Higher Education

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, I am pleased to have this opportunity to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Norton, whose experience and reputation in this field are outstanding. I declare an interest in that I was once the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education. It is an interest only in the sense that I was in a position to deal with the complaints that we received from international students.

Year by year, complaints from international students were higher in number than their proportion of UK students as a whole, so we started to look into why that was, and how our universities might be falling short in serving them. For that reason, I propose to concentrate today on the experience that we offer international students. Much has been and will be said about visa problems—I note that they are acute—but, even if they are resolved, we will not continue to be number one in attracting foreign students, which we are, unless we offer them a teaching and social experience that lives up to our reputation, and makes their stay here worthwhile.

Visas and formalities must be made student-friendly. From the numbers point of view, the experience may be more of an issue than the visas. One-third of our over 440,000 international students are Chinese. Some 42% of our postgraduates are from non-EU countries; our non-EU students outnumber those from the EU by nearly 3:1. Applications from EU students rose by 3.6% in 2018. We have a plentiful pool of students from around the world. The Chinese supply is almost inexhaustible—for now—regardless of Brexit. The clue to our attraction lies in the nature of our universities. British universities are superb in their attention to every single student with all their problems—unlike the failings reported to me by students who went to Europe and found relatively poor support and accommodation.

The USA is the first choice for British students wanting to go abroad, so it is not wholly visas and money that determine the traffic but language, high reputation and experience—albeit that scholarships are attractive, as they need to be here, too. The traffic is many times higher in students coming here. Where would an able EU student go, if not here? There is not a single non-British EU university in the Times Higher Education ranking of universities until you get to about number 34. Even if the fees go up, the choice for a bright EU student will remain the UK or the USA, where the visa problems and expense are most likely even greater. I am not saying we should be complacent—far from it. There is evidence that we are not treating our foreign students as we should, and our reputation could vanish if we do not improve it.

Our universities need to understand that foreign students, however bright, may have been raised in an entirely different teaching culture. We assume that Asian students, for example, must know the norms of English academic writing. Little training is given and they are expected to follow our habits of citation and referencing, to be critical of professors, and to be competitive rather than collaborative, as they may have been in, for example, China. Universities here need to be sensitive to the influence on foreign students of culture, language, identity, knowledge and their peers, and not to be too ready to accuse them of plagiarism. The solution is more mentoring and induction when they arrive, having checked that their command of the English language is good enough, which is sometimes not the case. Universities have to help foreign students settle in, whether that is by means of alcohol-free freshers’ weeks—which frankly would be advantageous for all students—buddy schemes, arriving in the same week as home students, which is a good idea, mingling with them in accommodation, and in general doing everything to avoid segregation into national groups, which happens when there are significant numbers arriving from one country and they are not integrated as soon as they arrive. London colleges are particularly problematic, with their scattered campuses, high travel costs and concentration of foreign students in large groups.

Universities need to make honest promises to overseas students and have direct communication with them. Sometimes they are recruited to come here by intermediary agents whose aim is to attract as many as possible, and who may promise undeliverable studies. The Office of the Independent Adjudicator used to get complaints that foreign students would come here to study with a particular professor, only to find, when they arrived, that he or she had gone on sabbatical, or even died. Sometimes they complained that equipment promised and needed for scientific research was broken or not available, or that universities were not helpful with visa and financial issues. Promoting inclusive societies and clubs is very effective in settling international students and making them feel welcome. We must avoid making them think that, once they have paid their fees, they are not of much interest.

What do we do for students who cannot afford to go back to their home countries in the vacation and who know nobody here? I draw attention to the valuable work of an organisation called HOST UK. It is a charity with a UK-wide network of some 1,500 volunteer families who welcome overseas students into their homes for short visits at weekends and over festive seasons. It is the only nationwide organisation providing this much-needed service of integrating overseas students into the community. The benefits of those HOST visits for the UK, in terms of promoting international friendship and building new relationships for the future, are incalculable. The welcoming of international students will become even more important following our withdrawal from the EU as part of the process of building new international relationships. Will the Government undertake to maintain and increase support for HOST UK through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office?

Sadly, I met a student from Paris recently, who told me that he and several classmates had decided to study in London to escape the anti-Semitism rampant in French universities. For example, earlier this year the Jewish student building at the Panthéon-Sorbonne campus was vandalised. He said that he was upset to find that the atmosphere was as bad, if not worse, at his London college. I have spoken about this before, and your Lordships will know that fears of anti-Semitism, especially associated with universities and the Labour Party, are worldwide news, and will deter some from coming here, albeit a small number. It needs to be tackled.

The UK is one of the world's leading study destinations because of the first-class experience that our universities can and must continue to offer. The International Student Barometer finds the UK number one for overall satisfaction, reputation and quality, employability, making good contacts, quality lectures, laboratories, and a supportive environment. Indeed, one might call it “the highest level of special”—had that phrase not already been commandeered by someone else.

Foreign students are valuable to us not merely as an export, and we must hope they never see themselves in that light alone. They are valuable because they bring their diverse talents to enrich the home student body and because of the research they do. Oxford University spin-outs have an estimated turnover of £600 million annually; 45% of the founders or co-founders are from outside the UK, as are 77% of the founders of start-ups. We need to reach out to our foreign students, graduates and researchers with financial assistance. I need only mention the astonishing success of the Rhodes scholars, who now come from a wider range of countries; the scholarships offered by Oxford, for example, to Indian and Russian students; the Gates scholarships at Cambridge; the Weidenfeld-Hoffmann scholarships offered at Oxford; the joint collaboration between Oxford and Chinese students in biotechnology and health; and the work on tropical diseases with researchers from the Far East. We want them because they take home a good impression of the UK which we hope will last a lifetime.

Will the Government maintain and increase scholarships for international students—such as, the Chevening and Commonwealth Scholarships—as the benefits clearly outweigh the costs? Will the Government also pursue full associate country status with Horizon Europe to keep the research flow going? The foreign students are our friends and collaborators; they have enriched us in the past and we owe them a great deal. We know what it feels like, because I am sure that many of your Lordships, like me, have been foreign students abroad. We appreciated those instances when we were made welcome and made lifelong friends, and came to love the countries where we studied.