International pathway programmes (re-)entered the public eye in a less desirable light in January this year via the Sunday Times article Cash for courses: top universities recruit foreign students on low grades.
The article conflated international foundation programmes with international year one offers, and attempted to cast the delivery of these programmes into a negative light. As someone who has spent a significant part of their career enabling high achieving international students to access largely UK university degrees via these pathways, I felt it was time to provide greater understanding of this less well known and little understood part of the HE sector.
International foundation programmes have been running since at least the 1980s and were developed with very specific objectives in mind. In my experience, at undergraduate level, this was to provide a means for entering a UK degree for students who come from countries that offer only 12 years of high school versus the 13 years of the English, Welsh and Irish systems or whose high school qualification is not deemed equivalent to A levels. These programmes provided level 3 subject content alongside developing the academic literacy skills required for a UK degree.
In more recent years, with the erosion in the actual value of the home fee, universities turned to international student fees initially to subsidise research income and then, as the cost of an arts and social sciences degree was no longer covered by the income received, to subside the cost of home student places on degrees. This focus on income created a space for private education providers to enter the scene and offer ready-prepared international students: they offered to recruit and prepare these students ideally in a centre based on the university’s own campus. The offer by now included international foundation programmes (IFP), Pre-Masters courses and also, increasingly, international year one (IYO) provision.
(Having said that, there are still institutions that run these programmes in-house themselves, and many are members of the University Pathway Alliance of which I am chair.)
Collaboration models
Over time the models of collaboration with private education providers have diversified from either an on campus international study centre to a variety of partnership models resulting from the desire by some institutions to maintain a level of their own provision but at the same time benefit from the global marketing research and expertise of the private providers.
Over the past few years I have created a table which contains the models currently in existence that I am aware of:
| Model | Description |
|---|---|
| 1 | The international pathway programmes are owned and run directly by the university |
| 2 | A private education provider is recruiting and preparing students via an on campus international college. For example, Kaplan, Study Group, INTO, Navitas, CEG, Oxford International |
| 3 | The university has its own provision in addition to working with a private education provider, as follows: (i) Own IFY plus receiving students from an external centre run by a private education provider in partnership with another HEI within the city as a city-based centre, rather than institution-based (ii) Own IFY plus London college. For example, many HEIs partner with Kaplan to receive students from their London centre (iii) Own or private education provider plus NCUK: NCUK largely offers offshore foundation programmes |
| 4 | The university runs its own pathway programmes alongside a partnership with a private education provider, who recruits the students onto the university's own programme(s) |
| 5 | Partnership/hybrid version: the university providers the academic content and staff to deliver the academic teaching; the private provider recruits students and providers student support |
| 6 | The university offers IFY/IFP as year zero of a joint degree overseas (four-year degree) |
| 7 | A private education provider delivers the international pathway programmes and the university's own English language centre delivers the English language separately from the academic study skills |
What is causing the angst over quality?
A key element is the lack of broad understanding of the purpose of international pathway programmes. Many colleagues within institutions see the term “foundation” and immediately associate these programmes with the widening participation agenda. In addition, when teaching international students who are navigating a significantly different approach to education than that which they experienced in their home country, academic staff often think they have “weak English” when in fact the issue is more likely to be around academic literacy – such as how to produce a literature review, how to plan, carry out and write up a research project, or how to relate to an academic who is not telling you the right answers and directing your studies as you are used to.
In addition to this, as international student numbers have become more vital to university financial plans, there has been creep in some institutions around the entry criteria and the progression criteria. Having said that, the recent QAA report commissioned by Universities UK confirmed that the level of delivery and entry criteria are broadly equivalent to other level 3 provision, and this is somewhat of a vindication for both in-house and private provider programmes.
Having worked with private education providers and on in-house programmes, I am conscious that there are often at least two sets of voices: those who are primarily concerned about numbers and the monetary benefits of these programmes, and those who are focused on the student experience and the academic quality of the programmes. Each agenda will seek to pressurise the other to achieve its goals.
Quality matters
All in-house provision is under the same internal QA processes as all provision within the institution and regulated by internal quality assurance processes. Private education providers, led by Study Group, have largely chosen to register with the Office for Students and come under their external regulation and scrutiny, seeking to prove the quality of their provision.
Considering entry criteria, there are a range of factors to bear in mind – most notably, parity with the institution’s entry criteria more broadly. There are institutions that only offer places to students who have taken all of their A levels in one go and achieved the grades stipulated. There are many degree programmes across the sector, including in more selective institutions, which will accept students who have retakes. There are also quite a number of places offered across the sector to home students via alternative routes such as home foundation programmes or a range of alternative qualifications with a mixture of work experience; for some institutions this makes up significant portion of their student body.
When we get into the territory of suggesting that international students are being offered “easier routes in”, this is therefore a nuanced context – and not as clear as it may seem from the outside.
In the above context, providing resit opportunities on pathway programmes is not only largely in line with home student admissions, as outlined above, but also in line with progression within degree programmes. It is worth saying that for students on pathway programmes which are run by the HEI, it is possible they are at a disadvantage in this respect. The pass mark for undergraduate degree level study and therefore progression onto the next year is 40 per cent, and so the resit and progression policy is aligned to this 40 per cent. For students on an international foundation year, they will typically be required to demonstrate a performance higher than 40 per cent, and so a capped resit at 40 per cent is less relevant and therefore unhelpful.
Relationship management
International pathway programmes, which enable access to international students, have a value which is often overlooked.
In my experience, there are many in this sector who are working towards quality provision and are putting the students at the centre. There are pressures which come largely from the well-documented, testing economic and political environment in which universities have been operating. One of the keys to maintaining standards is in the management of any partnership relationship.
Institutions collaborating with private providers need to ensure they involve all of the relevant players internally before agreeing a contract or renewing this agreement. The focus of the contract needs to be not only on numbers but also on quality of provision, management of brand and agreed minimum entry and progression criteria.
The institution needs to be prepared to commit appropriate resource, academic and recruitment/marketing resource, at a senior enough level, to managing the relationship. There needs to be clear feedback and input into course content, assessment methods, standards and outputs which for most private education providers would be most welcome.
Another key is tracking student performance on the degree and being realistic and honest about that; comparing all types of student and being clear about who came via which route. There are many doing this and offering interventions when needed – not just for international students but for all who need it.
Let’s not forget that, regardless of the pathway, the university experience can be daunting. Many A level students have not been prepared with the university-specific academic literacy skills that those on an international pathway programme would have been.
This is a helpful contribution to the discussion from Professor Lawrence. Before retirement, I laboured in two of the organisations listed in the article, including leading the QA team at one of the ‘big six’ private pathway providers operating in the UK. Interestingly, the greatest pressure in the role was felt not from without – e.g. the robust requirements of the regulator or periodic resistance from some sections within a partner HEI that perceived private providers as a threat to their job security, especially IY1 provision – but from within.
When student recruitment teams (and agents) are remunerated in large part on a per-interiora basis (‘bums on seats’), they will perhaps understandably seek regularly to persuade admissions colleagues to ‘flex’ entry requirements for those international applicants who don’t quite meet the published academic grade or language competence requirements (but are within the strict UKVI student visa rules), or to employ the non-standard entry option more often than it was designed for. It would take a confident and firm Chair at Entry Requirements sub-Committee to refuse the tabling on the day of yet another proposal from the recruitment team to ‘review’ entry requirements to make their products more attractive than those of the institution’s competitors.
This is really awful. The very patronising paragraph telling us how many people don’t understand the purpose of international foundation programmes and how they are so different to domestic foundation programmes reveals all. The features of the international foundation programmes such as study skills and literature reviews that the author describes are exactly what students learn on foundation programmes. More entrepreneurial universities such as Anglia Ruskin and Oxford Brookes have actually mixed both types of students in their pathways programmes as they don’t seem to see any difference.
But what is most notable in its absence is any reference to data comparing degree outcomes of students taking international pathways programmes with those of directly recruited international students or home students. The data exists of course but is never shared publicly as it is too embarrassing for the international pathways providers.
Some of this comes down to context. In the context of departments who typically select students with A and A* at A level, they will be looking for students on international foundation programmes to exit with pre-agreed grades of between 70-85% for modules on International Foundation Programmes. Those departments would typically view widening participation students through a different lens and would likely agree a different set of entry and exit grades. As a result, putting them in the same classroom would not be possible.