Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-90)
Q60 Chair: Professor
Acton and Professor Smith, thank you for giving evidence. You
may have heard some of the previous evidence. How does this consultation
concerning sub-degree level have an impact on UK universities?
Because it appears that the Government does not have the universities
in their sights as far as bogus colleges are concerned and stopping
abuse.
Professor Acton:
It is very important to emphasise the distinction between preuniversity,
which is our concern—courses people come and take designed
to prepare them for a degree—and sub-degree. The real distinction,
our preoccupation, is about pre-degree because many countries
in the world do not do the second year of A-level, and especially
nonCommonwealth countries, and do not have adequate English
to move into a degree programme. As Australia and America are
finding, the year pre-degree is critical to recruiting undergraduates
especially, but some English for postgraduates, from those countries.
That is our concern: protect the pathways and do not impose a
language barrier, B2, which would actually suffocate those.
Q61 Chair: How
many of your students would come to the University of East Anglia
via the pathway?
Professor Acton:
A very significant proportion of the undergraduates.
Chair: How many is that?
Professor Acton:
Well, each year we recruit about 400 overseas students.[1]
Cumulatively, because the undergrads and the postgraduate research
students are there for three years, it amounts to a very large
income stream and those coming via the pathway are absolutely
vital and the biggest growth sector. We estimate in Britain there
are now 60,000 students on pre-university pathways of one form
or another. We estimate that 70% of those would never have crossed
the border if the rule were B2 English and that the cost in fees
alone would be £1 billion recurrent.
Q62 Chair: Professor
Smith, would you agree with that?
Professor Smith:
Yes. If you look at the national data it is quite compelling.
We do not need to be hysterical about this in any way. 46% of
undergraduates, overseas and non-EU undergraduates; 33% of postgraduate
taught, 46% of postgraduate research international students have
previous experience of studying in the UK. So a large percentage
of the student body comes here for language top-up or whatever
before. We understand the politics. We understand the pressures.
For us, it seems paradoxical at a time when we are
trying to find growth in the economy. Here is an export industry,
by some estimates the seventh largest export industry in the UK.
The market is growing at 7% a year. The UK is the second most
successful sector in the world. It would be worth, over the next
15 years, an additional £5 billion of export earnings per
year to the UK on top of the £5.3 billion it earns. It seems
crazy to stop that development by focusing on—using inappropriate
methodology—something we think is not a problem. The key
figure for me, Chair, is the UKBA say, quite rightly, that there
is noncompliance, but in the university sector it is under
2%. So we think it is a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Q63 Chair: Well,
that is pretty clear to the Committee. You talked about understanding
the politics of this. How can we help the Government achieve what
it is going to achieve without damaging UK universities? Is there
anything that can be done? The issue of bogus colleges aside—because
no one is suggesting that any UK university is a bogus university;
at least I have not heard it being suggested—what can we
do to help the Government?
Professor Acton:
I strongly support the UKBA's plan to restrict recruitment to
highly trusted status sponsors. It is absolutely right about that,
but the accreditation for that status should be even tighter,
and it would be very wise for Britain to insist on significant
deposits for all students entering the country.
Chair: Deposits of money?
Professor Acton:
Yes. Thirdly, as soon as they can, it would be very good if the
UKBA would tell each sponsor when their offer letter—CAS
it is called—has been used to give a student a visa, when
that student enters the country and when they leave the country.
At the moment UKBA cannot tell us but it is racing towards getting
the methodology for that through e-Borders.
Q64 Chair: Why
do they not tell you?
Professor Acton:
They are only setting up e-Borders, this wonderful system—and
the Government is backing it to the hilt—which will, for
the first time, check individually when people leave the country.
As soon as that is completely in place, Britain will have figures
for net migration so vastly superior to what it is proposed to
use at the moment that we will retrospectively look back and say,
"If we had been guided by the International Passenger Survey
we would have done terrible national damage".
Q65 Chair: I want
to ask you about the definition of the word "student"
and whether that is the problem. I have always understood "student"
to be someone who comes and studies and leaves. Is that your understanding?
Professor Acton:
Yes, insofar as, for the purposes of this exercise, it is people
with a visa that has an end point, at which point they must leave
the country unless Britain has decided—it is a separate
issue—to give them a different kind of visa. That is who
we are talking about. In our view, they come, they study, they
leave or, but it is not up to the universities, Britain decides,
"You we would like to stay".
Q66 Nicola Blackwood:
Do you think, then, that the route through foundation course to
undergraduate to Masters to PhD or DPhil through post-work study
into Tier 1 or 2 visa is too direct a route to settlement? Because
once you have been through that study course you have been here
10 years and you are accruing the right to remain. Is that something
that you think should be addressed in order to stop this confusion
between what you call a student and what we would call an immigrant?
Professor Acton:
My understanding is while you are a student you do not add to
your right to settle. While you are here it is discounted. You
cannot say, "Hey, I have been here for five years".
No. If you are a student: zero points. My greatest concern about
the debate around this is that it leads to confusion. People say,
"Well, because some students stay there is a sort of doubt
cast over the whole lot of them".
We, therefore, risk being misled into thinking of
them not as rather long-term tourists pouring foreign currency
on to our goods and services but as a source of people who are
going to stay. In that respect, I would rather like it if we severed
it but we should be very clear: Britain is dependent for its postgraduate
research, especially in STEM subjects, on foreign students. It
is sad and in 10 years we may get more Brits to do it but we are
failing at the moment. If we denied PGRs the prospect of staying
and of bringing their family, I am afraid we will see a very quick
decline in STEM subject research here.
Professor Smith:
Could I just add to that? The UKBA's own data is very interesting
on this. UKBA data show us that actually if you take five years
after study, only 3% of the students who come in have any claim
to settlement and have tried to settle. 85% have either left or
have gone on to further study and, of the remainder, many of them
are in work and that should not be a surprise because 39% of international
students study the very subjects that the CBI and everyone tells
us are in high demand, namely the STEM subjects, the science subjects.
It is hardly surprising that they stay, because the UK knowledge
economy needs these graduates in many cases to go into the universities.
I think it would be a massive own goal for us to try and restrict
those students because they are vital to the health of the UK
knowledge economy, which, as I said earlier, is the second strongest
in the world.
Q67 Mark Reckless:
Could the post-study work route be restricted so that it was only
if you were working within academia in the way you describe? Would
that be one way to break the escalator mechanism where people
come in at foundation and then stay on forever, at least in some
cases?
Professor Smith:
Two very quick points on that. Firstly, I do think we need to
think about the international messaging. It is about is the UK
open for business? As someone who, as President of Universities
UK, travelled with the Prime Minister to both China and India,
it was very interesting, in both those education summits the Indian
Minister and the Chinese Minister said, "We are worried about
the visa issue. Does the UK want our students?" So I think
there is a lot—
Q68 Chair: What
did the Prime Minister say to that?
Professor Smith:
The Prime Minister was not in that meeting. This was the Education
Minister.
Chair: What did he say to that?
Professor Smith:
They all said, of course, "The UK is open for business".
No one wants to damage the university sector. Our concern is that
the effect—may be unintended—is to damage the university
sector, and post-study work is exactly an image. Our competitor
knowledge economies offer that. They see it as a great hint as
to why you should come and study in another country; precisely
because it gives you a right to do work after you graduate.
Q69 Mark Reckless:
Professor Smith, I find this quite difficult because you speak
with similar enthusiasm, it seems to me, on both of these issues.
But I draw a distinction between not wanting to put artificial
barriers in the way of university recruitment and artificially
making it more attractive to come to university by saying, "Well,
if you graduate here we will let you stay on afterwards for post-study
work. Do you understand the distinction that I and my constituents
have potentially drawn there?
Professor Smith:
Yes. Although there is no evidence, is there, that students who
stay on are, in large part, taking the jobs of people in the local
economy? Because the jobs they are taking are related to the high-level
skills they have gained.
Q70 Mr Clappison:
I am with you on a lot of what you say but I am afraid not on
your last point, because we hear that all the time. It is the
same argument that is produced by the CBI saying, "Let us
recruit the skilled workers we need overseas and bring them to
this country because we cannot get the people here". The
answer to that is we are not training the people we have here
and if we listen to that argument all the time we never will do.
Can I ask you, Professor Acton—
Alun Michael: Can
we hear a response to that rather tendentious point?
Mr Clappison: Yes, please do. Yes, fine,
have a debate about it.
Professor Smith:
Let us look at the data. There is now an upturn at the moment
but the UK simply is not producing enough people at age 16—at
16, forget university—with the skills level. 52.5% of 16-year-olds
do not have five GCSEs A to C. Where are the jobs for these people?
Many UK science departments would not be in existence but for
international students because those students are needed to keep
the science subjects healthy. So my view is there is a massive
issue about skills in the UK but the way of dealing with it is
not to say to people from abroad, "Do not come". It
is to make sure that we do everything to support the development
of training and education in our school system.
Q71 Mr Clappison:
I hear what you say on that and the STEM subjects, the science
subjects that you were talking about. The problem has been that
we have been producing fewer and fewer people who are qualified
at A-level and so on to enter the university to study those subjects,
and that problem has been developing and continuing all the time
that we have been admitting the students. We should be concentrating,
shouldn't we, on educating students in this country to a high
level to go into science subjects? It is masking the problem.
Professor Smith:
Yes, but if I may, one obvious point: no international student
takes a place that is available for a home student. They are in
addition.
Q72 Mr Clappison:
I am not suggesting that, no.
Professor Smith:
It is not that they are crowding out home students. The answer
to the problem is to do everything we can to improve science education
in our schools and I accept that. But that does not mean the way
you deal with that is to say then, "Let us make it more difficult"—
Chair: We will be hearing from the scientists
very shortly.
Q73 Nicola Blackwood:
I just wanted to pick up on a point that you made about our competitors
offering post-study work routes as something valuable to attract
students. Could you give us an idea of what other countries offer
comparable routes and how they handle it?
Professor Acton:
I do not think I can give you the precision I would like to. I
could easily answer by letter, but both Australia and America
do. France is proposing to do so for three years. You know the
French have crossed the Rubicon and are teaching degrees in English,
so delicious is the world market.
Chair: Professors, we would be very grateful
to have that comparison. It would be very helpful if we could
have that.
Professor Smith:
We can send that to you.
Chair: Thank you.
Q74 Alun Michael:
I have a question to put to each of you, but before I do could
I just pick up one comment that flashed past, which was a reference
to increasing deposits or the requirement for deposits. I think
it was Professor Acton who raised that point. Wouldn't that favour
the well off and not necessarily the talented, and isn't it really
a non-relevant test?
Professor Acton:
Of course I follow that danger, but we think that there is a very
strong correlation between those who put up a big deposit and
those who are completely serious about coming and complete their
degree. Given concerns about any apparent misuse of the Tier 4
system, I think it would be a really good way of tightening it.
Q75 Alun Michael:
Not to delay us but could you give us written evidence for that
assertion?
Professor Acton:
Yes.
Alun Michael: It seems to me rather dubious
but that is because I have not seen evidence on it.
Professor Acton:
Yes.
Q76 Alun Michael:
Professor Smith, in your evidence you say there is a lack of basic
data about student visas and who they are issued to. Can you elaborate
on that and ways in which the data could be improved?
Professor Smith:
Our main concern is that the data that are driving the proposals
of UKBA are very, very unreliable. Last year, 273,000 student
visas were issued. Of course, we know how many come to the universities.
What we are asking for, to be honest, is that the highly trusted
status sponsors are the focus of the relationship between the
student visa, the student arriving and then the student leaving.
We can actually test that. Our problem with all the data is that
there is not the linkage shown between the methodology they are
using through the International Passenger Survey to estimate students
leaving. That is our major concern.
Q77 Alun Michael:
Are you satisfied that all universities would be capable, provided
they choose to do so, of achieving that highly trusted status?
The reason I ask that is obviously the economic contribution to
some of the more local and newer universities is absolutely crucial.
Is it possible for any university to reach that sort of status
and have the correct systems in place?
Professor Smith:
First, yes, it is. We think all the 133 members of Universities
UK will easily be able to achieve that. Secondly, your comment
about the economy is actually, for me, the key issue. It is not
about universities. It is about UK PLC. If you look at the contribution
of international students to local economies—forgive me
if I just use one sentence on my local example—we commissioned
Oxford Economics to do the analysis of what international students
contributed to the Exeter region economically. We have 3,400 international
students. They contribute £57 million to the Exeter economy
and are creating, with knock-on multipliers, 2,100 jobs. Think
of the growth if we can double our international student numbers
or grow them at 7% a year as the evidence shows us. But think
of the cost if we have to cut them back. This would be felt in
every university city in the country and it is thousands of jobs.
Q78 Alun Michael:
Thank you. Professor Acton, you comment that the Migration Advisory
Committee, "is obliged to rely on the data collected by the
International Passenger Survey. The MAC's own opinion of this
data is not flattering". Again, how can we improve that situation?
Professor Acton:
I am very glad you have asked me that. I am really concerned in
the national interest that if UKBA/Home Office policy is guided
by the International Passenger Survey, guided by the target laid
out in the 350-page MAC report of November, which is to reduce
net immigration via the student route to 23,000, we will reduce
university recruitment alone by something of the order of 60%.
I have done a little exercise.
Imagine in 2005 the Government of that day had said,
"The International Passenger Survey is showing an alarming
growth in net migration of our students. We will peg it. We will
hold it to 23,000", which is what MAC is proposing. Do you
know what the cost would have been by 2011? This is demonstrable.
It is not imaginary. The statistics on what the fees and recruitment
actually were, they are all there. But if you imagine that we
had capped the number of international students coming in, in
2008-09 instead of the £2.3 billion that the Home Secretary
rightly celebrates in the introduction to the consultation, fee
income would have been £1.1 billion. At steady state, by
2010-11 fee income to universities would be £1.8 billion
lower than it is in the current year. The cumulative costs between
2005 and now would be £6 billion. Add in the off-campus expenditure:
it would be £12 billion.
If a government of 2005 had pursued the very approach
that MAC has adopted and is trying, believing it must use the
IPS—now, the IPS was found, after the 2001 census, to be
the primary source of the most appalling miscalculation. There
were 800,000 missing young men and it shocked—I do not know
how many of you remember it. I do not remember it at all. But
what was the prime source of that? The IPS had undercounted young
people leaving the country. They still are, massively. Now, though,
because of this Government's admirable support for the institution
of the system called e-Borders, which counts every individual
arriving and leaving, but the system is not yet covering all—
Q79 Chair: They
have teething problems. We do know about that.
Professor Acton:
But if we could use it, there is a way of using it not to do net
migration—that we will have by 2013—but to do a test,
which I urge you to ask the Government to do: look at the names
and birthdays of the 100,000 non-EU students graduating in whichever
year we can do, and I think 2010 is the one e-Borders could do;
check who among those have a visa that expires and check which
of those left. Now, that is a realism. When I said this to the
Minister and the UKBA official—and they are extremely helpful,
they are asking UUK to second somebody to work with them—they
said, "That would be awfully expensive". I said, "The
universities will pay". The stakes are terrifying. This could
be done extremely quickly.
Q80 Chair: You would
pay for this exercise?
Professor Acton:
Yes.
Chair: We will put this to the Minister
next week.
Professor Acton:
Will you? Please do.
Chair: Yes, we will.
Professor Acton:
But it must be done in February. There is a hurry because like
Steve—
Chair: We will definitely put—
Professor Acton:
—I want the message to go out, "Britain is really open.
Britain is the warmest place to international HE students".
Chair: Yes, indeed.
Professor Acton:
We are yearning to develop and expand. In March every part of
the economy will be seeking ways of growing.
Chair: Professor, thank you.
Q81 Dr Huppert:
I apologise for interrupting this flow. I think there are some
very compelling things on the figures there about number of students
and the process there and about the economic benefits. Would you
say there are some less tangible benefits as well to domestic
students from having international exposure to different ways
of thinking, whether in the scientific fields, humanities fields
and so forth? Have you done any work to look at those? Is there
any way of surveying that or quantifying that at all?
Professor Smith:
Briefly, yes, massive benefits. If you think about the things
that make people employable—being aware of international
cultural issues, maybe experience of studying in other countries—for
the UK student it is a real marker. Tomorrow's graduates need
to be people that can move culturally and geographically. Frankly,
at Exeter where we have grown international students significantly,
we have found the effects enormously beneficial; also on the cultural
life of the city. It is Chinese New Year this week. To see our
students taking the Chinese dragon through the streets of Exeter
is a great issue for the town. I think there are all sorts of
benefits to our students and also to the local society.
Q82 Mr Winnick:
I wonder if I could be the devil's advocate for a second. What
would you professors say to those who, hearing your evidence today,
would say, "Here are two distinguished academics, no doubt
very genuine, but who do not understand the very high feelings
over the need for immigration controls to be more effective, to
cut down on immigrants and the rest"; that in other words
you are living, to use a phrase, in an ivory tower? Professor
Smith?
Professor Smith:
I would sit down with people and I would say, "I do understand
the problem. It is in the community I live in and I am aware of
that". But when you then ask people, "By the way, what
do you mean by immigration?" they do not mean students who
come, study, enrich the society and, do you know what, leave.
The non-compliance of the student body at universities is 2%.
That is not the problem. The problem: the public perception is
about immigration. It is not about economic students coming in
and studying in the UK and then leaving the country. I understand
the problem but it is the wrong target. Students come and leave.
Professor Acton:
I think there is a problem about public perception; that they
do not welcome additional people, especially when there is unemployment.
But exactly like Steve, Migration Watch itself says, "Students
who come, study and leave are not the problem". They are
very like tourists. They are spending foreign money.
Chair: We will be hearing from them next
week.
Professor Acton:
Well, that may not be all they have to say.
Q83 Mr Winnick:
Migration Watch, which believes it has some sacred duty to save
us from foreigners, is quite able to speak for itself. What would
be the sort of impact abroad if the general feeling was that Britain
was closing up for business as far as studies are concerned; that
we would cut down drastically on the sort of students who are
going to your universities and others?
Professor Acton:
I think even our research alliances would be affected. There is
some hurt felt by some parts of the world when it is felt Britain
is not that warming and the exact reverse when they say, "But
Britain is the best, the most open and warm". I cannot tell
you the soft power we get from alumni abroad. They are there,
Anglophile, love their contacts and, I am afraid, steer a lot
of things in our direction that will not be steered if we were
ever to say, "We do not want international students".
Professor Smith:
Can I just add it is largely also a matter of impression. A policy
that is not aimed at the universities can still have the effect
of cutting back applications. Take two cases: take Australia and
the US. The US after 9/11 restricted its visas. It led to a 20%
reduction in international student applications. Australia, early
2010, changed its visa regulations. It led to a 16% reduction.
Both of them have reversed it. So I think the damage is the image
that we send out about the UK, and the UK higher education sector—whatever
we think, whatever our moans and groans—is the second strongest
in the world. It can grow. It can bring in more earnings to this
country and more jobs, not just in universities but in all the
communities around them.
Q84 Mr Winnick:
What is our standing at the moment, before these restrictions
come into force? What is our standing in the countries where students
want to come and study?
Professor Smith:
Incredibly high. I mean incredibly high. We get 11.8% of the international
students in the world. It has stayed the same since 2001. The
US has gone down from 25% of the market to 20%. That market, as
I said earlier, is going to expand. If we wished to, we could
expand our involvement in that market as well. I think it is a
win-win and it is a big win for the UK economy.
Q85 Nicola Blackwood:
You have spoken about the impacts on the economy of some of these
changes. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the impact
on the academic standards at the universities that these changes
might have.
Professor Acton:
I think that it relates to the point that Dr Huppert brought up.
The experience of home and EU students of intellectually mingling
with those from 150 different counties in the world is greatly
enriched. British students are extraordinarily reluctant to go
abroad. We must all encourage them to do so more. But at least
they can spot how fast the world is changing and study other cultures
alive by sitting alongside them in seminars.
Q86 Nicola Blackwood:
But is it simply a matter of cultural enrichment or is it a matter
of learning alternative methodologies and actually increasing
academic status and standing of students?
Professor Acton:
Enormously at the research level, enormously. We must really recognise
the advantages of different approaches that other cultures bring
to us. At the undergraduate level I do think British higher education
is the best in the world. I think it teaches a method of problematizing
and not just taking it as read from the professor that many cultures
still really value, because that is our approach and it is not,
as yet, universal.
Q87 Nicola Blackwood:
How many foreign research students are involved in that undergraduate
teaching and what would happen if those numbers were reduced?
Professor Acton:
Well, a lot of them are, partly by way of training them for a
prospective academic life. I do not think I have a figure for
that. Would you, Steve?
Professor Smith:
No. There are 23,000 postgraduate research international students
in the UK. As you will know, commonly now students are not just
thrown into it. When I did a PhD you just went off and did it.
Now it is about research training and so teaching is part of that;
so you will find that. To be honest with you, the key issue is
that international students enrich every aspect of the life of
our campuses and I think it is a mindset issue, to be candid.
We want the UK to be more globalised, more open. The economies
that are going to succeed in the future are going to be the knowledge
economies—preparing people for jobs for the future, not
jobs in the past—and to do that you have to have those linkages
with the other leading knowledge economies in the world.
By the way, the really interesting thing is that
because of these connections with international students coming
to the UK, UK universities are increasingly forming deep, sustainable
research linkages with the other leading universities in the world.
What we do not want to do is to say, "We do not want to be
part of that game".
Q88 Chair: So
those who are rubbing their hands with glee are the Americans
and the Canadians and the Australians?
Professor Acton:
They really are. The same agents very often guide prospective
applicants: which of these three English-speaking countries would
you like? At the moment, until we finish this and get the message
out for pre-university pathways, "Britain is the warmest
place", there is a danger. There is a sort of nervousness
in the market. I do not know what the British Council said, but
to us they have said there are rather worrying articles appearing
in India and China especially. Almost whatever the consultation
were to say there would be worry. Some of the proposals, and the
B2 one is the absolute Exocet, would have repercussions. We would
sit here in a year and say, "Could we really have done that
deliberately?"
Q89 Chair: There
is no prospect of filling this gap by universities themselves
opening campuses or offices in other countries?
Professor Acton:
You see, the point of the pre-university route is that you need,
especially from Asia, to have immersion in a society where English
is what you hear on the radio, watch on the telly, hear spoken
all the time. People who study English for years and years and
years but never mingle with anybody English speaking cannot get
to B2 from Asia. They can a bit in North Europe. They cannot even
in Southern Europe. It is hopeless in Asia.
Q90 Chair: Professor
Acton and Professor Smith, thank you very much for coming in.
We would appreciate something in writing on the points that have
been raised by Members of the Committee if you are able to do
that. Thank you.
Professor Acton: Thank you.
Professor Smith: Thank you.
1 The witness later estimated 600 overseas students
were recruited via Pathways annually. Back
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