Although the figures released by UCAS today show a
significant decline in the number of individuals applying to university in the
UK this year (in England in particular), one figure that has bucked this trend
has been largely ignored: an increase in applicants to UK universities from
non-EU residents. It is of course quite right that the natural focus should be
upon the choices made by our young people, but the fact that there has been a
notable drop in applications from other EU countries – a decline of 12.9% from
47,675 to 41,543 – whereas there has been an increase of 8.5% from outside of
the EU from 56,279 to 61,041 is worthy of comment.
In recent years UK universities have been investing an
increasing amount of resources in attracting non-EU students because of the
higher fees that they can be charged, and over the past 12-18 months in
particular, there appears to have been a surge of recruitment to positions
directed towards appealing to the international market and attracting overseas
students to the UK. Whilst many of the students recruited in this fashion are
certainly genuine and bring benefits to their receiving institutions and to
their countries when they return home, a certain proportion are not, and use a
university place to secure residency in the UK. This is the disreputable
downside of the business, and one that has to a certain extent been encouraged
by successive governments keen to attract ‘international talent’. It is this
putative desire, linked to the embrace of globalisation and the orientation of
many contemporary university vice-chancellors towards business plans focusing
more upon maximising revenue rather than academic excellence, that has given
birth to a powerful lobby group arguing in favour of increasing the ingress of
international students and their exemption from immigration statistics.
Last month, Migration Watch drew attention to a letter signed by 70 university chancellors arguing for international students not to
be included in immigration statistics. The think-tank quite rightly objected by
drawing attention to the fact that circa 20% of all such students ‘stay on legally’ when they complete their studies, and that an unknown number remain
illegally afterwards, particularly those from poorer countries. With some two
million non-EU students having come to Britain for a year or longer over the
past decade, it would therefore be folly not to include them in such
statistics. Worryingly, the government does not even possess a mechanism for
ascertaining how many students have returned home, as such checks are not made.
Quite clearly, the system of higher education admissions for non-EU students
needs to be overhauled, with universities being made legally accountable for
any non-EU students who do not return to their countries of origin upon the
completion of their courses. If universities wish to receive the financial
benefits of recruiting such students, then they should also assume the costs to
the wider society if those students then subsequently disappear into the ether
so to speak. Introducing and enforcing such sanctions would be the only
effective means of ensuring that acquiring a university education in the UK is
not used as a backdoor to settlement in the country and the acquisition of
citizenship.
aren't foreign students taking uni places that should go to Brits? Aren't we educating the competition?
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