UK universities enrolling foreign students with poor English to get higher fees: Report

Universities in the United Kingdom (UK) are allegedly enrolling foreign students with poor or limited English by charging higher fees, BBC reported. According to the report, most of the students paid other people to get their coursework done and to register attendance for them in the lecture.

The University and College Union (UCU) further told BBC that some institutions are overlooking the language skills of foreign students so they can get higher fees from them. A professor even told the British news outlet that around 70 per cent of his recent students pursuing a master's have inadequate English.

Universities UK, comprising 141 institutions, rejected the claims, saying it has strict language requirements for students coming from abroad.

UCU has around 120,000 lecturers and university staff, and one of its members, Jo Grady, told BBC that it's an open secret that students who are not good in English as a language come to the UK to pursue their studies.

"When we speak to members, we hear about the tricks that are pulled to have people pass the relevant language test and get on to courses," Grady told BBC.

Rose Stephenson from the Higher Education Policy Institute, an independent think tank, told BBC that at least seven out of 10 students pursuing master's in England are from overseas.

University tuition fees for undergraduate students, who are from England only, are capped at £9,250 ($11,705) whereas for foreign students, there is no upper limit.

"You can charge a foreign student as much as they're willing to pay," Stephenson told BBC.

It was further revealed that postgraduate fees are also not capped for foreign students, so an overseas student pursuing a master's in the UK at an elite university pays around £50,000 ($63,260).

A whistleblower working at an education provider that prepares international students for university told BBC that agents target rich foreign families or people who have enough money to pay.

We knew that those universities were increasingly desperate and would go along with our plans without much scrutiny of how those students were being found. No independent party is looking at the grades or the examinations. It's the Wild West, in a way," the whistleblower further told BBC.

(With inputs from agencies)