internationalstudents – View From A Bridge – management, education and personal thoughts

SHORELIGHT REPORT AND STUDENT SAFETY – ILLUMINATION OR OBFUSCATION?

We are familiar with the notion that there are “lies, damned lies and statistics” so whenever an organisation throws up figures to paint a scenario that is in their interests it’s always worth taking a second look at the source data. Students, parents and agents should particularly beware claims made primarily for marketing purposes when safety issues are at stake. Caution is certainly a good approach to take with the recent collaboration between Shorelight and US News Global Education (USNGE) which includes a, so called, University Safety Index and league table of the safest States for international students.

There is no place in the world that is entirely free of potential trouble, and international students should be alert to both the joys and the potential troubles of studying overseas*. The widespread rise in hate crimes around the world and specific incidents of racism are as concerning for the UK, Australia and Canada as the USA. Reputable universities work hard to make their campuses as safe as possible but the advice to incoming international students should be pragmatic rather than marketing gloss.

There is no reason to believe that the numbers used are incorrect but the way the Index is constructed shows Washington D.C., Vermont and Massachusetts as the top three states of “the “extremely safe” category for international students.” In September 2021 these States were listed as the top three of the list for Hate Crimes per capita in a 24/7 Wall Street report using FBI Uniform Crime Data and the FBI data shows Washington D.C. as having the US’s most violent crime rate per 100,000 inhabitants in 2020. Further analysis suggests these anomalies reflect a selection and conflation of data that may mislead international students about the relative safety of their study destination.

Table Source: University Safety Index: State Safety by International Student Enrollment Percentage from How Safe Are U.S. Campuses?

Not All Crime on US Campuses is In Decline

While focusing on a comparison to criminal offenses two decades ago the Shorelight/USNGE’s own graph (below) shows that the “criminal offenses on campus” were comparatively higher in 2019 than five years before. Also, the long term decline is largely due to a fall in motor theft, robbery and burglary which masks other trends on offenses against the person. The U.S. Department of Education’s Campus Safety and Security Survey (CSS Survey), the source of the Shorelight/USNGE data on criminal offenses, shows that hate crimes, “sex-offences-forcible” and violence against women (VAWA) have increased in recent years.

Source: University Safety Index: State Safety by International Student Enrollment Percentage from How Safe Are U.S. Campuses? By Selene Angier

Since 2014 the number of cases historically recorded by the CSS Survey as “Sex Offenses – Forcible”, increased 65% from 7,955 to 13,121 by 2019. Since 2014 these offenses have been reported separately as “rape” or “fondling” with the former growing 33.5% and the latter by 124.2%. A National Center for Education Statistics summary reflects these figures and notes that “according to reports in a student survey administered at several dozen large universities, officially reported sexual assaults represented only a minority of sexual assaults that occurred.”

There has been excellent progress in reducing motor theft, burglary and robbery but the situation appears to have worsened in terms of sexually related offenses. Offenses recorded as “aggravated assault” also remain stubbornly around the 4,000 mark. Mixing and matching the categories of crimes against property and crimes against the person fails to offer clarity that might be helpful in assessing risk.

Source: U.S. Department of Education Campus Safety and Security Trend Data

The CSS Survey also shows, separately, a 47% growth in reported offenses of violence against women, from 12,232 in 2014 to 17,578 in 2018 (the most recent data). These have been registered since the Violence Against Women ReAuthorization Act 2013 (VAWA) brought changes to Clery Act reporting requirements. With estimates that over 40% of international students are women it would seem reasonable to reflect this information in an article on campus safety.

Source: U.S. Department of Education Campus Safety and Security Trend Data

International Student Safety Off-Campus Matters

The CSS Survey data only includes cases, “…on campus, on property controlled by the university or a student organization, or on public property immediately adjacent to campus.” By using this measure the Shorelight/USNGE Index removes any information about the towns and cities where international students will hope to be welcomed. This contributes to the leap of logic that establishes a league table of “the safest states to study in” which doesn’t include any city-wide or state-wide crime data.

The principle of aggregating data across a state is, itself, highly questionable when it comes to giving a student information on selecting a specific destination. The statistician joke, credited to C. Bruce Grossman, that with your head in the oven and your feet in the freezer you are comfortable on average, comes to mind. This consequences are evident as soon as you begin to consider more wide-ranging data about the crime rates in different cities.

In 2021 US News and World Report considered Massachusetts the 7^th safest state in the US (although only 24^th lowest for violent crime) but COVE Home Security in 2017 suggested the chances of being a victim of violent crime in Boston made “the city less safe than 83 percent of US cities”. Neighbourhod Scout indicates that UMass Amherst is in a town that has a crime rate of 5.99 per 1,000 residents while UMass Boston is in a city with a crime rate of 26.45 per 1,000 residents. Shorelight/USNGE use their Index to say both universities “…are located in the “extremely safe” category for international students” even though the numbers suggest the locations are quite different in terms of crime.

Washington DC, according to the Index is an ‘Extremely Safe’ State despite a 2019 crime rate which some sources indicate is 1.8 times higher than the US average and higher than in 95.5% of US cities. American University’s campus may be a haven of civility and courtesy but students would probably be wise to exercise appropriate caution when they move onto the surrounding streets. The university provides personal safety tips to international students which is both responsible and appropriate.

Hate Crime is Relevant to International Students

The report is heavy on presenting data to reassure international students, yet surprisingly silent on the incidence of Hate Crimes recorded by the CSS Survey. It was a 2008 amendment to the Clery Act which required post secondary institutions to report these incidents. In 2018 the National Center for Education Statistics indicated that 43% of reported Hate Crimes in 2018 were motivated by racial bias.

The data presents a grim picture with a spike over the most recent years which is of relevance to students travelling to the US from abroad. This may not fit the Shorelight/USNGE narrative but it is an important issue if students are to be given the most complete picture. The Australian response to international students who are victims of crime might also inspire positive initiatives to engage productively with the issue rather than ignore it.

Source: U.S. Department of Education Campus Safety and Security Trend Data

At a state level Shorelight/USNGE report considers Massachusetts “extremely safe” for international students but the state’s campuses rank behind only New York (250) and California (174) in terms of reported Hate Crimes in the Survey. The trend has been remorselessly upward for a decade. In the broader Massachusetts context even the Editorial Board of the Boston Globe has recently argued that the situation in the state is serious enough to warrant its legislature updating hate crime laws.

Source: U.S. Department of Education Campus Safety and Security Trend Data

Whose Facts for What Purpose?

It is not unusual for organizations to give the most positive presentation of their situation and the Index is positioned as a response to a situation where “news headlines and social media shares can unfairly grab attention and raise concerns”. But it seems specious to suggest that “U.S. News and Global Education (USNGE) and Shorelight — two leaders in U.S. higher education — have partnered to develop the University Safety Index” when one is owned by the other. It also seems misleading to present the item as news on a website where the branding gives the gloss and reflected credibility of US News and World Report’s league tables.

While the article is designated as “News” the authorship, data and presentation of universities looks like an inside marketing job. The writer was once on staff for Shorelight, has written regularly for the company’s website and describes herself as a “content manager specializing in e-commerce marketing, UX messaging and lifestyle brands.” The statistics were compiled by Shorelight’s vice president of data science and strategy.

The marketing dimension becomes even more clear when “Notable U.S. News Global Education Universities” are highlighted – they just happen to be Shorelight partners. There is, however, no mention that the lowest “Somewhat Safe” category of the Index features Florida and Illinois where Shorelight has partnerships with Florida International University, University of Central Florida and University of Illinois at Chicago as well as new partner Eureka College. The implication of the Index is that international students have more reason to be concerned about safety if they go to those institutions but that seems a less palatable marketing statement.

Summary

Several countries and many universities are in a headlong dash for more international students and most recently Colleges Ontario commented on the need to recruit them to fill funding gaps. CBC News recently reported on the problems for students from south Asia who had arrived to study in Calgary but couldn’t find jobs and were unprepared for the winter weather. It’s a toxic mix where students are not getting realistic information about the situations they will encounter and there is every chance it will end in tragedy for individuals as well as blemishes on institutional reputations.

Fall intakes have shown that international students are returning to the US in significant numbers after the pandemic but it is entirely possible that some will have lingering doubts about attitudes towards foreign visitors. It is, however, unhelpful to underestimate the importance of ensuring that young people are given balanced information and not lured into a false sense of security. International students are courageous, committed and deserve more respect than that.

The US should also be applauded for publishing campus crime data in a consistent manner and might consider positioning this as a competitive advantage over the UK where there is a growing clamour for better data on student-related crime. While the Complete University Guide is to be commended for giving comparative information on an issue where one in five students are likely to be a victim, action from HESA or the Office for Students would be welcome. For international students, agents and other decision makers the best advice is to demand information directly from your university of choice and avoid sales promotion gimmicks.

NOTES

* I am not aware of any comprehensive and credible research on which countries are safest for international students. Various guides exist but tend to base their outcomes on overall country statistics. The Founder and CEO of iSchool Connect based a recent table in The Tribune of India on indexes covering factors such as Global Peace, quality of life etc. It includes Singapore at number five – a country where the Prime Minister has recently acknowledged “resentment over foreigners”.

**US News Global Education was formed as a collaboration between US News and World Report (USNWR) and Shorelight but is a subsidiary of Shorelight. The University Safety Index is a reminder of the link to USNWR’s own league tables whose methodology ex-Editor Peter Bernstein, in a classic Freudian slip, called “this mythology.”

***This blog relies, in part, upon my understanding and interpretation of various data sources and media reports. While data is almost always partial in the way it is collected, categorized and presented I have considered a range of sources in an attempt to ensure the points made about specific locations are reasonable. I am happy to correct any material errors brought to my attention by an authoritative source.

Go compare – the emerging threat to higher education

Louise Nicol and Alan Preece First published in University World News on 22 May 2021

Commodification is increasingly likely to be a word that universities need to recognise, understand and apply to their business planning as technology levels the playing field for international student recruitment.

Investopedia tells us that it means ‘a basic good used in commerce that is interchangeable with other goods of the same type’. When you put it alongside Clayton Christensen’s ‘jobs to be done’ and the growing availability of university comparison or application sites, it’s easy to see emerging comparisons with the marketplace for car insurance.

The point about the ‘jobs to be done’ approach is that it highlights that the purpose of buying a particular good or service is to ‘make progress in specific circumstances’. For most international students (and increasingly home students) the purpose of getting a degree is to get a job and to have decent career prospects.

Higher education may want students to study for love of a subject, but the harsh reality for a generation that is poorer than its parents is that this does not seem to be leading to what they need.

A world where outcome is all that counts

A 2013 report by Oliver Wyman shows that, in the United Kingdom, price comparison websites (PCWs) were securing 60% of new motor insurance policies after starting up just a decade before. It suggests that many people were content to make their purchasing decision in this way rather than studiously interrogate the terms and conditions of every company individually.

There is no doubt that the ability to consider price alongside any other factors was vital in the rise of such sites. Moreover, the report found that the reality was that many of the insurance products were virtually indistinguishable.

Choosing a university may not be exactly the same as choosing car insurance, but aggregator sites could present dozens of business and finance courses that all end with a degree from an institution.

In the case of the UK these are accredited by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA). The QAA Quality Mark or Review Graphic shows that the provider has “met or exceeded the UK expectations for quality and standards in their QAA review”. In principle, every UK university with this seal of approval has degrees with equal status, but they offer them at significantly different prices.

The great and the good of higher education may be shaking their heads at this and thinking of Lord Darlington’s quote from Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windemere’s Fan about ‘a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing’. But, in a situation where the customer has access to alternatives at the touch of a button, they have the means to determine the price they are willing to pay for the outcome they want.

Lord Darlington’s remark was about the nature of a cynic and it is arguable that young people are increasingly sceptical about the value of higher education.

Price, grades and rankings as differentiators

Institutions will undoubtedly look for ways of distinguishing themselves, but there are very few that have the financial muscle or marketing wit to be able to do so on a global scale.

It was not unknown before the internet for lowly institutions to inflate the tuition fees of their courses to international students on the basis that ‘price is a proxy for quality’. Better accessibility to information and ubiquitous university rankings have put a halt to that ploy so there will be a need for different tactics.

Entry qualifications, which are often seen as a signal of a quality institution, could become a way of communicating quality. But it has become clear that, with the number of universities going SATs free in the United States and the propensity for UK universities to be very flexible with international students, this is shaky ground.

It’s made even more complex by pathway operations that will offer international students a route to entry based on getting the required language level and passing the pathway’s own academic tests.

It would also seem counterproductive for most institutions to try to distinguish themselves by having high tariff entry points on a comparison site. Student matching may be sophisticated, but there is limited scope for nuance about such a defining piece of information and losing volume is not something that most institutions can afford to do.

Trying to impress with output grades is an equally risky business given the potential for grade inflation and the ability of institutions to decide how many of their students get ‘good degrees’.

University ranking may offer a different sort of quality test for students and, whether you love them or hate them, they have become a popular measure of distinction. However, research from the 2020 QS International Student Survey, recently presented at the Universities UK International Higher Education Forum, showed that there is a significant mismatch between the way rankings are compiled and the perceptions of students.

Prospective international students were asked to rank, in order of importance, what they thought a university’s good ranking indicated about the institution.

The top result was that 72% believe graduate employment rate is the most important factor. This was even above the 69% mark for the qualification level of staff members at the institution and 64% for student satisfaction. How a university is perceived by employers was deemed important by 49%, above the 48% for the number of citations in academic journals.

In short, students believed that employment outcomes and employer views were more important than staff quality, student satisfaction and research publications.

Price, ranking and employability

In that context it is disappointing that no current rankings include international student graduate employment as an input.

Within the QS World University Rankings, “employer reputation”, which is not the same as graduate employment rate but could provide some indication, accounts for just 10% of the measure. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2021 methodology did not include any element related to international employability or graduate outcomes.

Government-mandated graduate outcomes data collected in the majority of countries are usually only published with responses from domestic students. As the vast majority of international students – in the UK the estimate is 85% or more – still return to their home country, it would be inaccurate and misleading to use them as a guide to international student employability.

With rankings publishers forming partnerships with agents, aggregators and other interested parties to gain international student eyeballs, it is important for them to pay more attention to this important area.

International student graduate outcomes are being collected by private organisations and would bring real added value that is demonstrably aligned with the aspirations of students willing to invest to study abroad.

Without incorporating this key metric, the rankings will remain more of a vanity contest between institutions than a relevant and useful guide to applicants.

Price, ranking and international student employability are likely to become the key measures of a university’s value proposition when degree information is simple to compare and most institutions are obliged to engage with the aggregator sites.

Being a commodity product means a race to the bottom on price if that is where the institution chooses to compete.

Rankings are fickle, difficult to manage and leave the institution’s fate in the hands of publishers looking to satisfy their own ends. This is a good moment to really focus on providing the student customer with what they want and find ways to enhance value by proving that the institution provides a route to employability.

Alan Preece is an expert in global education, business transformation and operational management and runs the blogging site View from a Bridge and Louise Nicol is founder of Asia Careers Group SDN BHD.

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

Aggregator recruitment start-ups meet the old order

First printed in University World News on 01 May 2021

The developing aggregator picture has some of the hallmarks of a classic movie where the scrappy outsider working from their bedroom takes on the corporate giants with near limitless resources.

One sign is that we are seeing Yocket, a company started in 2015 by four Indian graduates for US$132, taking on ETS, founded in 1947, which had revenues of over US$1 billion in 2019.

Underneath that David versus Goliath headline there are many other factors at play, with most leading to circumstances where many universities find themselves marginalised as active recruiters.

EdAgree is a subsidiary of ETS founded with US$1 million of seed funding from ETS’s corporate investment arm, ETS Strategic Capital. It runs a free platform allowing international students to match with and apply to university with the support of an advisor.

Yocket offers an online platform which helps students find their best fit university and offers counselling along with other support services.

Yocket’s claim of more than 400,000 registered users and over 100 university ‘tie-ups’ looks impressive with EdAgree only boasting nine listed university partners on its website at the time of writing. But the website also promises university partners the benefits of synergy saying: “EdAgree, with ETS, will bring you qualified students who are ready to succeed…”.

Just for good measure, ETS Strategic Capital is also an investor in ApplyBoard, while ETS is a partner of Studyportals.

A fast-changing world

It’s a dizzying world with companies appearing, rising and disappearing in the space of a few years, driven by the hunger for edtech investments and the expectations of significant growth in globally mobile students.

Start-ups since 2015 include the three mentioned above as well as Edvoy (part of IEC Abroad), Leverage Edu and StudentApply, while SchoolApply has risen, been purchased by INTO University Partnerships and then closed in the space of five years.

Longer term stalwarts such as Studyportals, founded in 2008, have responded with ambitions to be seen as ‘the matchmaker’ in higher education.

Their April 2021 blog notes that they have historically focused on generic content, but are trying to move to more personally curated content including scholarship opportunities.

The blog mentions Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and Netflix as inspirations, but it seems likely that the new kids on the ‘university matching’ block have influenced the pace of change.

The dynamics of the sector are still working themselves out, but some trends and tensions seem evident:

• Geographical focus – India seems to be the focus of attention which is not surprising as it has been identified by everybody as the most obvious volume growth market for student mobility and the preponderance of graduate students might suggest they are more comfortable and willing to forego involvement with an agent.

• Role of agents – Several of the newer players have been vocal in suggesting they are correcting the inefficiency of a disorganised agent market. Most aggregators seem to be reaching out to the agent community and providing a new channel for getting university offers. But savvy agents have been using technology for years and it remains to be seen if the agent powerhouses in China will be easily disrupted by aggregators.

• Pathway operators – Much of the recent effort of pathway operators has been to drive revenue through providing direct recruitment to both their pathway partners and as a stand-alone service to other institutions. This route to growth could be blocked if aggregators are able to dominate with students and agents in most countries. Pathway operations may also begin to rely on aggregators – an enquiry to ApplyBoard showed 34 of 97 opportunities identified in a search for UK-based institutions were for pathways.

• Aggregating aggregators – The investments related to ETS suggest that there is plenty of potential for big, well-funded players to selectively invest in a portfolio of aggregators by picking off smaller players or investing in start-ups who might be happy to take the money and run. The ETS involvement also offers the potential of vertical integration along the student journey.

Added value

It might be that the winners and losers are those that find the secret sauce of added value which makes them the best choice for nervous students and parents considering study 5,000 miles from home.

The Studyportals model of simply providing information has morphed into a much more bespoke service but seems a long way from Leverage Edu’s claim to offer access to ‘best-matched career and higher education options’, access to 2,000+ personalised mentors, scholarship finding, education loans, accommodation options and long-term mentoring.

Several of the newer entrants also mention employment and career opportunities with the same fanfare as their links to high-quality universities.

There is no doubt that the aggregators have the financial muscle to do whatever they think will fit the bill. Craft, the enterprise intelligence company’s platform of commercial data, shows that there is a tidal wave of money flowing.

Studyportals raised US$5.4 million in 2017, Leverage Edu’s latest funding round in February 2021 was reported to be US$6.5 million taking total funding to US$9.8 million and the ApplyBoard story is well known, with the funding round in September 2020 reported to be US$53.2 million to take the total raised to US$182.4 million.

It leads to an extremely disrupted and fragmented situation for universities which do not have the will or the money to build their brand, their recruitment expertise and their marketing capability to secure students.

Packy McCormick, founder of the Not Boring Club, notes that the “biggest breakout successes created in the first two decades of the 2000s – the aggregators – started by aggregating demand and using that demand to commodify supply”. The point about a commodity is that it is interchangeable with other goods of the same type and it can be argued that degrees from many institutions are very difficult to differentiate.

A zero-sum game?

If the algorithm works, then the degree alternatives offered should all match the student’s academic capabilities with their desire for a specified qualification from a country or countries of their choice.

They will then be able to focus on factors such as cost, visas and post-study work with the security of knowing that their choices have been laid before them.

This should send a chill down the spine of institutions that have relied on the promise of ‘acres of rolling grassland’, ‘years of academic integrity’ or ‘highly regarded professors’ rather than differentiated, relevant courses leading to successful careers.

There is an inevitable and inexorable shift in the axis of power and the pandemic has accelerated the disruption of old norms. Aggregators are here to stay and the only question is the extent to which most universities find themselves caught in a zero-sum game, where attempts to distinguish themselves become more about marketing spend or data on graduate outcomes than nuances of location.

For all but a few, commodification may then be the name of the game.

Alan Preece is an expert in global education, business transformation and operational management and runs the blogging site View from a Bridge.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

INTO AT WORK IN A LAND DOWN UNDER*

Rumours of INTO University Partnerships (INTO) striking a deal with the University of Western Australia (UWA) seem to be gathering pace**. It’s certainly clear that Study Group’s operation aligned with UWA, Taylor’s College, is closing in December 2021 and is currently not accepting any more students. Meanwhile UWA has announced the opening of UWA College, a new pathway institution, in February 2022 and it sounds as if this could be where INTO has landed its first ‘partnership’ in Australia.

The loss of UWA takes Study Group down to three university partners in Australia, according to its website, but it continues with its links to the top-ranked Australian National University and University of Sydney. Navitas currently lists 11 Australian partners with only one from the Go8. Just for the record that’s Adelaide which also appears on Kaplan’s list of three partners.

INTO’s entry into the Australian fray makes it the newcomer and comes some years after casting eyes at the opportunities . Discussions with La Trobe (currently a Navitas partner) were fairly advanced in the early 2010’s and there were other flirtations. The questions – why now and why Perth – would lead to an understanding of whether this is opportunism, an emerging strategy for diversification or a desperate throw of the dice.

The company’s problems with losing partners have been well rehearsed in recent months but there seemed some logic to taking joint ventures accruing debts to INTO out of the portfolio. While it is doubtful that all the decisions to close were driven by INTO, the remaining partners include some top names in the UK at a point when international recruitment is bouncing back. Almost every pathway group has had to take some pain with closures in the US so INTO’s troubles there were not uncommon.

It still seems something of a leap to take on a new partner in a country where the company has no infrastructure and limited operational experience. Even more so at a point when that country has a very uncertain path to being able to welcome international students back in the numbers it once enjoyed. It’s also reasonable to say that Perth has not historically been the epicentre for international student growth in Australia and that enrollment has lagged behind the country’s impressive upward curve to 2019.

Sources: UWA Annual Report (showing student load) and Australian Department of Education Skills and Employment

While UWA is one of the Group of 8 of top universities in Australia but is also behind some of the more illustrious names in terms of global ranking and attractiveness to international students. So, even when the borders reopen there is little to suggest that UWA will be at the front of mind for international students looking to find a top ranked university. All the while, there is also the drumbeat of Australian politicians and pundits who are keen to see the 2020 reduction in international student numbers go down even further to reduce university dependence on international fees.

	THE 2021 Global Rank	QS Global Rankings 2022	% of international students (THE measure)
University of Melbourne	31	37	48
University of Sydney	51	38	43
Australian National University	59	27	47
University of Queensland	62	47	38
Monash University	64	58	43
UNSW Sydney	67	43	44
University of Adelaide	118	108	29
University of Western Australia	139	93	29
Uni of Technology Sydney	160	133	36
University of Canberra	184	436	36

Business Insider Australia and other publications have set out the broader risks to Australia’s booming international student market as its Government struggles to find ways to allow inward mobility. UWA has taken the opportunity to roll out $40m in ‘structural cost cuts’, including ‘university-wide redundancies’ while flagging heavy investment in its campus. All of this plays out against the background of continuing tensions between the governments of Australia and China with the latest spat over the Great Barrier Reef and complaints at the World Trade Organisation being just the latest examples.

It is fair to say that the jury is out on how soon and how robustly Australia will return to the international student recruitment party. Those who have travelled the scene for many years know better than to write them off and they have overcome dips in enrollments before. But the resurgence of the UK, the Biden bounce and Canada’s continuing surge means that the competitive market they face will be more challenging than ever before.

All in all the link up, if it is confirmed, seems out of context for a business that has focused so heavily on the US for the past five years. The geopolitics of the enrollment potential are also difficult to divine at this stage and may make the partnership a harder sell. It’s going to be interesting to watch and see if INTO find it the “land of plenty” or whether those making the decision will think they’d “better run…better take cover.”*

NOTES

* It’s sometimes irresistible to allude to the mighty Men At Work and their song Down Under which topped charts around the world between 1981 and 1983. In September 1983 it was adopted as the theme song by the crew of Australia II in their successful challenge for the America’s Cup yacht trophy.

** As always, I would welcome any clarification or correction from an authoritative source at the University of Western Australia or INTO University Partnerships and amend the copy accordingly.

Image by Katrina_S from Pixabay

Brass in Yocket for Aggregator Founders*

Having recently delved into ApplyBoard and Study Portals it was Yocket’s turn to go under the computer mouse. Reportedly, started in 2012 with $136USD (less than £100GBP) the company claimed over $1m revenue in 2020 and a plan to get to over $10m in three years. Various internet searches have not found references to other external funding in support of the company, so it looks like the founders are backing themselves.

Described as a ‘one stop study abroad solution’ Yocket focuses on candidates from India and suggests it has registered more than 400,000 since 2015. The company name is a word play on the company being a ‘rocket’ for students to meet their aspiration. It claims to have ‘tied-up’ with over 100 universities in the UK, US, Canada and Australia although the nature of the engagement and the split by country are not transparent. Yocket is part of Avocation Education Services Private Limited (Avocation) which also owns Stupidsid** which was also started by the founders.

Yocket’s model would appear to be focused on being a ‘student aggregator’ making money by selling added value services rather than an ‘agent aggregator’ trying to attract recruitment agents. There is a clear attempt to build a revenue stream from universities but this appears to have had limited success with only 42 in the ‘Apply through Yocket’ list and limited institutional activity on the site. Before universities go rushing in to fill that void they may want to consider some features of the site and what their brand will be associated with.

Data Management and Use

One of the emerging concerns about aggregator sites is their use of data and Yocket’s site demands an email as the price of doing any search and engages the user in giving more personal details at every opportunity. An email, phone number and other details allows you to set up an account and “By creating an account you agree to Yocket’s Terms of use and Privacy policy. Attempts to click on the links to read these take the user on a circular route back to the initial sign on page which may be a glitch but is unhelpful.

However, the Privacy Policy is available through an internet search and is the same as that of Avocation in giving broad opportunities for the use of data, such as making it available to ‘third party service providers’ as well as to advertisers including financial services. It notes that ‘Avocation Educational Services Private Limited’ reserves the right to update, change or modify this policy at any time.’ The Terms of Use can also be found and note that, “It cannot be guaranteed that the material, information, links, and content presented on and by this website is comprehensive, complete, accurate, sufficient, timely, or up to date for any particular purpose or use.”

Given that students going to the site are expecting accurate and comprehensive information about any country that they hope to study in this seems problematic. The information provides the basis for the potential student spending money on other services, such as Yocket Premium or finding a loan, so there should at least be some sense of responsibility. As the test searches outlined below suggest, there is some way to go before the information available provides full confidence.

In Search of Substance

A search for universities in the UK provided a list of 124 institutions – well short of the number of degree-awarding institutions in the country. The opportunity to search by private universities only provided information on Ecole de Management de Normandie, Oxford and Arden University. There was no mention at all of sector notables such as BPP and the University of Law (one of Arden’s siblings in the Global University Systems family).

Oddities in the UK public university listings included:

– Northumbria (Amsterdam) listed as one of the three for the institution.

– Nottingham Trent, Aston and Birmingham each having two locations listed

– University of Buckingham, a private university, appears in the list of public universities

The listing of each institution comprised a fuzzy photo of something that looks like a university with the university logo superimposed on top of it. Adding to the general sense of low-resolution and compromise on detail is that 12 of the universities had no logo shown and 47 of the universities had no indicative tuition fee shown. That might be a blessing for anyone interested in accuracy and quality of information.

There is a feature which allows a search by Low, Medium or High Price and this has several anomalies. The most obvious shows Kings College London as having an international tuition fee of £9,250. A fee of £20,790 for classroom based international undergraduate students appears to be the starting point at this venerable London institution.

Thirty institutions are listed in the Medium price sector but only one makes it to be shown as High Price. The University of Bristol occupies this category with a tuition fee that the site suggests is £72,000 when the university’s published undergraduate classroom based BSc is 20,100 and an MSc in Management at £26,500.

The low-priced list did not include the University of Chester which has a rate of £12,750 for international students which is lower than the £13,000 shown (correctly) for Teeside University. All of this suggests that AI or machine learning is being used to find information on university sites it needs some fine tuning. If it’s human research then the quality control needs to be stepped up. It’s currently misleading to students and potentially damaging to university recruitment hopes.

Going to North America

The search for top universities in the USA offered up 242 universities with Harvard, MIT and Stanford at the top but one for “popular universities” listed 659 with Northeastern, Texas A&M and University of Texas at Dallas at the top. The first two are among those among the 42 listed on the Apply to Universities via Yocket page which suggests there may be a closer relationship between institution and aggregator.

Perhaps surprisingly given the world rankings, Canada has 194 ‘top universities’ listed which is exactly the same as the number shown as ‘popular’. The University of British Columbia Vancouver and the University of Western Ontario are at the top of both lists but there is no description of how a university gets on one or the other list. Neither university is on the 42 listed on the “Apply to Universities via Yocket” page.

Generally speaking, the pictures and the logos for the USA and Canada are in better shape than those for the UK. The site also provides further counselling if you are “Confused about which country to pick?” but this requires upgrading to Yocket Premium. The paucity of filters to offer comparisons make it difficult to make any sort of well-informed choice without taking that step.

Clicking through to the university page from the search does give the added information about how many ‘Yocketers’ have applied and how many have been accepted as well as their average GRE quant score. There’s also some information on scholarships available. Just out of interest the claim is that 99 have applied to Harvard’s School of Engineering with 17 admitted and 222 have applied to MIT’s School of Engineering with 14 admitted. Whether or not they chose to use Yocket’s other services or counselling is not made clear.

Further Insights

The application to universities service is currently limited to 42 institutions with only the universities of Wolverhampton, Sheffield, Huddersfield and Essex listed for the UK. These universities do not appear to receive special treatment in other search facilities on the site and the nature of the relationship is unclear. A 5 May 2020 blog post on the site in the Applying to Universities section indicates a session with University of Essex where participants may receive an “on the spot offer” depending on eligibility.

In answering the question Why Should I Choose Yocket? the company says that it has “..been a helpful companion to 300,000+ study abroad aspirants since 2016. Through a powerful network of students and machine learning algorithms, yocket empowers you to make informed decisions to your educational pursuits.” The critical question for many observers might be whether or not the platform and its current capabilities is enabling sufficient information for an informed decision.

An interesting feature and highly relevant given the power of peer-to-peer recommendations is the ‘Trending Yocketers’ section which allows direct connection to a candidate who is looking to study at a specific university. This is supplemented by a Discussions thread where candidates can pose questions in the hope that a peer will respond.

Yocket may be planning to upgrade the site in the near future. A blog on 27 April invites interest from users willing to participate in the Yocket Hydrogen Beta version. It is described as “an upgraded platform that is better in design, experience and features”. With the anticipated growth in India students travelling abroad to study this would seem a reasonable investment.

Some Thoughts

Yocket’s story is well known and it has recently announced plans to recruit 300 more staff in 2021 and a further 1,000 over three years. It has presented itself as enhancing student services in a disorganized market dominated by agents, where students were often misguided. It is reasonable to believe that the development of an online service provides access to more people but this, in itself, does not mean that students are better advised or informed.

It is difficult to know how the information about universities is being gathered and the extent to which it is verified to allow reasonable comparisons. Whether the other Yocket services – such as premium service at a reported £500 per student – gives well-founded counselling is also hard to know. The company’s 7^th Annual Virtual Meet Up in March 2021 claims to have gathered 40 universities from the US, UK, France and New Zealand and over 4,000 students, so the demand would seem to be there.

From the point of view of institutions news stories have indicated that universities can get directly involved for between $1,000 and $10,000 dollars. This gets access to services that reach out to students in a growing market and may be tempting. Institutions who choose to engage might consider learning how data is used and the terms under which additional services, particularly loans, are being offered.

There are also questions about the levels of transparency, the comprehensiveness of coverage and the quality of information available. For universities who have not given permission for their brands to be used it may be time to consider whether the format and presentation is acceptable and they should certainly check the details given about them. Aggregators are using university names and logos as bait for students and then selling other services so it would be reasonable to take an assertive stance.

The overall impression is that Yocket started as a page allowing students to exchange information about universities and has become a business operating in one of the fastest growing student recruiting markets in the world. The founders have commented extensively on their desire to ensure a more accessible and better organized service for students than they believe many recruitment agents have offered. These are fine principles but operationalizing them probably requires more attention to detail than is currently evident on the site.

NOTES

1. *For those unfamiliar with popular music “Brass in Pocket” is a 1979 single by The Pretenders. Apparently, lead singer Chrissie Hynde overheard someone enquiring if anyone had, “Picked up dry cleaning? Any brass in pocket?” Brass is Northern English slang for money but is used idiomatically in several other ways including “brass neck” to mean showing a lot of nerve.

** Stupidsid.com started in February 2010 as a college review website with students’ opinions on colleges, courses and universities. It has developed to provide Study Resources (including solved question papers, university syllabuses and previous questions) and Knowledge Hub (claimed to be the “largest database of engineering-related information you’ll ever come across.”)

2. Searches were carried out on various browsers over the period from 13 to 17 May.

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

LEAGUE TABLE CLICK-BAIT COMPLICATION FOR UNIVERSITIES

It is standard to hear a manager in the English Premier League say “the table doesn’t lie” as they bemoan their lowly position or celebrate their success. By contrast it has been equally standard to hear university recruiters put the case that various league tables are wanting in terms of nuance, specificity or even veracity. But it may become even more complicated if university league table compilers have a direct, commercial interest in the outcome of the table and its impact on students.

In a recent article in The PIE, the Chief Development Officer of Times Higher Education (THE) outlined plans for millions of international students who consult its rankings website each year. He said, “We want to stay top of the funnel and maximise the number of students coming to the site. What we will then do is identify a network of complementary, trusted partners that we will send those students to.” The potential for universities to find themselves excluded or obliged to pay large sums for access seem obvious.

Regulators, governments and the sector’s networking bodies would do well to consider whether this manipulation of the recruitment process through commercially driven league tables is in the interests of the institutions and the students. Back in October 2018 the Office for Students Director of External Relations wrote of the “challenge for policymakers….providing information responsibly and well as accessibly” but it is difficult to see any action to head off the private sector. Allowing brands that have been built with substantial public funding to be used as click-bait providing a return to private money certainly does not seem the best way forward.

Selective, Subjective and Subject to Manipulation

It is equally troubling to think that students may find themselves railroaded into choices by an organization that decides how the league table is compiled and has commercial partners who may have more than a passing interest in the result. Elsevier have quoted Lydia Snover, director of institutional research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as saying, “every ranking is based on the available, comparable data, and is built on the subjective judgement (over indicators and weightings) of its compilers.”. Even when league tables are independently audited, consulted upon and done with good intentions they are about choices.

UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education has suggested that “universities with frequent QS-related contracts experienced much greater upward mobility in both overall rankings and in faculty-student ratio scores over five years in the QS World Rankings”. HEPI’s president, Bahram Bekhradnia, did not find this a surprise and noted, “QS is a commercial organisation. They’re there to make money and their rankings are not objective.” The higher education sector, while complicit in working with rankings media, is aware that this is a double-edged sword, and it may be that commercial imperative is sharpening one side.

Those factors are made worse by the documented cases of universities deliberately manipulating the data they submit in order to secure a place higher up the ranking. A University World News article in 2019 highlighted how the University of Oklahoma had been supplying US News and World Report rankings with incorrect information for nearly two decades. Occasional errors seem forgivable but the more complex and wide ranging the tables the more scope there would seem to be for manipulation.

Legitimization and Lost Perspective

It seems a long time ago that in the late 1990s a few national UK newspapers would produce university league tables once a year as part of their wider agenda of news coverage. But since the early 2000s league table compilation and publication has become increasingly central to the activity and business model of some HE sector-oriented media organisations. Universities have played their own part in legitimizing the ranking races that may undermine their reputation and their ability to compete for students.

Many university planning offices have also spent hundreds of hours analysing league table performance and working to advise their senior colleagues on the levers that can elevate the institution’s position. It would be difficult to believe any Vice Chancellor who says their university’s league table performance is not considered in strategic discussions. League tables have become silent and increasingly oppressive enforcers influencing decision making, reputations and student experience.

It is certainly plausible that one of the factors influencing grade inflation at UK universities has been the weighting of a ‘good degree’ in the league tables. When one university sees a perceived competitor getting league table marks for awarding a higher proportion of ‘good degrees’ the argument to amend marking criteria can be positioned as not disadvantaging students. Almost without realising it institutions and academics may find their autonomy compromised by external factors.

Methodology, Misalignment and Misunderstanding

Over and above that, the dizzying array of league tables has become a way for compilers to open new routes for advertising income and securing influence. Universities under 50 years old may welcome the chance to trumpet their performance against similar institutions and it allows the sector to applaud its own achievements. But when high placings are used as advertising and marketing fodder to attract students the institutions are validating a process which is almost entirely out of their control and where interests may not be aligned.

In 2004 the Times Higher Education (THE) began its University World Rankings but that has now been joined by 18 other main categories including World Reputation Rankings, Young University Rankings, Emerging Economy Rankings, Subject and Teaching Rankings. The latest addition of Impact Ranking assesses universities against the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The accompanying launch events, announcements and conferences drive substantial content, which may be the purpose of media organizations but that is not the same as the purpose of universities.

The QS Rankings also began in 2004 and now covers 11 main categories, with several similar to THE but some noticeable differences such as Employability and System Strength. They have built a student-facing event series – the QS World Tours – to bring students together with admissions directors at events. Conferences and consultancy services also build out of the rankings as a source of revenue.

The variability of methodology that universities are trying to deal with shows in the league table results. The THE and QS most recent “top 10 global universities” and “top 10 under 50 years old” show seven as being the same in each category but three different. It’s a discrepancy which seems unhelpful if you are a student really wanting to know which were the best of breed in either category.

So, even when compilers are gauging similar categories they are making subjective choices about what to include, how to weight it and whether it will be important to their readers. But in what is largely a game of statistical musical chairs there is some evidence that there are also fundamental misunderstandings about what is driving the performance of institutions. Research by QS has suggested, for example, that students believe that a university’s ranking is substantially linked to employability of graduates when this only makes up a small element of the overall score.

It seems indisputable that league tables have become very big business for organizations that compile them and are influential enough to be a source of power over university decision making. The prospect of them being leveraged to influence student choice and the recruitment potential of institutions has been made clear. An informed, open discussion leading to collective action by the sector would be a step towards restoring balance.

Image by Firmbee from Pixabay

Un-civil War for UK Universities If Welsh Break Ranks on EU Fees?

A tweet from Chris Marshall, Head of Policy and Strategy, at Swansea University on 6 January suggested that the first shots may have been fired in the battle to lure EU students to Wales when their fee status changes to ‘international’ later in 2021. The sub-text and purported THE headline is that the “Move sets Wales apart from rest of UK post-Brexit”. It implies that the Welsh Government is legislating, or planning to legislate, to mandate differential fee treatment for EU students attending Welsh universities which would probably provide legal protection from the anti-discrimination principles of the Equality Act 2010.

Just a word of caution. The link to the timeshighereducation.com source lead me to a page that read You don’t have permission to access this page.and a search of the THE web-pages does not find the article. It seems possible that someone jumped the gun, that the website has not updated or that the story, for some reason, never appeared.

If the Welsh Government does legislate in a way that gives legal cover for EU students being charged the same fee rate as Home students it may be the starting gun in a race to level the playing field in the UK. Those with long memories in UK higher education will recall the period when the post-study work rules in Scotland were more benevolent and seen as a boon for international student recruitment north of the Border. There seems little doubt that legislators in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland would come under pressure to allow the same benefit if Wales makes a break.

It would probably be a relief for Swansea University who management of their current preferential treatment of EU students seem a bit convoluted. The main fees page states, “Your Tuition Fees will be chaged (sic) at the same rate as International students” but the Undergraduate Scholarships page tells us there will be an “automatic discount to tuition fees for EU students that join us in the academic year 2021/22 and will reduce the fees to the same level as UK tuition fees”. Perhaps this is just an attempt to spare the feelings of other international students who will be paying £5,550 a year more for a course in, say, Business Law, LLB (Hons).

Another version of the preferential pricing is seen at Bangor University which has a £5,000 EU student scholarship for EU undergraduate students in 2021/22 – with the spin that £2,500 is off fees and £2,500 is off university accommodation. The difference between the International fee for a BA in Business Studies and the Home fee is £6,000 so it nearly makes up the difference. Maybe there is a hope that having a ‘scholarship’ split between fee and accommodation is a way of defending a legal challenge on discriminatory pricing?

There may well be other variations on these themes but the trend for many universities reviewed in England and Wales appears to be to proclaim on the international fees page that EU students will be subject to international fees from 2021/22. The underlying blanket sweetener, discount, scholarship or bursary for students from 27 European countries is offered discretely, some might also say discreetly, on a separate page. It all seems less than transparent and might suggest that there are deliberate attempts to keep the preferential treatment of students from Europe under the radar.

Checking the Government Position

In a written statement from Kirsty Williams, the Minister of Education for the Welsh Government, on 10 August 2020 said that EU students ‘will not be eligible for support or, in the case of higher education courses, home fee status’ after 1 August 2021. A search of the Welsh Government pages shows a new statement on the fee situation (6 January, 2020) which says ‘the Welsh Government will provide support to EU, EEA and Swiss nationals who benefit from citizens’ rights under the various withdrawal agreements.’

The European Union statement on Citizens’ Rights under the Withdrawal Agreement says that ‘The Withdrawal Agreement protects those EU citizens lawfully residing in the United Kingdom, and UK nationals lawfully residing in one of the 27 EU Member States at the end of the transition period.’ This does not, however, include EU students who are resident in the EU.

The ‘citizens’ rights’ question relating to fees was also answered by Michele Donelan in October 2020 when she indicated that “current EU principles of equal treatment will continue to apply for those covered by the citizens’ rights provisions in the Withdrawal Agreement”. It is difficult to see that the Welsh statement makes allowances for a significantly wider group than has already been accounted for in England. The devil, as always, is in the detail and the intentions of Governments are not always clear so I would be very happy to have authoritative guidance on the issue and whether the statement from the Welsh Government makes a material difference.

Legal, Moral or Ethical?

A material change in legislation would, of course, save the blushes of English universities currently planning to discriminate in favour of EU students against other international students. But it would not save the moral dilemma of advantaging students from Europe over those from Asia, Africa and the Americas. Neither would it satisfactorily respond to international students who have long held the view that they are exploited by universities to subsidize home students.

What the THE did write about on 6 January was that UK universities were ‘‘weighing options’ on EU Student Fee Discounts”. In the article Smita Jamdar, head of education at Shakespeare Martineau, suggests that “in my mind there’s a question over whether ‘EU national’ really is a nationality-based discrimination”. There is also a suggestion that transitional arrangements could be considered a proportionate response to the changing situation for EU students.

It’s all interesting stuff that will play out over the coming year but thus far the vast majority of universities have decided to charge EU students international fees for 2021/22. When a university chooses to significantly increase the price of a course from year to year there are not usually ‘transitional arrangements’ for new students. It is also difficult to argue that EU students have not had fair warning of their likely change of status given the Government’s General Election promise to complete Brexit.

It really is about time that the organizations with an interest in students – Office for Students, National Union of Students, UKCISA and others – got to grips with the situation. Clarity would be a very good thing but so would some considered responses on how differential pricing is equitable even as a transition measure. At the very least, universities might be challenged to indicate the timetable for any transition rather than allowing a systemic, divisive and discriminatory system by default.

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Jeopardy for UK Universities – Part 2

Responses to an earlier blog showing that, post-Brexit, a number of UK universities would continue to offer all European Union students preferential tuition fee status over international students suggested it was worth digging deeper. It’s also worth considering what the consequences might be if a group of international students or the National Union of Students decided to test whether a university’s blanket discount for EU students was discriminatory. The recruitment implications for pathway operations if some university partners provide preferential fees for EU students is another dimension for consideration.

Research on university websites suggests that universities planning to give EU students the same tuition fee as UK students in the 2021 academic year include:

Bedfordshire	Buckinghamshire
Solent	Leicester
West London	Royal Holloway
De Montfort	Portsmouth
Oxford Brookes	Nottingham Trent

In most cases the intention is clearly stated but there are more subtle versions of preferential pricing such as the University of Gloucestershire where details are buried in the 2021/22 Fee and Bursary Policy (on page 14 of 19). It notes that “The International Grant Award is a tuition fee waiver of £3,000 deducted from your first year’s tuition fee” while the “EU Grant Award is a tuition fee waiver of £3,000 deducted from each year”. So, an EU undergraduate student on a three-year degree course gets the benefit of an additional £6,000 of grant “automatically awarded at the point of offer”.

Some of the university websites are so Delphic or poorly organized that it is difficult to confirm their position one way or another so the list may not be comprehensive. At least 13 universities reviewed do not seem to be in a position to show fees for 2021/22 or say they are awaiting further information from the Government. These include some surprisingly big players:

Coventry	Northumbria
Cambridge	Liverpool
University of the Arts, London	Brunel*
Queen Mary	Loughborough
Greenwich	SOAS
Brighton	Hertfordshire
London South Bank

*A source has indicated that Brunel are offering the same rate to EU as Home students in 2021 but I am unable to verify this on the website.

The legal consequences seem ill-defined and it remains possible that last minute Government action might change the situation. Scotland has already decided that post-Brexit it could not legally continue to offer EU students the same, free tuition as Scottish students. Edinburgh University is publishing 2021/22 fees that have three rates – those for Scottish students, Home/Rest of UK, and International/EU. This would suggest that the university sees little room for manoeuvre in maintaining even the Home/Rest of UK for European Union students.

Legal analysis is very thin on the ground with the Time Higher Education article by Elizabeth Jones of Farrer and Co being an exception and the piece does not run to exploring remedies that might arise if the differential fees are illegal. The university would, presumably, be obliged to honour its contract with the EU students to charge them at home rates so could not change that arrangement. If that is the case then it is possible they might be required to reduce fees for all other international students to the same level.

As an example, the difference for De Montfort would be around £5,000 a year per student. HESA data for 2018/19 indicates that the University had 1,020 EU and 2,025 other first degree, full time international students so, if one took a third of the latter number that could suggest around 675 first year international undergraduate students and, therefore, a potential cost of £3.375m a year in lost fees if they had to be charged at the lower rate. There are many ‘ifs’ involved in the calculation and I am happy to make any corrections needed if an authoritative source is able to say how much is at stake.

There’s also the interesting matter of what international students who are attending a course with a commercial pathway provider have been advised about their fees. Just as an example, De Montfort is aligned with Oxford International Education Group (OIEG) which offers an integrated degree – the student can either study an International Year Zero (IYZ) and then go on to do three years with the university or an International First Year (IFY) and go on to do two years with the university.

The point is that the OIEG website shows the “International or Tier 4 Visa students” fee for IYZ at £14,995 for 2020/21 and 2021/22 and for the IFY at £14,995 in 2020/21 rising to £15,995 in 2021/22. EU students on the same courses are being charged £9,250 in 2020/21 and the 2021/22 fees are not yet announced. Commercial providers in a similar situation may soon have to choose whether to continue to offer wholescale preferential rates on the basis of nationality.

Some pathway operations have grown large numbers of EU students into their operation with the lure of being charged the same as Home students when they go on to the university to complete their degree an important sales points. For example, the 2018 QAA Report on the Navitas pathway operation with Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) noted, “The significant growth in student numbers at the Cambridge College, based on recruitment of home and EU students, is a trend that the Provider is looking at in relation to other colleges.” Individual course pages suggest that ARU is currently planning that in 2021/22 EU students will be considered international but that could be tested if other universities and their partners appear to be successful in their recruitment efforts with preferential fees.

It would be good to see the UK Government confirm its position so that UKCISA and universities have to provide certainty to students about the fees they will pay. This is also a moment where the NUS could step up to ensure that international students are being treated equitably. The current situation was wholly foreseeable and organizations that are meant to have student interests at heart are only noticeable by their absence.

If universities offering lower EU fees are successful in their recruitment efforts it does not take a great leap of imagination to see how this could become widespread across the sector. It would mean universities choosing (rather than being obliged by Government) to embed preferential treatment based solely on nationality into their recruitment processes. That seems an unfortunate consequence which should be challenged at the earliest opportunity.

Jeopardy for UK Universities Giving EU Students Financial Preference

Anyone who thought that “Brexit means Brexit” or that all UK universities would accept that EU students no longer have special protection on tuition fee levels should think again. Some institutions are publicizing that EU students starting in Autumn 2021 will pay Home student fees for the duration of their studies. Some suggest it may be illegal and for international students from other countries it will reinforce a suspicion that Euro or Western-centric policies, pricing and priorities continue to prevail in some English institutions.

The straightforward fact is that if you are a student from China, India, Nigeria, Brazil, Canada or anywhere outside the EU, there are at least six universities in England who have decided to charge you a significantly higher tuition fee to sit alongside an international student from a European Union country in the 2021/22 academic year. It is a distinction not based on that student’s language capability, their government’s contribution to English higher education, their intelligence, or their capacity to pay. The privileged treatment applies, without any form of means testing, to students from some of the wealthiest countries in the world.

A review of the 40 English universities with the most European Union students (HESA, 2018/19) shows that five have either maintained EU rates at the same level as UK students or put in place special ‘scholarships’ that have the same effect.

University	Number of EU Students	University Statement
Bedfordshire	1,725	Approved-schedule-of-mainstream-fees-2021-22-081220.pdf (beds.ac.uk)
Solent	1,310	Following the UK government’s confirmation that EU students will no longer be eligible for home fee status benefits, we’ve made the decision to keep EU tuition fees the same as UK tuition fees for 2021 entry.
West London	1,240	No statement – shown on fee schedules
De Montfort	1,175	DMU recognise the challenges this brings for our prospective EU students, and therefore for undergraduate EU students commencing their course in the academic year 2021/22 an automatic discount will be applied to reduce their undergraduate fees to £9,250 for the duration of their course.
Portsmouth	1,120	If you’re an EU, EEA or Swiss national or an EU national with settled status in the UK, starting a course in the academic year 2021/22 or later years, you will no longer be eligible for the same fees as UK students. You’ll pay the same fees as an international student. But a Transition Scholarship will be applied to your fees reducing them to the same amount as UK students.

A sixth, the University of Kent, which dubs itself “The UK’s European University”, has put in place a blanket 25% reduction on the international fee level. Seven others currently either indicate that they cannot confirm fee liability or do not have any 2021/22 academic year fees shown on their websites. Among these is Coventry University which, with over 3,600 EU students in 2018/19, has a lot at stake.

Beneath the top 40, Royal Holloway, University of London, was among the first universities to indicate its intention to maintain EU student fee levels in 2021/22. Their online statement suggests good intent as they note, “At Royal Holloway, we wish to support those students affected by this change in status through this transition. For eligible EU students starting their course with us in September 2021, we will award a fee reduction scholarship which brings your fee into line with the fee paid by UK students.” The institution is keeping its options open for the 2022 intake and a cynic might suggest it will see how enrollment goes before deciding whether to extend the reduction.

While the argument about support through transition sounds good universities do not, generally, take on wholesale financial risks incurred by students as circumstances change. Students often find that the currency exchange rate goes against them during the course of undergraduate study, in the case of Indian students by around 18% between September 2017 and July 2020, but universities don’t cover the cost. Giving a blanket dispensation on fees to favour students from 27 countries is unheard of and a cynic might argue that it is driven by enrollment objectives more than anything else.

It also raises the question about the nature of the cross-subsidy that non-EU international students might be giving to the new class of “EU international” students. The Migration Advisory Committee report of September 2018 made the point that, “There is no doubt that international students offer positive economic benefit, including cross-subsidising the education of domestic students and research.” This suggests that allowing EU students to continue paying “home” fees will mean that their full-rate international student peers will be subsidizing them.

Relatively little has been written about the legality of this type of favouritism for one group of international students over another. In July 2016 Elizabeth Jones, a senior associate at Farrer & Co, wrote for Times Higher Education that “Universities are required by the Equality Act 2010 to treat students in a way that does not discriminate on the grounds of any “protected characteristic” such as race (which includes nationality), age, sex and disability.” She noted that providing students from the rest of the EU with the same fees as UK “home” student fees was, at the time, an allowable exception because it was mandated by legislation.

A statement by Michelle Donelan, Minister of State for Universities made it clear that this mandate no longer existed. “Following our decision to leave the EU, EU, other EEA and Swiss nationals will no longer be eligible for home fee status…for courses starting in the academic year 2021/22.” In July 2020, Gerrit Bruno Blöss, CEO of Study.eu, commented on the damaging impact this could have but noted that, “A few institutions are also evaluating potential legal loopholes to charge different fees.” Perhaps they found them or simply decided that nobody would notice or dispute their decision.

The UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA) is simply publishing Donelan’s statement and reflecting that further guidance on regulations from Government may not come before the Student Loans Company (SLC) system launch in February 2021. It is surprisingly coy, given its remit as “the UK’s national advisory body supporting international students” about whether maintaining a significant price differential between two groups of international students is fair, decent or appropriate. It claims every UK university as a member and must know that some institutions are publicising their 2021/22 academic year pricing strategy on that premise.

UKCISA’s 2020 Policy Position Paper notes that a key part of delivering a world class student experience is communicating “a clear message of welcome to all international students in the UK, at every level of study”. That seems quite difficult if the system becomes underpinned by preferential treatment for students from the EU without real clarity on what makes such exceptions equitable or even reasonable. This is particularly so when so many other institutions have made it clear that the ‘international’ fee will apply to EU students from the 2021 academic year.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Office for Students (OfS) is silent on the issue. It has been pointed out elsewhere that the OfS shows a level of disinterest in whether international students get value for money from a UK education. Perhaps they could provide comparative information to at least fulfil their promise to “ensure that all students are provided with the necessary information, advice and guidance so that they can make informed decisions about where and what to study.”

It’s also not clear where the National Union of Students stands on this anomaly. Back in 2013 their position was that, “It is scandalous that non-EU students are charged fees that can be thousands of pounds higher than those for other students.” One would think that they would at least expect everyone designated an international students to receive equal treatment from universities.

With the pandemic and Brexit diverting attention it may not seem important that a handful of universities have gone out on a limb to preserve a point of privilege for EU students. But reputation is hard to gain and easy to lose. It’s time for the UK authorities to clarify the situation and possibly for Messrs Sue, Grabbitt and Runne to become involved.

NOTE

In principle I am in favour of all education being free and would welcome a situation where universities were able to focus only on teaching, learning and research in the interests of students and broader humanity. This blog reflects the realities of international student fees and the potential for preferential treatment to emerge when universities make decisions driven by economic factors.

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