Internationalising HE must mean more than banking the cash

During the pandemic, students rightly tended to be given plenty of extra time to complete and/or goes at completing summative assessment.

For plenty of international students, that posed a problem. Reassessment without formal attendance might work for home students, and might even work for international students who can submit online or aren’t fussed about staying in the UK.

But for the tens of thousands of international PGTs bankrolling the sector, it has been the ability to stay for two years on the graduate route that has been the big draw.

Unless the visa itself is extended, multiple reassessment attempts can end up using up the 4 months’ permission to remain that are bolted onto the end of visas.

And so given the graduate route is an extension that requires the application to be made while still in the UK, I came across endless examples of students suddenly realising – at roughly the same their university was realising – that the concessions put in place to cause them to succeed suddenly meant that their career ambitions would fail.

No detriment turned out to be the diametric opposite for many.

Various bodges were put in by various universities I spoke to at the time – changes to reassessment dates, extra exam boards and so on – and so I blithely assumed that given the centrality of international PGT fees to the ever-more desperate funding model, that the problem was fixed.

I was wrong.

This summer as I’ve been traversing UK HE delivering training to new SU officers, I’ve come across endless heartbreaking tales that surround the interaction between the UK’s immigration system and its higher education bureaucracy.

Like those universities that took steps to reassure potential applicants over the race riots but forgot to say anything to those currently here, Bridget Phillipson’s welcoming mood music counts for nothing unless she’s able to influence the actual rules and system that students face on arrival, which in many ways remain as hostile as ever.

But this reassessment issue isn’t really on UKVI – it’s on universities.

No shame, no remain

Imagine you’re a university that allows a couple of reassessment attempts after a fail. Nothing wrong with that – plenty of parts of the system recognise that hitting a defined standard doesn’t always mean hitting it at the same frenetic breakneck speed as everyone else.

It’s a concept that becomes even more important for international PGTs, who are told that the UK has magical powers to deliver a full Level 7 in one year where most countries take two – even if they arrive late because of visa delays and the university banks the cash.

International students may struggle with the (academic and social) culture, might find the UK is significantly more expensive than they were told, and can face enormous challenges with housing and health – so those extra goes become crucial.

But then imagine that while reassessment attempt one, plus the marking and associated exam board, can be done and dusted within the visa wash-up period, reassessment attempt two would bust the limit.

And imagine only finding that out after you’ve provisionally secured a job or signed for accommodation – especially but not exclusively if you have dependants with you. If nothing else, you’ve usually had to pay a year’s rent upfront.

There are, it seems, a whole host of universities offering reassessment where the deadlines for attempt 2 busts the visa time limit. There’s some where the deadline’s OK, but the marking isn’t done in time.

And some where even the provisional mark is released in time, but because the exam board hasn’t met, the course completed flag isn’t set in time – and the student is told to leave.

The first time that someone told me that a student in their DMs had been told “well you can always apply for asylum”, I chalked that up to being in a large sector where the occasional bit of shocking advice in a desperate situation is inevitable. By the tenth time I was starting to think that some evil mailbase post has caught on somehow.

I also know of at least ten universities where because of the traditional dates that exam boards and assessment cycles are held, a January start student using re-attempts is fine – but those starting in September are screwed.

What a weigh-up. A much worse welcome week and almost no chance of securing appropriate accommodation (January), or a smoother start and much bumpier end if you struggle with anything that could wreck your career dreams (September).

At least it would be a weigh up if their universities warned them – which they don’t.

“A fantastic opportunity”

The issue is that most universities with substantial volumes of international PGTs are promoting themselves partly on the basis of that graduate route visa. It’s the no.1 sell that agents often use to drive students to the UK.

And so if you’re a university that says with its chest “you can have a couple of reassessment attempts if you find things tough”, I don’t think this is hard – you have a duty to ensure that those reassessment attempts without attendance, plus the matching and the exam boards, can be completed within the visa length.

I’m literally looking at one university right now that says to its students that:

…there’s no stigma attached to reassessment.

Try telling that to the student who’s about to return home to tell their family that the debt they’ve racked up has now ended up in a forced deportation before they could get the work experience their agent sold them on.

Where does this end Jim

Both when this happened during the pandemic and in recent weeks when I’ve been talking to people about this, I’ve heard all sorts of excuses.

Some have suggested that extra assessment cycles and exam boards would be a hassle, and might interfere with holidays or research leave. I have some considerable sympathy with that, and do think solutions need to not just end up with even more unmanageable workload. But at the same time, that hassle doesn’t seem quite as problematic as being deported.

Others have suggested that the admin involved would be onerous, or that even actually arranging such things would attract unwelcome sponsor compliance questions from UKVI officials. There must surely be research somewhere on the way in which managers use the vague threat of external regulation to avoid fixing things for staff or users.

Some have suggested that the “line has to be drawn somewhere”, where what they mean is that the line is that it has to be drawn where it’s always been drawn – and where it was drawn in a context of home students already understand the UK HE system’s expectations, rarely being allowed to enrol late and still being in the UK when further dates and graduations were set.

Others have suggested that this is the price students have to pay if they want to complete – but it’s not a price that’s advertised, in fact quite the opposite. Some say that if students complete in time, the “reward” is the graduate route. Nope – if you say that reassessment is normal, it has to be normal. Some suggest that they as brave academics are upholding academic standards while others in marketing sell false dreams. Get in a room.

Some have said that changing the regulations would be impossible, as if they’re set in immovable granite. Like disabled students hankering after lecture recordings for decades who suddenly got them during Covid, I seem to remember that during the marking and assessment boycott, we saw all sorts of administrative and regulatory miracles performed that were previously deemed impossible.

Some have pulled the old “but where does this end, Jim”, and I’ve said, “well it ends where your assessment regs says it normally ends”. Of course there are always edge cases, but if the general blurb says that some students need two re-attempts and your awards are awarded to those who take and pass the second of them, that’s where it ends, Jim.

As I say, I don’t think this is hard. If you’re selling a UK PGT course to a student where your regs normalise assessment reattempts without attendance, you have a duty – probably a legal one and definitely a moral one – to ensure that that can be done within the leave to remain associated with the course.

If it can’t be done, the very least you should do is warn them – in very big letters and in a way that can cause a student not to choose you if they don’t want to take the risk. But that really would be the very least you can do given the way these students are propping up your wages.

Welcome and pay now please

While I’m on, above I mention the phenomenon of international students whose visas are processed late being admitted late to a programme – sometimes several weeks later than others. That’s something else that Bridget Phillipson ought to be leaning on Yvette Cooper to fix if she’s serious about Britain being a country that “builds bridges of friendship with other nations”.

But if she can’t, I’ve run out of fingers and toes counting the international SU officers who tell me that they (and many of their friends) arrived late, paid their fees, missed the induction and then found themselves hauled up over an assessment offence.

In England, Office for Students (OfS) Condition B2 couldn’t be clearer about this – support to avoid academic misconduct is a core duty and it needs to delivered in a way appropriate to the needs of the cohort.

But like lots of OfS regulation, it’s not an issue likely to make it through the risk-based net. Who are the international PGTs thinking “I must remember to make a notification to OfS” – because if not, it’s not as if the issue is going to show up in OfS’ other metrics.

This whopping great blind spot in the regulator’s risk-based framework – a combo of a lack of metrics and an absence of complaints confidence in a huge and financially vital section of the cohort – is something I’ll return to at some stage.

And inside universities, it speaks to the perception that I hear a lot from international students – that it’s a system that is utterly desperate for their cash, but that hasn’t really changed its rhythms, cycles, practices or procedures to meet their needs.

A welcome reception with the local Mayor and a glass of fizz is one thing. Doing the hard yards on systems – understanding the way in which everything from timetabling to induction to the ways students are introduced to the VLE – is quite another. Especially when international PGTs have to both learn a new set of expectations and requirements, and un-learn a whole bunch of assumptions that they have about education.

But for now, as we approach September, a simple exhortation. If your finance and admissions functions are prepared to enrol a student late, you also need to be prepared to support the student to understand what they’ve missed – especially where a lack of understanding could cause a dismissal from both the course and country.

That has to go beyond sending them a PDF – even if the accompanying email says “you must read this”. Dig deep into the huge fee they’re paying and spend a tiny extra slither of it on them – find some January start students that you can pay to be late-start mentors or something. You’ll sleep better at night.