by David Craig
3. International students
UK universities have a proud tradition of educating international students who have gone on to great achievements in politics, arts and science. Expansion has seen a dramatic increase in the quantity of international students (Figure 2).
Figure 2 - The growth in international student numbers
However, there is ample evidence that the growth in the numbers of international students has been matched by a notable reduction in their average quality. This growth has not been driven by a desire to recruit the brightest and best from around the world. Rather, it reflects our universities’ ability to charge these students whatever fees they wish and it has been achieved by lowering entry requirements – in particular, the standard of English as measured by International English Language Test (IELT) scores. In an investigation into IELTS in 2012, the Telegraph reported that:
“... a combined ‘band score’ of 6.5 out of nine is needed in listening, reading, writing and speaking tests to play a full part in degree programmes. But it emerged that 58 out of 88 universities – including at least one member of the elite Russell Group – had a ‘standard minimum’ requirement for undergraduates of 6.0.”52
This was corroborated by a Times Higher Education Supplement investigation which found that often linguistic “competence” was the best that could be hoped for from some international students.53 Will “competence” really allow these students to read weighty academic books and debate and discuss complicated and abstract concepts at degree level? Further investigations from the Telegraph in 2012 suggested not:
“… almost 66 per cent of institutions… are awarding places to undergraduates whose language skills are no better than ‘competent’. Experts … suggested that the standard used to dictate entry to many universities was not good enough for academic courses.”54
When the quality of international students declines, it affects the learning of other students in numerous ways. Some of these are obvious, as in this submission by a mature student to the House of Commons Select Committee in 2009:
“I have taken modules where there are considerable numbers of students from all around the world. The varying abilities of the students, and their poor English, meant that I had the impression at times that things had to be pitched at the lowest common denominator. … one of my lecturers was being asked to slow his lectures down so that the significant number of Chinese students could follow what he was saying. His speed was fine for native English speakers, so I would assume that any slowing down will have an impact on the material covered.”55
Other effects are less noticeable but more damaging. They can include a reduction in the complexity of material taught and a downwards pressure on the standard of assessment. Even more troubling is pressure placed on academics to mark weak but lucrative international students to less demanding standards.56 The uncomfortable reality is captured in this comment from an understandably anonymous academic on the Guardian website:
“...ask thousands of teachers and lecturers about what they think of IELTS indicators, as reflected in the quality of many international students coming into their courses, and you are likely to get the big thumbs down. At the same time, whole departments are kept open, and jobs are maintained, because of this cosy process.”57
In 2012, Professor Susan Bassnet, a former pro–vice chancellor of Warwick University and an external examiner for other universities, described colleagues asking her to “disregard linguistic competence and focus on content”. She noted that some students she encountered had such poor standards of English that they “wouldn’t scrape a GCSE.”58
Whilst UK universities still recruit bright and capable international students, they also recruit many who are neither. And this necessarily detracts from the overall learning experience. This situation is certainly not the fault of these students. If anything, they receive the worst value of any students. Though they’ll still all get their degrees for which they, or much more likely their parents, will have paid so much.
More is worse
Students who have barely squeezed through A–levels or equivalents or who have a limited grasp of English are now fed into a Higher Education system that is not designed for them. Because these changes have occurred over four decades, their effects have emerged incrementally and hence individually they have appeared to be relatively harmless. Taken cumulatively, however, their impact has been profoundly damaging, meaning that a student today is likely to have an inferior learning experience to a student on the same course 30 years ago.
Money
Not only does wealth improve your chances of attending the best universities, it also radically affects your experience at any university. Today, there are multiple student experiences and they often depend on what a student can afford. If you’re poor, then you’re more likely to study at your local university living at home for the three years and missing much of the Young Ones or Brideshead student experience on the grounds of cost. These students’ choices are driven less by the reputation of a university or specific degree than the prospect of free accommodation with their parents and the relative cost and ease of commuting.
Students without financial support are also likely to work part–time during study or to undertake part–time study whilst working. Research by Universities UK in 2005 identified a growing trend towards a two–tier student experience: “Of those who worked during term time, 80% said they missed study time to do so, 51% said their assignments suffered and 42% missed lectures.” The report described student experiences that were increasingly polarised by students’ family background:
“… higher income students …don’t need to work in term time and do interesting work in holidays to enhance their CVs. Then there are those who have to work in term time and whose academic work suffers. The work they do is for short–term cash benefit rather than long–term career benefit.”59
This fragmentation by ability to pay is even reflected at student union events. In 2009, for example, the Birmingham University Guild of Students offered Gold, Silver and Bronze Freshers’ packages:
“Students who can afford the gold package at £65 ‘don’t miss a single thing!’. Bronze students (£45) miss out on N–Dubz and Calvin Harris, but do go to the ball. Sadly, there’s no ball for the sub–bronze students who can only stump up £9; …they get a trip to Cadbury World to see how chocolate buttons are made.”60
Students without financial support face a choice between racking up more debt or largely opting out of a social life. Most, immersed in a debt–fuelled university system, choose increasing debt. In 2014, research by the NUS found nearly 50% of students required financial support from their parents, 11% relied on credit cards and 2% made use of pay–day loans with enormous interest rates. 61 Applying these percentages to the wider student population suggests that over 200,000 students are using credit cards and over 40,000 students are using pay–day loans.
The full extent of parental support was revealed in a 2009 report on student spending by the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS):
“More than half of all students (52%) are receiving the same or more parental support than the same period last year (2008). Of their children’s weekly term–time income, parents are contributing 61% (£69.51) compared with 58% in 2008 (£64.12)” 62
The reality is that today’s students spend a lot more than they receive in funding from the state and this gap needs to be plugged somehow – the bank of mum and dad for those who have access to such facilities or further debt for those who don’t.
In 2013, the NUS reported that many students were struggling to meet their daily living costs, with an estimated average annual shortfall of around £7,600. At no point does anybody complicit in this system (the government, universities, banks, student unions) suggest that more debt might be a bad thing. The default option is always to push another line of credit. After all, repayment can wait until the graduate job a
rrives. The behaviour that this hardwires is to spend without regard to the consequences – something that has potentially profound implications not just for students but for our society as a whole.
Financial reality generally sinks in after graduation, when graduates have debt but not the means to repay it, or worse when compound interest increases their debt faster than their repayments can keep up. Ironically, by cramming ever–increasing numbers of students into universities in the name of equality, we have also greatly increased existing economic inequalities in the nature of the student experience. Compared with the 1970’s, when most students had their fees paid for them and received maintenance grants to cover basic living expenses, state funding is now spread more thinly across a massively increased cohort of students. Those with money can top this up, those without cannot avoid going into debt. Expansion has created a university experience that is nominally the same, but is in reality now segregated by the ability to pay.
Accommodation
With the exception of tuition fees, accommodation is the single biggest contributor to levels of student debt. Making new friends via the random allocation of students to halls of residence is a rite of passage at university. For many students, however, this experience is no longer available as their university’s accommodation has been stretched past breaking point during expansion. Many universities no longer have the capacity to offer accommodation to all first–year students. Typically, those universities which have grown most have been those with the least money to spend on building new accommodation. The results can be seen all around the country every October:
“Up to 800 students at De Montfort University in Leicester and 300 at the University of Hertfordshire have been temporarily housed in hotels and B&Bs because there were no rooms left on campus. Aberdeen has put up 80 students in a Premier Lodge, while Warwick has booked 145 rooms in a private apartment block in Coventry.”63
Some students find themselves in temporary accommodation for weeks on end. This could be caravans, university gymnasiums or even holiday camps:
“Edge Hill University was scoping out a Pontins holiday camp in search of emergency accommodation for first–year undergraduates. A spokeswoman said that ‘in a year when we have experienced increases in demand for our courses, there are a number of students looking for options off campus’.”64
Often these students have to wait for other undergraduates to drop out, making places in student lets and halls available.65 Perhaps this situation slightly resembles Stalingrad, where Russian soldiers, sent into the attack against German positions, were issued with one rifle for every two, or even every three, men – many had to wait till a fellow soldier was shot before they could get their hands on a weapon. On the plus side, in some universities they won’t be waiting long. Drop–out rates for first–year students at some newer universities, where there is less available accommodation due to greater expansion, can be over 30% and tend to be much higher than at more traditional universities where student numbers haven’t increased so much. Moreover, first–year students without a place in halls can find themselves living miles away from campus in expensive private accommodation. Late arrivals, such as clearing students, are particularly likely to find themselves in this position. This can result in social isolation and probably contributes to the higher drop–out rates amongst clearing students.66
The scarcity of student accommodation is now reflected in its cost. In 2016, a National Union of Students survey estimated average weekly rents in university accommodation at £134.23. Back in 2002, this figure was £59.17.67 In 2016, private providers charged an average weekly rent of £169.94. In 2009, this figure was £112.68 These are massive increases, well above the rate of inflation. Research by the student housing charity, Unipol, suggests that these increases are routinely outpacing the wider rental market. Between 2010 and 2013, student rents rose by 25%. In comparison, across the rental sector as a whole the rise was 13%.69 This is a key factor in the mushrooming of graduate debt and a growing cost–of–living crisis for students.
It isn’t just the cost but also the duration of their accommodation contracts that cause problems. In the private sector, students might want to rent a house for the 40 to 42 weeks of term time. But demand often makes the best accommodation near campus a sellers’ market. Consequently, many students find themselves forced to pay rent for a full year. The taxpayer, often via student loans, is therefore paying to keep tens of thousands of houses and flats empty for months during a national housing shortage.
At some point during expansion, many universities jettisoned the notion of providing decent basic accommodation at low cost to their students, relying instead on private companies to provide new accommodation. In 2013, Unipol estimated that overseas investors were responsible for around 80% of new student accommodation built.70 This accommodation is generally high–end, expensive and beyond the means of students dependent on maintenance loans. In Exeter city centre, for example, luxury student accommodation can cost up to £10,710 per year and in 2018, purpose–built student accommodation in Bournemouth ranged from around £6,000 a year to £8,000 for a 40– to 42–week academic year. In 2018, the annual student maintenance loan was £8,430 for a student living away from home studying at a university outside London and £11,002 if living away from home and studying in London. Out of this, a student is expected to pay for accommodation, bills, transport, food, computers, social life and books.71
Safety
Money and accommodation are both issues that we would expect to directly affect student life. Something that we hear less about is student safety. University prospectuses might enthuse about the cultural activities awaiting young people in their host town. They are less likely to mention crime. It can be a major concern though. In 2008, the Independent reported that: “It is estimated that around a third of all of students will fall victim to some form of crime while at university.”72
Gauging the full extent of this problem is difficult. In 2010, research from the NUS suggested that 40% of students had been subject to antisocial behaviour or crime.73 Again, problems with crime are not experienced equally by students. Those studying in cities are particularly exposed as university buildings and student accommodation are often concentrated in areas within those cities with reputations for being crime hot spots:
“Manchester has toppled Nottingham from pole position of most crime–ridden university city outside London. The city beats all others for the number of burglaries, robberies and crimes of violence put together. The second most crime–ridden city is Nottingham, followed by Liverpool, Bristol and Leeds.”74
For those studying in more pleasant, green–leafed campuses, such threats are minimal. The Independent noted that the safest places to study were Lancaster, Canterbury and Bath – three “old” universities set apart from their cities on green campuses.75 Student life in inner cities can be quite different, though. In 2000, the Guardian reported: “In Manchester, last year, there were 1,000 street robberies in a two and a half mile radius of the universities.”76 The situation had not improved by 2008: “100,000 students in Manchester make up a fifth of the city’s population but are estimated to form between a quarter and a third of its robbery victims. One third of those who come to the university become victims of crime.”77
Or for that matter by 2014 when The Complete University Guide, which publishes a list of crime rates for over a hundred universities and colleges, ranked Manchester as having the highest levels of student–relevant crime (robberies, burglaries and violent crime) in a city with two or more universities.78 By 2018, students at Manchester, Bradford and the LSE were five times more likely to be affected by crime than students at York, Reading or Winchester.
The problem facing Manchester and other cities is that of “studentification”, a social phenomenon in which areas become saturated with students and then act as a magnet for crime and antisocial behaviour. Students are the most expensive demogra
phic group to insure, often arriving on campus with MP3 players, iPads, bikes and other high–value and easily–transportable items. For the enterprising criminal, this means that student accommodation contains multiple examples of these readily ‘stealable’ objects, as the website for the South Yorkshire Police noted: “Ten per cent of students are likely to be burgled, collectively having £34.65m worth of possessions stolen. As many as 38,500 people who are starting university this September could have their accommodation broken into… with items worth an average of £900 taken in each burglary.”79
This information is only based on the items reported as stolen, the real figures for theft will be much higher. In some major cities, however, it isn’t just a desire for financial gain that lies behind anti–student crime statistics. More concerning is the trend for students in these areas being mugged or even assaulted simply for being students. There is plenty of evidence of gang rituals in which assaulting a student is an initiation rite. To give an idea of the scale of this problem in Sheffield in 2014, within six weeks the South Yorkshire police recorded 43 violent crimes against students. Whilst this led to a student safety campaign in 2015, it still represented seven students being assaulted per week in just one UK city.80 Unfortunately, some urban police forces are still perceived as viewing this type of violent crime as just part and parcel of the student experience.
Universities have also been criticised for failing to alert students to potential dangers, worrying instead about their reputations. As the Guardian noted in 2008:
“Universities were nervous about highlighting the risks. ‘There is sensitivity around using the “crime” word because that worries parents,’ said Professor Alex Hirschfield, ‘But you are importing a large cohort of potentially vulnerable people who are not used to living in inner–city areas. We would argue that universities are benefiting from fees and it would be positive for them to address the issue’.”81