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

Mathaanxiety thank you for answering my question.

I think part of the problem here is that those that quite rightly highlight the issue of foreign students being given relatively low offers are being painted as mild racists and pointing out the unfairness is akin to a 'send them home' attitude which is simply not the case.

Universities will defend this money stream by virtuous arguments about inclusivity, globalism and diversity but it is simply a financial prop. Oxbridge foreign student numbers have crept up and while the offers may still be high it is undoubtedly very middle class, often privately educated offspring that arrive.

That ship has long sailed.

@Barbadossunset When I went to Oxford Poly (OB now) it would have been laughable for it to offer a music degree. This demonstrates the precise problem of the last 30 years. Of course it should not offer music and probably never should have done.

TigerorFizz, genuine question, but why should it not offer music? Is it less useful than, say, History of Art?

The information is available online. It is usually very obvious on campus who is stinking rich and who comes from a less monied background.

Mathanxiety another question, surely being rich and intelligent aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive? On American campuses if someone is obviously rich is it automatically presumed they got in thanks to legacy admissions?

I don't think everyone saying that is racist, any more you probably think everyone trying to explain the broader context and assure posters that the issue is not as extreme (or even true) as these articles suggest, think that any international student should be admitted, regardless of qualifications.

However I will call out sweeping generalisations such 'international students can't be arsed to improve their English'.

You're right that income is one of the key drivers for international student recruitment but it's absolutely not the only one. Even if you don't believe in the more intangible benefits such as how 'learning to operate in multicultural environments helps prepare students for a global career' or 'diversity benefits us all', there are numerous other benefits, such as the creation of international research links and international exchange agreements (which enable students to study abroad). Not to mention the significant boost to the economy (going beyond the 'coffers' of individual universities).

If I may weigh in here, having taught in two excellent American universities: presumably as in the UK the DC of the rich are somewhat - I don’t know to what extent - more able than others to present an attractive admissions profile anyway. In many cases their parents have been focussed on getting them into good universities since they were in kindergarten and presented them with corresponding opportunities. Any DC who takes advantage of those opportunities will attain more and this is well recognised in the US as in the UK.

So no, it isn’t presumed that rich students are all legacy admits. However a system without legacies removes all doubt.

Thank you for answering my question poetry

Sure. Love your username, @Barbadossunset

Thank you poetry. Nothing more I’d like right now than a Barbados sunset but I’ll have to make do with a Wiltshire one.

Another question about US universities: Didn’t some of them also discriminate against Asian students as they brought a court case against this?

I think @TizerorFizz's point is that not all universities should offer every subject as then supply outstrips demand - it's not so much that music isn't a valuable subject to study, more that not everyone who studies it is going to get a related job because there just aren't that many of them.

One person I know who studied History of Art went on to work for the National Gallery for a number of years. Not many of those sorts of jobs around, though.

PS if it's of any consolation, it's been raining for much of the past 3 weeks in Barbados 😂

Thing47 ok, that makes sense.

Yes, a formal complaint - I don’t know whether it was a lawsuit or not - was made against Harvard in particular, I think about 10 years ago. I think some troubling data or anecdata was uncovered about Asian Americans not having desirable personalities - being too introverted, not ‘well rounded’ etc. Quite ugly.

I don’t remember any more, except thinking that the whole thing was dreadfully reminiscent of the proven antisemitism faced by Jewish students at elite American universities in the 20th century.

I think some troubling data or anecdata was uncovered about Asian Americans not having desirable personalities - being too introverted, not ‘well rounded’ etc. Quite ugly.

That’s shocking.

Yes. US universities had ( not sure if it still occurs) higher grade expectations for Asian applicants than it did for anyone else. Lower for black and Hispanic. In the middle for white. So they discriminated positively and negatively based on race. Appalling.

So I’ve been in a meeting today and been told that nearly every university is expected to make a loss next year mainly due to a decline in international student numbers. No idea how true this is. But universities apparently generally make a loss on home students due to the freeze in tuition fees and not as many international students applying for various reasons inc the govt coming down on bringing dependents here.

I admit I don't understand why we don't have quotas on foreign students, make it free for British students and charge foreign students a lot more. I think that used to be the arrangement but don't know the economics. It has never seemed fair to have our own kids saddled with so much debt at the start of their lives

Because the Gov won't fund universities so home students have to pay fees. Why would you want to limit international students - HE is one of the UK's best exports. Although the Gov is doing its best to put them off (no more dependents visas, prob getting rid of post-study work visa, general anti-immigrant rhetoric).

@bombastix that would be a very risky strategy. The number of foreign students tends to fluctuate much more than UK students, because they have the choice of going to various different countries - Europe, US, Canada, Australia etc, so they will choose whichever one seems most appealing. If they were charged the fee level that would be necessary to make it free for British students, they would vote with their feet and not come here.

That would require either the government going back to funding universities in a much more substantial way, or the fees for international students being so ludicrously expensive that the market would disappear overnight. We aren't the only popular destination for international students - we compete with the US, Canada, Australia, and many more besides, a lot of whom offer more competitive benefits and funding packages.

Not to mention that as a PP has said, it would be an extremely risky strategy.

It's all true. Since they've clamped down on bringing in dependents, the market has gone through the floor.

Ultimately UK students will lose out as institutions will close/merge and there will be less choice, and probably more competition for spaces.

Indeed, and that is being tackled.

Still, it doesn't mean that the UK can't learn anything about university funding from the US. It would be horribly flippant of me to say no system is perfect, given the ugliness of racial stereotyping, but university funding in the US is a part of the system that should be studied.

I note a pp provided links to the institutional development pages of a few British universities. They represent a good start, but there's a lot of catching up to do.

It's obvious who is intelligent and motivated to work for their grades and who is not - you can see it in choice of major (some are easier than others) and in calibre of work, especially when students collaborate on a project. If someone has a famous surname, drives an expensive car, lives in an apartment or house bought by dad off campus, and isn't shy about the fact they pay someone to write their essays you can be pretty sure they don't belong in, for instance, Princeton. Lots of factors give hints.

I agree though, that you can be both really rich and also really intelligent, and some legacy admissions would have got into the university they attend even without the connections. Their monied parents or grandparents normally wouldn't have come from landed wealth they've been sitting on for centuries as might be the case in other societies. I don't know anyone who is really rich who doesn't work extremely hard for their money and isn't really, really intelligent, often in a multitude of different ways.

The correlation between being skint and being highly intelligent in an Ivy League setting is far closer.