British universities and government cheated non-EU students on a grand scale

I was beguiled by University mission that I’ll get 2yr post-study visa, I went there for undergraduate degree in engineering, got top grades, paid international fee but me & hundreds of thousand international / non-EU students were given a middle finger After graduation. We were looted by British universities And government who paint a rosy picture to cheat international students of their money. Back then the fee for British students and European students was capped at GBP 3000 but for international students like me, I paid 13,000 pounds per year only in tuition fee. After coming back home I struggled to find a job for many years. The alumni and careers office at Lancaster did not provide any careers help when I emailed them. Is there anyway that I can report this fraudulent practice to a media channel?

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 1

Napp

I believe theres this magical invention called an "email" or if you're feeling particularly antediluvian a "phone". I have my suspicions they have better things to report than this particular gripe though.

Reply 2

11cosmos

Original post by Napp

Thanks for reminding. Of course it’s a gripe when British shops a.k.a. universities make billions of pounds each year by promising what they did not deliver! A single British tourist being mistreated / cheated elsewhere takes enough of tabloid space.

This conversation provided me an idea: maybe I should try for non-British media outlets!

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 3

username4926212

Original post by 11cosmos

I was beguiled by Lancaster University mission that I’ll get 2yr post-study visa, I went there for undergraduate degree in engineering, got top grades, paid international fee but me & hundreds of thousand international / non-EU students were given a middle finger After graduation. We were looted by British universities And government who paint a rosy picture to cheat international students of their money. Back then the fee for British students and European students was capped at GBP 3000 but for international students like me, I paid 13,000 pounds per year only in tuition fee. After coming back home I struggled to find a job for many years. The alumni and careers office at Lancaster did not provide any careers help when I emailed them. Is there anyway that I can report this fraudulent practice to a media channel?

You struggled to find a job for many years? Was this really down to Lancaster University, your local job market, or your own lack of skills, attitude, motivation, etc?

Reply 4

yaja_jaswal

Original post by 11cosmos

I was beguiled by Lancaster University mission that I’ll get 2yr post-study visa, I went there for undergraduate degree in engineering, got top grades, paid international fee but me

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 5

yaja_jaswal

Original post by 11cosmos

Thanks for reminding. Of course it’s a gripe when British shops a.k.a. universities make billions of pounds each year (at least between 2010-2015) by promising what they did not deliver! A single British tourist being mistreated / cheated elsewhere takes enough of tabloid space.

This conversation provided me an idea: maybe I should try for non-British media outlets!

What exactly did they say they would deliver? No university guarantees a job after. They will always give statistics and perhaps you got sucked in a bit too much

Reply 6

11cosmos

Original post by _Wellies_

You struggled to find a job for many years? Was this really down to Lancaster University, your local job market, or your own lack of skills, attitude, motivation, etc?

The way freshman get jobs in my home country is different. Company representatives come on campus to hire / interview graduates. I once emailed Lancaster to check if they have any collaborations with some companies in but they didn’t. I even emailed them to ask if they provide some carrier guidance to international student post graduation but they replied in negative. I was dismayed. All that international fee seemed like a waste, I got lesser facilities than the domestic students. I felt even more cheated once Lancaster started selling the same degree for a fraction of the price, by starting A twinning program with a local / poorly rated university in my home country.

Fortunately I’ve learned a lesson, I had a PhD offer in engineering from Cambridge where they charge me a tuition fee of 30,000 pounds per year, whilst British students/EU students get paid a stipend! My parents were willing to pay the fee but I refused. One of my former classmates (a foreign student) a 2:2 student is a PhD student at imperial College paying about 25,000 pounds per year for his PhD. To keep the story short, I think British universities treat international students like cash cows, they put up degrees for sale, they have been milking them for far too long now! It’s about time that their differential treatment gets called out. People become aware of their practices.

Reply 7

11cosmos

Original post by yaja_jaswal

What exactly did they say they would deliver? No university guarantees a job after. They will always give statistics and perhaps you got sucked in a bit too much

They said every foreign student after graduation would get a visa for the duration of Two years, irrespective of whether they have a job offer or not. These two years could be used to search for a job, practical training, volunteering that is this time could be used for getting relevant work experience after which the students could leave to their home countries or continue in Britain if they found a sponsorship.

Reply 8

yaja_jaswal

Original post by 11cosmos

well did you get that Visa? I'm pretty sure universities can't offer visas. That's only done by the home office

Reply 9

History98

This is already a well reported story and there are former students who are in court right now fighting this case even though I think the odds of them prevailing is very slim. The cases have been going on for so long now that I think they are most probably just going to keep the court proceedings going up until they qualify to get settlement on the basis of long residence.

I know many non-EU students are still disappointed about the closure of the PSW stream, but that ship has long sailed, you just have to accept it at this point. I also came to the UK as a non-EU student in 2011 (8 or so months before PSW was scrapped) so I understand your frustration.

A lot of non-EU students and skilled workers here are still are fearful of the ever tightening rules for non-EU immigrants and the scrapping of the PSW is just one prominent example. In fact I remember when the 2016 EU referendum was being held almost all of my non-EU friends were voting out as they felt voting out would reduce the pace at which non-EU immigration policy was being tightened, with permanent residence grants to non-EU having fallen from an annual rate of 250K a year in 2010 to 66K in 2016. When I was around my UK friends all of them would be voting in and when I was around my non-EU friends all of them were voting out, even those who had managed to get a Tier 2 still wanted out. They would even get mad at me for just saying I am voting to remain.

I always advice non-EU students not to risk large sums of money coming to the UK to study if they can't afford it. Taking out educational loans or using a parents life savings to finance a UK degree on the hope that it will lead to PR is a completely flawed strategy and totally not worth it imo. If you can afford it and are doing it for purely academic reasons then fine but if you are purely looking at the money as a pathway to PR then no. Official visa statistics show that only around 4% of students manage to switch to Tier 2 skilled work visas from Tier 4 student visas so why people keep risking it is beyond me. The standard path that many non-EU students attempt to take of getting a Tier 4 student visa, switching to a Tier 2 visa and then switching to ILR is extremely hard to implement in practice and very few students actually succeed in realising that plan.

Also remember that it's not just you. Only around 12K people acquired PR in the UK in 2016 solely on the basis of being skilled workers, the rest of the tens of thousands being granted PR are dependents, spouses e.t.c. Of these 12K an estimated 4K are taken by one company, the NHS. The UK has one of lowest proportions of PR grants going to people who are acquiring that PR on the basis of skilled work in the world. Yet despite this the UK government still has it as government policy to reduce this further.

Reply 10

username4926212

Original post by 11cosmos

The way freshman get jobs in my home country is different. Company representatives come on campus to hire / interview graduates.

This seems to be an argument for why you should have done a degree in your home country rather than splashing out international fees for the reputation, experience, our exceptional weather, etc.

I once emailed Lancaster to check if they have any collaborations with some companies in but they didn’t. I even emailed them to ask if they provide some carrier guidance to international student post graduation but they replied in negative. I was dismayed.

Beyond generic career advice, checking CVs, and the odd careers fair, careers services don't do much else. The onus is on you to do your research and seek out employment.

To keep the story short, I think British universities treat international students like cash cows, they put up degrees for sale, they have been milking them for far too long now!

That has been an open secret for years and something you should have made yourself aware of before doing your degree.

For example...

One of my former classmates (a foreign student) a 2:2 student is a PhD student at imperial College paying about 25,000 pounds per year for his PhD.

It would be highly unusual for a UK student with such a poor degree classification to get onto a PhD program at Imperial.

Reply 11

acromo123

Original post by 11cosmos

Unis treat even home students as cash cows lol don’t blame them, its not their fault that fees are capped for home students but not internationals. And ofc its not, the unis are obviously going to favour home students than internationals

Reply 12

History98

Original post by 11cosmos

Fortunately I’ve learned a lesson, I had a PhD offer in engineering from Cambridge where they charge me a tuition fee of 30,000 pounds per year, whilst British students/EU students get paid a stipend! My parents were willing to pay the fee but I refused. One of my former classmates (a foreign student) a 2:2 student is a PhD student at imperial College paying about 25,000 pounds per year for his PhD. To keep the story short, I think British universities treat international students like cash cows, they put up degrees for sale, they have been milking them for far too long now! It’s about time that their differential treatment gets called out. People become aware of their practices.

I am surprised that a person with a 2.2 could get into Imperial, especially given I know people who couldn't even get places at universities much lower placed universities than Imperial even though they had 2.1 degrees and were also in a position to self fund. A 2.2 is a very low degree classification, especially for engineering. When I graduated in EE in 2015, my cohort had around 45% firsts, and pretty much the rest being 2.1's. I personally know no-one who got a 2.2 so getting into Imperial with a 2.2 would be really odd.

The myth that UK universities "milk" international students is on the most part false. If you compare the fees charged by UK universities to internationals (median of around £17K or so) to what other countries charge then you will notice that the fees being charged are abnormally cheap. In fact the fees charged to internationals are very close to the actual cost of delivering the course and are roughly equivalent to the fee that would be due to the university if a home student chooses to attend the university.

The cost of delivering the course to an international students is bore entirely by the student whilst the cost for delivering the course to the home/EU student is covered by i) a £9.25K fee paid by the student (with the help of a SFC loan), ii) around £3.5K or so as a UK government teaching grant and iii) around £5K or so received from various UK and EU research grants which are ultimately funded by the UK government. In fact, non-EU students make up around 13% of total UK university student population but only 8% of UK university funding is drawn from non-EU sources.