Your Views

No exploitation here?

I cannot recognise the picture painted by Robert Walls about the behaviour of British universities in relation to foreign student recruitment ("UK universities are `exploiting' foreign students", EDUCATION, 2 December).

I have been responsible for the research degrees programme in the Business School here for almost six years, and I have sat on the University Research Degrees Committee for a good deal longer than that. In that time I have dealt with hundreds of applications from overseas students, and if I behaved as Robert Walls suggests we would now find ourselves heaving with overseas research students.

However, the first thing the 12-strong faculty committee which assesses applications considers is whether an applicant is capable of PhD work (including language capability). We accept very few foreign students on this basis, and I have never had the slightest pressure put on me by faculty or senior management to accept students who are clearly wealthy and able to pay, even though we would be hundreds of thousands of pounds better off if we did. The picture in the rest of the university is the same: we want more research students, but only good ones.

PROF EAMONN JUDGE

Chair, Faculty Research Awards SubCommittee,

Leeds Business School,

Leeds Metropolitan University

The debate needs balance

Robert Walls' article concerning the lack of English language skills among overseas students, whom I prefer to describe using the less colonial and imperialistic term "international students", provides a provocative perspective on an important subject. It will, no doubt, stimulate much discussion in Britain's universities.

However, some balance needs to be brought to the debate by outlining some of the arguments which are not adequately mentioned in his article. It is inaccurate and offensive to view international students uniquely as a means of generating money for universities. They contribute much in terms of their culture and background knowledge. Many of those who embark on postgraduate courses, who form the greatest number of the students being discussed, are highly qualified academics in their own right. More importantly, a university's decision to recruit students from many different countries reflects the pluralistic nature of the research culture itself, in which academics engage in trans-national debates and encounters.

To suggest that most of them are having an "expensive and unsatisfying holiday" is, of course, a highly generalised comment. Most of the postgraduate students with whom I work are highly motivated, career-oriented people who are learning valuable transferable skills. One soon appreciates that they have an obvious sense of purpose.

In response to Walls' comments about the lack of English language skills, it is well to point out that most, if not all, universities provide on- going language support to these students in the form of intensive pre- sessional courses and (often free) in-sessional assistance. Under such circumstances, students improve dramatically during their year(s) of study.

My main concern with the article, however, lies elsewhere, in the unconscious ideology which shapes Walls' argument. It is right and just, in a university climate which is seeking to promote equal opportunities in all aspects of life, that British universities should be open to all. A protectionist system reserved strictly for the highest quality, native-speaker/writers of English would deny able, academic students (British as well as international) the right to contribute positively to intellectual life within academia. It would forge a sterile, arid environment, filled with the self-congratulatory elitism which one had fondly hoped was a thing of the past.

DR GERARD PAUL SHARPLING

Centre for English Language Teacher Education, University of Warwick

Canadians do it too

Of course universities and other higher education institutions will deny the kinds of charges made by Robert Walls. But Walls is not the only one with evidence of the practices which he describes.

Until my recent retirement I was a professor and head of department for 16 years at a university in Hong Kong. Throughout that time, though increasingly in the late Eighties and Nineties, I knew of numerous cases of British institutions - by no means only "newer universities" - which admitted students from Hong Kong to first or higher degrees in a variety of disciplines whose lack of adequate proficiency in English had resulted in their rejection from my own institution.

We also found many Hong Kong students who had completed a first degree in Britain or in Australia, Canada or the US, and whom we admitted to postgraduate courses, had considerable difficulties in written and spoken English. It seemed legitimate to wonder how these students had managed to satisfy course requirements, even though their academic credentials were rarely in doubt.

We knew the names of institutions which resorted to the kind of practices alleged by Robert Walls. However, as far as we were aware, no institution in Britain has matched certain Canadian universities in which there were/ are classes restricted to Hong Kong students taught in Cantonese by Hong Kong academics.

BRIAN COOKE

Plymouth, Devon

It is self-defeating

I read with some alarm the account by Robert Walls on UK universities "exploiting" foreign students. If it is true then those universities are adopting a policy of short term expediency which will eventually undermine their credibility to provide quality courses. It is self-defeating. As managers of the UK National Academic Recognition Information Centre (NARIC) on contract to the Department for Education and Employment, ECCTIS 2000 is responsible for providing academic recognition of qualifications for individuals, institutions and business.

We rely on our counterpart agencies in the EU and further afield to provide accurate recognition information in order that this complex issue is ethically handled in a way that provides the citizen with a fair assessment of their qualification in relation to a different academic system.

If some UK universities are recruiting students on the basis of cash rather than ability, they are misleading all parties and in particular prospective employers who will be forced to set up their own entry tests, as many of them already do, to ensure students are what they claim. The NARIC network has been set up to demystify for the citizen some of the transnational hazards to rightful recognition of their hard work - if this is being affected by some in the dash-for-cash, where does this leave the majority, both individual and UK Higher Education PLC, whose hard work could be tarnished by the efforts of the unscrupulous few?

JOHN FITZGIBBON

ECCTIS 2000 Ltd, Cheltenham

Personal development

In her column, Susan Bassnett highlights the problem of assessing the diverse performance and value for money provided by academics in higher education. (Comment, EDUCATION, 2 December)

While it is true that thinking is a process which is hard to quantify and evaluate, there is no doubt that many academics would like to know if they are carrying out their work to the satisfaction of their peers. The problem is that the job descriptions of most academics are vague and personal development plans with annual objectives and milestones are almost non-existent in academia. The need is not so much one of checking performance but to provide guidance on what is expected. Informal personal development plans in academia need not be onerous and might well promote better teaching and research quality.

DR MIKE SIMMONS

University of Aberdeen

Further education needed

The results of the Higher Education Funding Council for England's survey into student drop-out rates in the university sector (The Independent, 3 December) make somewhat disturbing but predictable reading.

In moving from a relatively elitist to a mass higher education system, we are pushing more and more people into degree courses for which many are simply not suited. Not surprisingly, large numbers of students fail to complete their courses, with the highest drop-out rates by far during the first year.

The government, opposition parties and others seem obsessed with the need for huge numbers of degree holders to benefit the economy. This is a mistaken view and is largely responsible for the waste we are now seeing of students giving up.

While there are many reasons for advancing one's education in the wider sense - and a degree is one way to attain this advancement - what the economy does need is people who are well skilled and qualified in technical terms.

To this end the situation is crying out not for any further expansion of the university sector but for a huge increase in investment in further education (the college sector) and in training. It is vital not to confuse the two. If we could get our priorities right, we could begin to lower drop-out rates - with all their economic and social waste - and stop misleading our young people in particular that the only advancement is to enrol on a degree. There is nothing wrong in mass education and training; as your editorial says, we need a diversity of approach that is sadly lacking.

D F RICHARDS

Southampton

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