Hidden in Plain Sight: The Real International Student Scandal

This HEPI blog was authored by two anonymous professors at Russell Group institutions.*

It is widely acknowledged that UK higher education is on the edge of a financial precipice. But the sector’s problems in fact run much deeper than this. There is also a quality crisis – which, though widely known about, is barely being discussed except amongst direct teaching colleagues.

What is this crisis (or, more accurately, this scandal)? That in many universities, a significant proportion of international students do not meet the basic requirements, especially English language skills, necessary to obtain a degree – and yet degrees are being awarded.

The situation is uneven between universities, and between subjects. The precise extent of the problem is also unclear, since there has been no systematic analysis of it. What is clear, however, is that the problem is most acute on Master’s programmes, and that it applies right across the sector, including in the Russell Group. The teaching experiences that we summarise here are very common.

Masters-level teaching used to be rich, challenging and enjoyable. But now, a Master’s seminar in the disciplines that we both teach typically involves a cohort in which three-quarters of the students (and often more) are from a single country, a few are international students from elsewhere and one or two are home students. On the Master’s programmes in our departments, only a very small number of students typically have the English language skills necessary for engaging in meaningful seminar discussions. Furthermore, there are increasing numbers of students who are not engaged at all in the learning process.

Master’s-level classes are designed as advanced learning and teaching environments that are often highly interactive. Now, our typical seminar experience is that material must be delivered in a lecture style, and preferably as a written document so that it can be translated using one of the many translation apps. Further, many students use translation apps (of variable quality) to provide real-time translation of any spoken content. Open questions to the whole class are often met with silence, while group tasks are typically conducted using translation apps, before usually the same student from each group is tasked with reading out the answers. We both recognise that this can be an extremely stressful and challenging environment for these students, and we try really hard to support them, often by rapidly changing the content and pace of classes.

One-to-one supervision and feedback meetings are particularly excruciating. We have both regularly encountered students who are unable to understand simple questions like ‘What have you read on this topic?’ Meetings often go nowhere, ending with a request to the student to put their questions or concerns into an email instead.

How has this situation arisen? The basics are clear: long-term underfunding of HE, a marketized higher education system, and university leaderships that value the generation of a financial surplus above all else. Income from home student teaching is too low – and has led to a rush to recruit high-fee-paying international students.

Universities increasingly rely on distant recruitment agents that sell UK higher education ‘packages’ to students. There have also been examples of students being given poor information about their course, and finding themselves on programmes they are not really interested in.

The widespread silence on this issue is also not difficult to explain. Academic staff are worried about their jobs and know that international fee income covers much of their wages. Managers and unions have no interest in raising troubling questions about student income either. And concerned academics have in the past been wary about saying things that might be exploited by a hostile Conservative government and a right-wing press eager for anti-immigration stories – as we also have been until now.

Other issues are more difficult to pin down. We don’t know how so many students with inadequate English language skills are managing to get admitted – whether this is largely through foundation courses, inaccurate IELTS tests, or something else altogether. A key concern is that admissions are now often done at the central university level, where administrators have specific recruitment targets to meet. Departments and programme convenors often have little or no input into who is admitted to study. We also don’t know how these students are managing to pass their degrees (despite often failing their initial assessments in massive numbers – in our experience, often over 50% of cohorts), though fear that the results of close inspection would not look pretty.

It is hard to understate how dire the situation is. There are growing numbers of student complaints about the situation, but these rarely go formal. There are also increasing reports of the detrimental impact on staff wellbeing and mental health, as staff struggle to cope with this new environment in which they ‘deliver’ classes that are well below degree standard. The knowledge that one’s teaching has negligible educational value can feel life-sapping, demoralising and deeply exploitative. For the best students, the experience of Masters-level study is frequently terrible: we both now advise our best students to go overseas. It is a very poor experience for the students struggling with English too. This all poses a serious long-term risk to the international standing of UK higher education.

What should be done? We do not have all the answers, but three things stand out. First, there needs to be an honest, open, and evidence-led discussion of this issue: the culture of silence around it needs to end, so that evidence including data about the extent of the problem can be gathered and understood. Secondly, improved regulation of English language entry standards is, in some form, clearly required. And thirdly, this issue – this scandal – needs to be on the table during policy debates about the future of higher education funding. The over-dependence on international students is not the answer to achieving health and stability for UK universities.  

* The authors are established Russell Group professors, though working in different universities and disciplines; they have both held management roles and have a combined 60 years of teaching experience. Despite this, they both fear the potential consequences of speaking out, which is why they are writing anonymously. They are writing now because they are hoping that, with a new Government in place, more serious and evidence-informed conversations about UK higher education’s problems will now be possible, and want this issue to be part of those debates.