I am not implying that I think every university gets it right.

Clearing will be open for whichever cohort(s) have not had their target(s) met. How low the Clearing requirement is depends on how far from the target you are, ie how many more bums of a certain type you need on seats.

ColdButSunny · 28/01/2024 09:56
The £9k fees (for UK students) have been in place since 2012. It's simply not enough, especially after the last two years of high inflation. The government won't increase it as that would be unpopular with voters. So the only option for universities is to take on international students paying higher fees. Otherwise they will go bankrupt.

If universities are so short of money why do they pay their vice-chancellors such huge sums?

I get this but if you are going to say that there are no places for a home student with less than A star AA but you'll take an international student with ABB - what's the difference between saying that any home student who fancies it can pay international fees and get in on the same course? Can you imagine the backlash - my state school educated child got AAA and was turned down from Durham (to pick one of the more desirable unis on the article the OP cited) but the girl who got ABB at the private school down the road got in beacuse her wealth daddy agreed to pay higher fees. That would quite rightly be seen as buying yourself a place - but I'm not sure I can actually see a difference here.

Legacy admissions are on the wane and are the subject of intense debate about widening access to third level education. Last July, the US Dept of Education opened an inquiry into legacy admissions at Harvard. The practice looks unlikely to continue because diversity of student body and accessibility for disadvantaged students and formerly ignored populations have become touchstones of desirability in university applications.

Since 2015, over 100 universities have done away with legacy admissions.

This all comes in the wake of the ongoing discussion of diversity in third level education in the context of affirmative action and the SC judgement declaring it illegal. Universities have been forced to look long and hard at the question of diversity, and in particular to examine the question of what exactly constitutes disadvantage and the other side of the coin, privilege.

No, because universities across the board are examining their legacy policies, and the tax system continues to make it painless for people to donate.

People won't want to send their children to what will ultimately be the last ten universities still doing legacy admissions because there will ultimately be a stigma attached to that.

@londonmummy1966 that's probably part of the reason why universities have WP targets, and are judged on how many students they from financially disadvantaged backgrounds (and other underrepresented groups). The current system at least ensures that UK students are competing on an even playing field.

My son and his girlfriend ( on different courses) struggled with international students in group work who had poor English, a poor understanding of the task and did little work. The other group members had to do their share to get a good grade. It's appalling. Why spend taxes on UK school students just to screw them over in tertiary education. Scotland is particularly bad for this. Tuition may be free but it's offered to very few

The universities I speak of never drop to the level of grades being requested. These unis are the ones who drop perhaps one grade and who have students miss out on their place for having dropped grades.

Also we had just 18 unis in 1950. That just seems impossible to comprehend now.

Scotland had 4 in 1950: St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

Yes but just because all home students are similarly treated doesn't mean to say that the actual playing field is level - just that wealthy Brits can't buy their way in but wealthy HK/Chinese/American candidates etc. can.

Your son is not going to spend his career working alongside only people who speak perfect English and always do their fare share. More likely that he'll work with people from a variety of cultures and backgrounds with differing levels of English and communication skills and different work ethics, and will have to solve some problems along the way.

There are iirc 66 universities in the US that offer to meet the full demonstrated need of all students admitted. Not all of these are no loans schools.

There are 115 (iirc) schools with need blind admissions.

There are 12 schools that offer to meet full demonstrated need plus no loans policies.

There is a good deal of overlap among these categories.

The crux is 'demonstrated need' but this is very clear-cut in many cases, and students holding more than one offer can haggle.

There is also a tier of universities offering various packages to meet a portion of the cost of attendance but not 100%.

Cost of attendance means room and board, tuition, books, general fees/ university sponsored health insurance, and travel costs.

In general, if your family income is less than $150k per year you will be offered some financial aid (aka a portion knocked off the total cost of attendance). Many private universities make allowances for proven estrangement from the main breadwinner in cases of divorce / abandonment when normally both parents have to fill out financial statements. State schools in general just ask for the financial statement of just one parent if divorced/ abandoned or if an untraceable / estranged parent is part of the picture.

State schools tend to be cheaper than private schools on paper, but when you factor in the financial aid offered by many private schools you can end up doing better in a private school. Not always, but often.

Student loan problems are certainly a big issue. Some students don't get the sort of jobs upon graduation that would enable them to easily pay back loans. Some students choose courses that don't lead to improved chances of graduate-salary employment. Some choose colleges whose reputations are not great. Some students should have chosen a path to a degree that involved two years in a community college followed by a transfer to a four-year university. Some students should consider taking a year or two out of school along the way to their degree to work and save and build their resumes instead of trying to get it done in four straight years and get the college experience under their belts. Some students should do whatever it takes to graduate and not drop out while still owing repayments. There are many factors behind the student loan issue. I'm fully behind Biden's efforts to write off loans, because large loans dampen the economy.

If a child of mine needed to take out $100k to get a degree from any university in the top 20, I'd encourage them to go for it, but to make sure they studied economics, finance, or engineering, or something else that would lead to an excellent salary by age 30. There are people who take out loans of that size to do communications at small, obscure colleges.

Carrying foreign students who have far more money than UK students and their parents have is not fair though. It wouldn't be fair if they were white and it's not fair if they're not white ( Chinese for both of them)

People won't want to send their children to what will ultimately be the last ten universities still doing legacy admissions because there will ultimately be a stigma attached to that.

Mathanxiety how will people know which students got in through legacy admissions and which got in through their own merit?

I work in Uni counselling in an international school where a lot of the students are native English speakers, American / European passport holders. Looking over our UCAS offers, it's clear that the international fee-paying students are getting much lower offers than we would usually expect e.g. a conditional offer for vet medicine - they should be asking for at least a 16 in the Bac to be up there with AAA or more. But our student (who's paying international fees) has received offers of 12.5 / 13 - which is closer to a CCC - to study vet! This is replicated across our applicants to UK institutions this year (including some of those mentioned in that article) - none are doing foundation courses, all are paying international fees. So my very small sample suggests that this issue extends beyond overseas students applying to international foundation courses, but no one wants to rock the boat...

The Y-axis on your graph goes from 450K to 650K which makes a 45 % increase in foreign students look more like a 20 fold increase to the casual observer.

Well, I agree with you that vice-chancellors are paid too much! But it's a drop in the ocean - a vice-chancellor's salary might equal something like 0.1% of the total tuition fees received (obviously varies a lot by institution).

@2Rebecca - just don't engage with @ludocris they are clearly of the view that the more international students we can cram into British universities regardless of any ability to do anything other than pay is a good thing. If your DC end up having to do their work for them so they can get a free pass on a degree no doubt so much the better as they can go home and tell their friends to go to the UK to get a degree and you don't need to speak English and can et by doing nothing. When UK degrees are devalued in the international community they will only be concerned if they think it will turn the money tap off.

Are you 8 years old?

"Don't speak to her, she's very silly!!" 😆

@flusterbluff My example of music is not off topic. If we train numerous overseas musicians, that’s not a bad thing but it costs money and we do need to evaluate what our money is spent on. Yes overseas students pay more but at times it’s to keep courses going because they are not viable. How many musicians pay their loans back fully?

Yes overseas students pay more but at times it’s to keep courses going because they are not viable. How many musicians pay their loans back fully?

Oxford Brooks is no longer offering music - presumably because it had become non viable.

PR on the part of universities that will increase their cachet by advertising that they only accept the best and the brightest is one way.

The experience of Amherst College suggests that opinion among alumni is divided on ending legacies, and that any shortfall in donations from donors hoping to secure a place for their offspring will be offset by donations from alumni who support the college's decision. Admissions of students who are the first in their families to attend college have risen to constitute one-fifth of the incoming class..

Students want to know they are applying to the best universities, where there will never be a question mark over how they got in.

Currently, you can find out the percentage of legacy admissions to those universities that still admit legacy applicants. The information is available online. It is usually very obvious on campus who is stinking rich and who comes from a less monied background.

It is also a factor that puts off extremely well qualified applicants, because each application costs money and time, and when a university only accepts 9-12% of applicants anyway, many people decide to look elsewhere based on an idea that they wouldn't fit in, that there are rich applicants who will be chosen ahead of them, and their time and money would be wasted.