British universities and some of the private ‘pathway providers’ offering alternative routes into higher education programmes for international students have been stung by accusations that overseas students are being admitted to prestigious institutions with lower entry requirements than domestic students.
Signs of panic set in after vice-chancellors were summoned to a meeting with Higher Education Minister Robert Halfon on a Sunday, just hours after a national newspaper published a front page exposé headlined “Foreign students get secret route to top universities”.
The story, based on an undercover investigation by a Sunday Times insight team, splashed a double inside spread billed “Cash for courses: Top universities recruit foreign students on low grades”, which said: “While Britons need straight As to get onto prestigious Russell Group degree courses, their international classmates can buy their way in through secret routes.”
The article claimed that prestigious institutions in the United Kingdom are admitting overseas students with lower entry requirements than domestic students because they are desperate for the extra cash, with foreign students sometimes paying up to £38,000 (US$48,000) in tuition fees as opposed to no more than £9,250 (US$11,700) for UK students.
Universities UK, the vice-chancellors’ and rectors’ lobbying organisation, issued a press statement the following Friday evening designed to head off further negative publicity and show they were listening to criticism of some of the recruitment practices, particularly by agents appointed by universities to recruit international students.
The Universities UK board met on Friday 2 February and its tea-time statement said it had agreed on immediate action, including a review of the Agent Quality Framework to look at how it can be “enhanced to identify and address bad practice and improve resilience”.
On top of that, Universities UK has commissioned the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) to undertake a rapid review of the “quality and comparability of International Foundation Programmes and Foundation Programmes for Home Students”.
No mention of International Year One by Universities UK
However, there was no mention by Universities UK in response to one of the major lines of attack in the original Sunday Times story published on 28 January 2024, and criticisms by some international higher education experts that foreign students with low grades, unacceptable for direct entry onto degree courses offered by British universities, could use a ‘back door’ route.
This allows them to still complete their studies for a UK degree in three years by doing an International First Year, or International Year One, and then going straight on to the second year of a degree programme.
These courses are sometimes confused with International Foundation Programmes, which are more like an access course for mature British students.
Both are run by private international education providers that offer pathway programmes such as Into, Kaplan and Study Group, in partnerships with universities.
The key difference is that foundation programmes are for less-academically-able students and lead on to the first year of an honours degree course.
International First Year, or International Year One (IY1) courses lead to direct entry to year two of a degree course for students who successfully pass the necessary exams – and it is these programmes that university chiefs seem reluctant to discuss.
This is particularly so after Halfon, the higher education minister, told a debate in the House of Commons the day after the Sunday Times story that while he was a strong supporter of international students, he wants “a level playing field for all domestic students as well”.
Undercover reporters posed as parents
The Sunday Times used undercover reporters posing as rich parents of foreign students studying at UK private boarding schools, whose children were struggling with their A-levels and GCSEs, to elicit information from representatives of the pathway providers and agents recruiting international students for UK universities.
The reporters quoted a student enrolment adviser for Study Group based in Singapore claiming that his company was accepting hundreds of students a year for Durham University’s International Foundation Year. But the article has been criticised by some higher education experts for not emphasising that foundation years require an extra year of study in the UK before starting a full three-year full-time degree.
The Sunday Times said neither Durham University nor Study Group would provide a comment, but University World News managed an interview with Study Group’s Chief Executive Ian Crichton.
He admitted that there was confusion between international foundation degrees, which are pre-degree level preparatory courses similar to a traditional access course in the UK, and IY1 programmes.
“International Year One programmes have been developed for a specific group of students who have demonstrated the aptitude to enter the first year of a degree but need additional language instruction and support designed around academic skills associated with that level of study.
“To ensure that international students are suitably prepared for progression, all IY1 programmes are designed in collaboration with our partner universities to ensure that the academic subject matter is comparable to that of students studying the first year of a specific degree,” said Chrichton.
“Because IY1s can be considered to be internationally tailored introductions to specific degrees, they allow successful students to be accepted into the second year of a partner institution’s degree programme.
“Typically, applicants to an IY1 programme will have high-level qualifications in their own country, but which are not considered comparable by some UK institutions to the UK qualifications required. It could be that applicants have linguistic or other learning needs that we feel we can meet if they work hard with us on an intensive year of study in smaller class sizes and with substantially more support than a university could offer to first year students.
“Providing they reach the right level they can join the second year of an honours degree, but let’s be clear, completion of an IY1 programme does not guarantee that they will be accepted at a partner university for further study,” explained Crichton.
Accusations of mis-selling
One of the criticisms implied in the Sunday Times story, and by some observers, is that agents representing UK universities in the Middle East and Asia are ‘mis-selling’ international foundation degrees – and international first years in particular – as a ‘fast-track’ guaranteed way for foreign students to get a British degree without the necessary grades usually required to study in the UK.
Among those who have been calling for a more ‘ethical approach’ by UK universities to the use of agents to recruit ever larger numbers of international students is Vincenzo Raimo, an international higher education expert who while director of the international office at the University of Nottingham 11 years ago, told University World News that there was a “need for UK universities to give greater scrutiny to their work with agents”.
He asked: “Do we need a more radical answer if we are to avoid the scandals of commission-based mis-selling? I clearly think the answer is yes, not just because that would be the ethical thing to do, but also because it makes good long-term business sense.”
He clearly had something like a crystal ball and talking to University World News on 8 February 2024, he said the latest exposé by the Sunday Times had led to “a mini panic [with] some university executive boards urgently asking their international directors for information about what their university does and doesn’t do with agents and what these international year ones are and whether they have one! There’s quite a lot of confusion”.
Raimo, who has written extensively about student recruitment agents, including in a recent book on the subject that he edited with Pii-Tuulia Nikula and Eddie West, welcomed the change of tune among UK university leaders to the growing crisis in confidence in international recruitment practices.
This was shown by a message by Dr Michael Spence, president and provost at University College London (UCL), who blogged that he was “confident that international students do not get an unfair advantage” at UCL. “It is not implausible, however, that there may be pockets of bad practice and I am pleased that Universities UK has announced that it will review admissions practices across the sector with the aim of rooting that bad practice out,” he stated.
Review welcomed
Another person welcoming the renewed focus on UK international student practices is Alan Preece, who once worked in the industry and regularly writes about his concerns in his View From A Bridge blog.
He wrote after the Sunday Times article that it had “sparked the usual defensive response from the UK higher education sector”.
He went on to say: “There was plenty of obfuscation and claims that the newspaper was guilty of poor journalism, but with a little engagement about the core claims.
“There does, however, seem to be some substance to the claim that universities are working with commercial partners in ways that are not entirely transparent and do not seem equitable in terms of academic and language standards.”
He also wondered why Universities UK had avoided mentioning International Year One courses in their statement, and asked whether they would be included in the QAA review, which just talks about foundation years. “They must know they are different and that there is no comparable option for domestic students,” he said.
When asked by University World News, a spokesperson for Universities UK said: “We recognise concerns around whether admissions via international pathways are equivalent and fair, which is why we announced that the Quality Assurance Agency has agreed to undertake a rapid review.
“The summary announcing that review is not all-encompassing on the areas to be covered, as we will be meeting the QAA shortly to agree the terms of the review in more detail.”
University World News
