British universities have been told to stop treating fee-paying foreign students from India and other non-European Union countries as "cash cows" after it emerged that overseas undergraduates are being charged up to four times more for the same course as their domestic peers.
The warning from a cross-party committee of British MPs follows research showing that in some cases overseas students are having to pay £35,000 for a course that costs their British and EU counterparts only £8000-£9,000.
The University of Cambridge
Daniel Stevens, international students' officer of the National Union of Students (NUS), described the difference in cost for home and overseas students as "scandalous".
"International students are an important part of the social, cultural and academic make-up of university life and should not be treated simply as cash cows," he told The Times Higher Education Magazine.
In a report ahead of the new academic session which starts next month, the House of Commons Education and Skills Committee criticised the universities' approach to foreign students saying that it was "driven by short-term gains in fee income". It noted that the cost of a British university degree for overseas students was already the highest in the world (only private American universities charge more) and warned that such heavy reliance on income from foreign students was not sustainable in the long run. They risked losing the best and the brightest foreign students to their more competitive rivals in other countries such as Australia and Canada.
The committee was critical of the current "marketing" approach to recruiting international students, which has seen a number of universities bend their admission rules putting cash above merit. There have been cases of less qualified domestic candidates being advised to apply as foreign students in order to get admission.
The minister for higher education Bill Rammell called the report "constructive'" even as "Universities UK", which represents university vice-chancellors, denied that recruitment of overseas students was driven by profit motive alone.
According to figures published by the Complete University Guide, Britain's most authoritative independent higher education guide, nine leading universities will be charging foreign students over £30,000 for an undergraduate clinical degree.
The Times reported that at least six universities, including University College London, King's College London and the University of Cambridge, "appear to charge some international students more in annual tuition fees than it costs to spend a year as a boarder at Eton College".
The findings come amid growing criticism of the government's increasingly stringent student visa rules including curbs on how long they can stay on in Britain after completing their studies. International students contribute an estimated £9 billion a year to the British economy and there are fears that the government might end up driving away the so-called "cash cows" with its politically-driven hard line on immigration.
The BCC reports there has already been a sharp decline in the number of foreign students coming to Britain with a 25 per cent drop in Indian students (the second largest group after the Chinese) reported last year. Quite a few smaller universities may struggle to survive if cash-bearing foreign students decide to take their custom elsewhere. It is therefore in the universities' own interest to heed the MPs' warning.
nnew3670ed 14 Aug, 2013
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Source: http://www.educationnews.com/2013/08/14/uk-universities-told-to-stop-treating-foreign-students-as-cash-cows/
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