Written evidence submitted by the Head
of International Student Support, Imperial College London (SV14)
My colleague Professor David Wark attended the Committee's
round table discussion of the UKBA consultation on the Student
Immigration route in mid-December 2010 and will be submitting
separately to you the statistics from Imperial College cited at
this meeting, which I am sure will include the proportion of our
students who are from non-European countries (29%) and the financial
contribution they make to the College (£75.1 million in 2009-10).
He has asked me to write to you with some additional points:
- 1. PSW should not be completely removed as
this will damage recruitment of overseas students to Imperial.
Our students see this as an excellent opportunity to gain some
valuable short-term work experience in the UK, not as a route
to permanent residence. Competitor countries such as Canada and
Australia are looking into opening up this option—we will
lose students to them. If any changes are introduced we suggest
that they are delayed until after the end of January 2012, so
that students currently in their final year of study or on one-year
Masters courses are not disappointed by having this opportunity
removed.
- 2. If the UKBA is determined to curtail this
route then we would suggest a phasing in of one of the following
options:
- (a) Maintain the route for graduates of HTS
institutions; or
- (b) Maintain the route for graduates with
a Masters or PhD; or
- (c) Revert to Science and Engineering Graduates
only, which is how this route originated.
- 3. Students already in the UK wanting to
study a new course should not be required to return home to apply
from overseas—this would cause considerable problems for
Masters students who complete their courses in September and want
to move straight on to a PhD. Most PhD funding begins in October,
so there would not be sufficient time for students to return to
their home country and obtain a new visa at an already busy time
of the year. Processing times in China in Summer 2010 were up
to 25 working days. In addition, students applying for Tier 4
visas in the UK are able to benefit from expert advice from trained
university staff—this advice is more difficult to access
from overseas.
- 4. Any changes to the rules on pre-degree
study will seriously impact on our recruitment of overseas students—currently
53% of enrolled non-EEA undergraduates at Imperial previously
studied in the UK at private schools or FE Colleges.
- 5. We do not feel it is necessary to make
any further confusing changes to the rules on working in the UK
while on a student visa.
- 6. Highly Trusted Sponsor status should be
maintained for the duration of a Sponsor Licence (four years),
rather than renewable annually. If some of our feeder institutions
were to lose HTS status for a year we would not have sufficient
time (or budget) to step up our overseas recruitment efforts in
time to mitigate against this change. Moreover, if we are Highly
Trusted Sponsors, then judgements of an academic nature (such
as English language entry requirements, issues of student progression)
should be at the discretion of the University, not the UKBA.
- 7. The changes proposed in this consultation
are not proportionate, nor correctly directed to the actual problem,
which the UKBA has identified as not being within the University
sector. We would therefore expect to see a number of concessions
and exemptions for students on degree-level courses at institutions
with HTS status, where the abuse is not happening.
- 8. Education is a significant UK export so
extreme care should be taken in the introduction of any potentially
damaging measures, in particular when cuts are being made to other
University income streams.
January 2011
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