A BBC investigation has found evidence that suggests some universities under financial pressure accept overseas students who lack adequate English.
Money from overseas students totals £1.6bn and makes up a third of university fees in England.
Arjuna – not his real name – is a law student in London and admits he cannot understand what lecturers are saying, Inside Out has discovered.
He said he could not write assignments and sometimes has had to cheat.
“In my class, the guys they know little English that they can understand properly.
“The Pakistani and Indians and the Gujaratis they can’t understand even one single word in English.
“That is the main problem for us, we can’t understand what they are telling.”
A temporary solution is to get help and until his English improves – he said that sometimes meant paying for others to write his assignments.
Arjuna is not alone.
One former English graduate from Cambridge University said he made a living from doing other people’s work.
These were for students from the Middle East and South America not studying at Cambridge University.
He told Inside Out that he wrote assignments for anything from business studies to European law and green economics to photography.
“I am highly surprised that it wasn’t flagged up that these particular students were perhaps achieving a 2.1 and writing reasonably fluidly, when they couldn’t speak English particularly well, let alone write it,” he said.
The pressure to recruit is causing concern among academics.
Lecturer Jan Farndale left Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge two years ago.
She taught English to overseas students but was not happy with the standard of language skills.
‘Not capable’
“I think the big problem was money,” she said.
“We were recruiting students who were academically not capable and the important issue was that they could pay.
“They did not have adequate English to be able to follow the course so it was difficult to know whether they could follow the subject.”
Anglia Ruskin University denied that there was a problem at the university with language ability then or now.
Sandra Hollis, vice-president of international and development services, said: “If we come across students who want to join Anglia Ruskin and who are qualified academically, but their English does not reach the right level, then we can recommend a couple of courses of action to reach the right level.”
Erode reputation
Some academics have also criticised the fact some universities have allowed students to pass even though their work was below standard.
Professor Alan Smithers, from Buckingham University, said he had witnessed leniency.
He claimed that at one university, not Buckingham, a deal was negotiated with Saudi Arabia to offer a diploma programme to 20 students.
He said that when it came to the examination, about 17 students were not up to the task.
“It became an issue that the money had been accepted so there were various compromises around the margins, and the majority of them got through,” he said.
Universities in England are facing cuts of more than £900m over the next three years.
Professor Smithers believes there is a danger some may erode their academic reputations by securing their financial positions.
“It is leading to a reinterpretation of what a British degree stands for in the world at large,” he said.
Leave a Reply
