Over here and underachieving

A professor at the University of Buckingham has said that universities are too eager to admit lucrative, international fee-paying foreign students at the expense of British students who may be of equal or greater talent. Universities UK responded by saying they applied "rigorous" checks on standards.

The truth is that many universities in Britain have been brought to their knees by underfunding, and have no choice but to unquestioningly accept foreign candidates who now make up 60 per cent of all higher degree students. When even the most prestigious universities in Britain can't prevent their lecturing staff going on strike almost every year, how can they afford to turn down foreign students who provide £1.5bn in fees annually?

The effect on campuses across the country has been a tide of foreign students, often from Asia, many of whom can barely communicate in English. From personal experience at SOAS (a top 10 institution according to the 2009 Good University Guide) I remember Japanese BA students who found their courses so startlingly impossible that they ended up living recluse-like in their rooms, phones unplugged, doors locked. At lesser institutions lecturers complain of having to lower standards to accommodate uncomprehending students and even of having to ignore cases of blatant plagiarism.

Professor Geoffrey Alderman, who made the accusations which started the debate, told The First Post that the dumbing-down of higher education currently affects even the most empirical areas of study: "In my view it affects the sciences and medicine as well as humanities and social sciences." The applied arts are not immune either. Witness the decline in quality of work produced by Central Saint Martins students as the school clamours to admit as many foreign students as possible, regardless of talent.

Meanwhile former polytechnics have become clearing houses for meaningless degrees awarded to foreign students who need to be registered at a college to be eligible for a visa. End of year assessments in such places have become arbitrary - there are no statistics showing how many students fail in these courses every year as the number is so miniscule.

A spokesperson at UCU - the lecturers union - told The First Post that universities feel obliged to ensure that foreign students who pay a fortune to enroll should not be allowed to fail at any cost. "There is certainly a silent pressure on colleges to get as many students to succeed as possible," the spokesperson admitted. Other, more serious, allegations include tutors 'ghost-writing', or even translating, their students' work to make it intelligible.

One Japanese student studying marketing in London told me that securing a BA at her college was alarmingly easy. "It is completely possible to do absolutely no work at all and still pass at the end of the year," she said.

The head of parliament's innovation, universities, sciences and skills committee has promised to take the issue of degree-fraud seriously. "The quality of our higher education product is dependent on the quality of research and the quality of the students doing the research," said Phil Willis MP. "That must not be jeopardised." Fine words, but unless British universities are relieved of their financial woes, the quality of our higher educational system will only be eroded further. ·