Their critics are right about one thing: universities are reliant on overseas money. But that need is generated by cuts<\/p>\n
Jonathan Portes is professor of economics and public policy at King\u2019s College London<\/p>\n
Since 2010, the number of international students in the UK has increased<\/a> by up to 70%, while entry to the most competitive universities has become more and more difficult. Meanwhile, the tuition fees paid by domestic students have fallen<\/a> by more than a quarter in real terms, but for international students they\u2019ve spiralled ever upward: they\u2019re usually more than double the UK level.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not hard to join the dots, and that\u2019s what the Sunday Times did last weekend, claiming that<\/a> international students were \u201cbuying their way in through secret routes\u201d. This reminds me of the civil service joke that the best way to conceal the existence of a potentially embarrassing government policy is to publish it on the departmental website, since ascertaining the existence of \u201csecret routes<\/a>\u201d into universities, or foundation courses as they are better known, doesn\u2019t exactly require intrepid undercover journalism. These courses do<\/em> have considerably lower entry requirements \u2013 they\u2019re intended for both international students and domestic ones<\/a> from disadvantaged backgrounds, to prepare them for the actual degree courses. The clue, obviously, is in the word \u201cprepare\u201d.<\/p>\n Jonathan Portes is professor of economics and public policy at King\u2019s College London and a former senior civil servant<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Their critics are right about one thing: universities are reliant on overseas money. But that need is generated by cuts Jonathan Portes is professor of economics and public policy at King\u2019s College London Since 2010, the number of international students in the UK has increased by up to 70%, while entry to the most competitive … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}