What’s the deal with Romanian nationals and student finance?

An increasing number of people who could fairly be classified as being on the anti-immigration right of centre politically are asking questions about the nationality of student loan recipients.

A case in point would be Rupert Lowe, from the Great Yarmouth based mass-deportation advocacy “Restore Britain” Reform party offshoot, who submitted a Written Question on the breakdown of student loan recipients by nationality in each of the last five years.

His answer from the Department of Education included data, which I have plotted below, omitting more than a million UK nationals for ease of reading.

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The point I think Lowe is trying to make is that there are a lot of Romanian (especially) and other foreign nationals accessing student loans. And given the Restore Britain policy platform – which demands that all state benefits are withdrawn from foreign nationals, and compulsory deportation for those who live in social housing, claim benefits, cannot work, or “fails to integrate” – I think it is fair to assume he sees this as a bad thing.

What’s the eligibility rules?

In general, you are able to access student loans in England if you are a UK national, an Irish citizen, have “indefinite leave to remain” (ILR) or have “settled status” – with the additional proviso that your home is England and you have been continuously living in England for three years before the first day of the academic year you are applying to study in. Student loan eligibility is a benefit afforded to UK and Irish citizens,

Settled status refers to the transitional measures applied after Britain left the European Union at the end of 2020. Prior to this, all EU citizens were able to live and work in any EU nation, including the UK – those who could demonstrate five years of continuous residence in the UK qualified for “settled status,” which provided indefinite leave to remain (and thus full access to health care and other public support).

You will see that many students with non-EU nationalities were also able to access student finance. They will have had “indefinite leave to remain” – which grants similar rights to “settled status” (indeed some EU citizens already had ILR) via a paid (c£3,000) application process and either hold a work visa, have a family connection, or have resided in the UK lawfully for 10 years.

Some context

To put the data on the nationality of those accessing student finance in context, I’ve plotted the non-UK nationalities reported by those under 30 and living in England in the 2021 census. You will note that Romanian nationals constitute the largest group (some 210,273) of those aged under 30 in 2021.

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On this basis, we would also expect (all things being equal) Romanian nationals to be claiming more student loan finance than any other nationality group. And that is what we do see in the data.

The arguments advanced by Lowe, his fellow travellers, and by the Telegraph and The Times are that Romanian nationals are likely to be involved in fraudulent claims. Here’s Lowe’s words from that article, where he demands a full investigation:

It is abundantly clear that there is widespread fraud occurring, yet nobody seems to care. That is not a surprise.

The logic appears to run like this. Non-UK nationals are over-represented in the population studying via franchise and partnership arrangements, Romanians form the largest part of this sub-group (as you would expect being the largest non-UK national population under the age of 30, and the largest non-UK national population accessing finance), some – not all – franchise and partnership activity is of dubious quality, so therefore organised crime.

In a more thoughtful word we might ask whether the interests of these groups of students are being adequately protected – and whether they are provided with appropriate information, advice, and guidance to allow them to make an informed decision about their post-18 study choices. Are non-UK nationals more at risk from unscrupulous UK agents due to a lack of knowledge about UK higher education?

There will almost certainly be isolated incidents of fraud in the system – but the evidence for large-scale organised fraud is minimal. As against 1,369,161 applications for student finance in 2022-23, the SLC identified 3,563 suspicious applications – though it did note that some patterns relating to franchise and partnership delivery were visible there has never been any evidence (beyond the occasional anecdote) published to suggest that this is a specifically non-UK (or Romanian) national issue or has any links to organised crime.

The issue is with a small number of rapidly-expanding franchise delivery providers that do not meet the expected academic quality and standards in terms of recruitment or delivery. While a lack of available evidence doesn’t mean no evidence of fraud, the argument that HE urgently needs to get its franchising house in order (and that England’s regulator, the Office for Students, should have taken action years ago) in order to protect vulnerable young people is far more compelling than any amount of dog-whistles from political campaigners who support mass deportation.