No more overnight queues for London's international students

I went down to the Overseas Visitors Records Office in Borough High Street, with a brief from EL Gazette to take some photos of this building - as depressing as possible please. I like to think I did a fairly good job of invoking the general atmosphere of despair that permeates the place, and South London in general. (A rather North Londoncentric view, I admit.) It was even raining lightly in a sort of drizzly way likely to induce a melancholy attitude - yes!

While Britain makes billions out of ripping off international students, and its politicians bang out about how essential the industry is for the economy, this didn't stop them making students queue all night (preferably in the rain) for a Form 3400 so they could register with the police at Overseas Visitors as part of their student visa procedures. If they turned up after 6.30am, they were turned away. And they paid over £30 for the privilege of this treatment, described in a letter from the heads of both King's College London and the LSE to David Cameron as "humiliating."

Unusually, such a depressing state of affairs wasn't the fault of the UKBA, as Overseas Visitors is a Metropolitan Police outfit. Needless to say, students could only register at one office for the whole of London - believed to be the world's biggest student city - and one office in a particularly depressing part of South London at that.

All it took was that one letter, and lo and behold! As of early October, students just have to show up there and pick up a pre-stamped form which they have until the end of 2012 hand in. After that, it's a queue again, but the Overseas Visitors people now claim they're on top of the backlog and waiting times for registering students will be bearable.

When I visited Overseas Visitors there were no queues but it was busy with brisk comings and goings of international students arriving ahead of the new academic year, and peering through the glass I could see it still was definitely a "please take a number" and wait at the service window gig.

There's a short picture story on this in the December 2012 EL Gazette.

Meet your mentor

Can befriending increase the effectiveness of support for non-native speakers at English medium universities?

(This article first appeared in English Language Gazette of January 2009)

Matt Salusbury

Writes

WITH THE continued rise in international students in English-speaking universities, more EAP and Foundation courses are springing up. But alongside training international students in English and in study skills, there’s also another strand to support for non-native English speaking students to ensure that they can stand the course – mentoring. Course descriptions for courses designed for international students on various UK university websites increasingly show less emphasis on many hours of generic EAP in groups, and more emphasis on tutorials, one-to-one English language sessions, and mentoring. What is mentoring, and how can it be used to help international university students succeed?

Mentoring is an increasingly popular tool in the UK, according to the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation (MBF), who run training projects for mentors through nine regional coordinators round the country, backed by the Home Office and the Cabinet Office. Mentoring is a concept being used in many areas of life – from tackling bullying at school to settling young offenders back into the community.

Mentoring (the term is often used interchangeable with ‘coaching’) is about helping people acquire the awareness and confidence necessary to fulfil their potential. Several Chinese students on MA courses in the US interviewed for our recent survey, for example, said life at a US university got much easier when they suddenly realised they were expected to ask for help when they needed it. This realisation, while vital for their success, has little to do with English or study skills. Within mentoring there is ‘peer mentoring’ – in universities this will be by other students – and ‘classic’ mentoring, which usually means a role taken on by university teaching or support staff. Properly done, mentoring should always be monitored, usually by the university. The MBF run the Approved Provider Standard (APS), which has benchmarks and best practice for mentoring.

Charlotte Leather of the MBF told the Gazette about some of the developments in mentoring projects aimed at international students at UK universities. These are most peer-monitoring projects which engage students who are already enrolled in ‘befriending’ roles – providing social support for international students when they first come to the UK.

Charlotte says these befriending projects are important part of ensuring retention of international students across UK universities, and that students who ‘befriend’ incoming international students can also fill an important role in familiarising them with areas of the subject they are coming to study. Universities are usually able to get established students to work as ‘befrienders’ on a volunteer basis, as the experience gained by mentors is seen as very valuable to their future career. Academic departments or units that have a lot of international students are also starting to work closely with students’ unions on these mentoring projects.

Rong Huang of Plymouth University has done extensive search on mentoring support for international students at every level, and how mentoring affects success. On one course, for ‘direct entry students’ students from China and other countries joining a course in its third year, he found there was a 43 per cent failure rate, and that the international students’ ‘transition has currently been managed on an ad hoc basis.’ His response was to train student mentors, including international students who had just arrived, and to use feedback from the ‘direct entry students’ and their mentors to compile materials for the next international intake of this course. There’s now a ‘special visit day’ for potential students of the course, at which the university goes to gatherings of potential applicants abroad and provides them with a full orientation. As a result, the university’s agents abroad can provide much more precise information about what the student can expect.

Charlotte told the Gazette that the University of Exeter’s peer mentoring scheme now starts six weeks before the start of the degree course, when the student arrives at the airport to be met by a student peer mentor. It’s followed by introductions to subject areas, the library, the university and the UK, all before the course starts. Mentors are older students – at the request of the international student body they are a combination of international and ‘British’ students, as international students felt they weren’t meeting enough students from the UK.

Another innovative mentoring project is the one at Sheffield University, which has 23 international student mentors who can be contacted through an email network for enquiries about orientation and on subject areas.

Rong Huang notes that there’s a tendency to see international students in terms of their country of origin, and how this affects their learning styles – how the UK’s academic culture is different to that of Asia, and particularly China, for example. While there’s been a lot of work on addressing these specific issues – see the UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCIS) ‘Prepare for Success’ for example – Huang says there’s been little research into the international student body as a whole. His research at Plymouth University showed they were generally satisfied by their courses and support services, but less happy with courses’ value for money and the quality of their seminars.

It was in their participation in social activities and sports that the international students surveyed felt dissatisfaction. Most international students were not ‘socially active,’ and their friends were mostly from their own countries. Only 15 per cent of them reported that their friends were ‘British’ students, and 77 per cent thought that UK students were ‘hard to get to know.’

Limited by their English? With increasing numbers of international students, is UK education risking its reputation? Read this article here

Indian destinations

Where are Indian students going to study abroad?

Traditional destinations shouldn’t take Indian students for granted as they look at more exotic options

Matt Salusbury reports

This article first appeared in the English language teaching industry trade paper English Language Gazette, May 2008

India is a huge market for English-medium higher education courses. We emailed India-based subscribers to our digital newsletter asking them about where Indians are going to study abroad.

According to ELT professionals the US, UK and Australia are the most desirable destinations for Indian students. One also mentioned Canada, while another identified Singapore as a big destination.

Which markets are growing as destinations for Indian students? ‘Australia is becoming more attractive. Europe is the next attraction because they are more friendly and affordable,’ said one. Another view was that ‘Australia, Singapore and Russia are gaining fast. Many medical students are also looking at options in China and Russia as studies there are less expensive than India and the US and the UK.’

Australia and Singapore are perceived by Indian students as countries for which it’s relatively easy to get student visas. Germany and France have a reputation for advantageous arrangements for student grants and tuition fees, with France in particular becoming a favoured destination for research students.

One respondent told us, ‘Many Ielts candidates state that they are going to Australia because they have heard that getting an Australian visa is easier than getting a visa to the UK and US.’ Universities Australia last year signed ‘international counterpart agreements’ on student exchanges with India, which should result in more Indian students in Australia.

When it comes to visa hassles for the US and the UK, we were told that these two countries are ‘feared’ by Indian applicants.
A sharp fall in the quota of H1-B work visas issued by the US for skilled professionals, capped at 65,000 visas per year after 9/11, was keenly felt by the non-resident Indian diaspora, and the assumption seems to have taken hold that student visas are also much harder to get.

What reasons do Indian students give for choosing a course abroad, and why don’t they instead choose to study at one of the over 113 higher education institutes in India? Admission to specialised higher education courses within India is seen as limited, with ‘candidates screened with stringent entrance exams’ and the policy of positive discrimination making access to these institutes difficult for those not covered by ‘reservation’ – keeping a percentage or quota of university places for applicants from lower castes. Other factors attracting Indians to study overseas are ‘better job prospects, greater status in society and larger pay packets after studies.

Indians abroad mostly study ‘postgraduate and technical courses – MBA, commerce-related and applied sciences are the preferred courses. Most students go abroad for postgraduate studies, although the number of students opting for undergraduate studies abroad is also up.’

It’s clear that the traditional destinations for Indian students had better watch out. Increasing numbers of Indians are going to study in countries that aren’t even regarded as English-speaking – Germany, which issues student visas to Indians for postgraduate study only, France and the rest of Europe, Singapore and even China and Russia for medical training.
It seems to be a difficult process to open a joint venture university in India, with probationary periods of state approval to go through and huge ‘security deposits’ payable to prevent a foreign university closing up after only a few years and stranding the students. But some of the traditional markets for Indian students are establishing a foothold in India beyond the usual recruitment office they have based there.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair’s India visit last year saw the launch of the UK–India Education and Research Initiative. Coventry University is now running a physiotherapy degree with Bangalore’s MS Ramaiah Technology Institute, and University of London’s external study business courses can now be taken at the University of Delhi. Open Universities Australia also has centres in four Indian cities. US universities such as Yale are hoping to open greenfield site campuses in India. It’s likely that more Indian students will in time go for a higher education course with a foreign university based in India, rather than actually going abroad.

Thanks to Francis Peter, who is a teacher trainer at Loyola College Chennai, and to Hutoxi Randeria, who is a freelance educational consultant.

Copyright: English Language Gazette

Head for the Highlands

Scotland’s distinctive higher education system is increasingly attracting international students from around the world

Matt Salusbury writes

This article first appeared in the English Language teaching industry trade paper English Language Gazette, May 2008

Scotland’s education system is widely regarded as the best in the UK. It has traditionally had proportionally more university places than the rest of Britain. Some of its universities are much older institutions than even Oxford or Cambridge, with one group of Scottish universities known collectively as ‘ancient universities’.

Figures supplied by Scottish Universities for students in higher education in Scotland put the total number of students (both UK and international) at 223,000. Of these, 12,500 were overseas students from other EU countries and 24,000 were from outside the EU. Some overseas students may find their school-leaving qualifications actually put them at an advantage when applying for Scottish universities compared to other UK entrants. This is because Scotland has a different system, with ‘Highers’ school leaving exams leading to a four-year degree in a Scottish university, compared to A-levels leading to a three-year degree in the rest of the UK. Susannah Lane, a researcher with the Scottish Universities association says the ‘perception of the four-year degree as the gold standard in education serves as a pull factor. Another big draw is Scotland’s ‘research base which is known internationally to be world class’. A comfortable majority of international students are in Scotland on postgraduate courses, and half of these are on research-based rather than taught ones.

Kelly Ferguson of Education UK Scotland suggests a ‘vast array of reasons’ why students chose Scotland, including ‘friends or family connections… safety and security on campus (and) culture - traditional and modern.’ She also cites the range of scholarships available for study there.

The most popular subjects for overseas students are business, which just beats engineering, then computing, biological sciences and ‘medicine-related.’ The ‘Watt’ in Heriott-Watt University commemorates Scottish engineer James Watt, and Napier University is named after a mathematician. Both of these universities pull in a lot of international students in these subjects, with Heriott-Watt recruiting many overseas architecture and business students too. Glasgow University seems to specialise in attracting overseas biologists. Strathclyde University had over 700 international students on its business courses in 2007.

But two less well-known universities seem to have carved out niche markets for foreign students. The Paisley-based University of the West of Scotland has the most business students from outside the EU, while Robert Gordon University has the most non-EU students in engineering, architecture and computer sciences. Dundee University seems to be doing rather well in recruiting non-EU students taking a variety of subjects.

The number of overseas students on further education (FE) vocational courses is surprisingly low. Of the 50,000 students who do FE courses in Scotland in 2005, only 310 are from other EU countries, and there are only 1,045 non-EU FE students. Non-degree FE courses are a growth market all over the English-speaking world, so this number can be expected to rise, especially given Scotland’s long-held reputation for excellence in technical subjects.

In 2001, there were students from over 100 countries studying in Scotland. The top ten countries of origin for sending students to Scotland as of 2006 were, in numerical order, China with just over 5,000, the US, India with nearly 4,000, Malaysia with over 3,000, Hong Kong with almost that number, closely followed by Ireland, then Canada with 2,000, Germany with 1,980, Greece with 1830. France is tenth, with1,500 students at Scottish universities.

The UK Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) has its own 2005–2006 figures for students from outside the EU studying in Scotland, and these list Norway, Nigeria, Taiwan and Japan as the biggest non-EU countries of origin after Canada.
There has been a steady rise in the total number of international students in Scottish universities. HESA figures list India and Nigeria as showing the biggest growth.
Non-EU international student numbers are rising much faster than for students from the rest of EU outside the UK. ‘Other EU’ student numbers have seen only a slight rise overall since the 1990s. While funding arrangements differ slightly in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK, the bigger increase in non-EU admissions could be partly down to the fact that universities can charge these students a lot more, so they become a marketing priority.

And let’s not forget higher education distance learning courses based in Scotland. Scottish Executive figures for 2006 put the total number of distance learning students based overseas at 18,000, and they outnumber the 14,400 who are based in the UK. Most of these distance learning students are postgraduate, with less than a thousand overseas students doing undergraduate first degrees by distance learning.

Matt Salusbury, news and features editor, English Language Gazette
with additional reporting by Michael Bowden
Copyright: English Language Gazette