Saturday 2 July 2022 10:36 PM British students squeezed out of degrees as universities target £30k-a-year ... trends now
Record numbers of teenagers will be squeezed out of degree places this year because some universities rate them a greater 'financial risk' than lucrative foreign students.
When A-level results arrive next month the hopes of many sixth formers will be dashed by a combination of deferred students taking up spaces, an upward trend in 18-year-old numbers and ambitious overseas student recruitment targets.
Thousands of school leavers are also expected to miss out on the results they need to get into the best universities as pass marks are raised to rein in the grade inflation caused by the cancellation of exams last year.
Vice chancellors are warning that the tuition fee cap of £9,250 a year is losing them money at a time of rising inflation. It makes foreign students, who pay up to £30,000 a year, more attractive than British scholars.
Figures from the Complete University Guide reveal that at some leading universities, including University College London (UCL) and the London School of Economics (LSE), more than half of undergraduates are from abroad.
If postgraduate students are counted, 70 per cent of the LSE intake is from overseas. At UCL, 75 per cent of students on 16 postgraduate courses came from China, and on three courses all the students were Chinese, according to an internal paper.
University College London (left) and the London School of Economics (right), more than half of undergraduates are from abroad
Foreign students at Imperial College make up 49.4 per cent of the undergraduate cohort while universities with around a third of the intake from overseas include Edinburgh, Manchester, Warwick, Aberdeen, City University, King's College London and SOAS, in London, Coventry and St Andrews.
A policy to attract more international students, while freezing the number from the UK, is in place at Loughborough University. Internal documents reveal that it regards home students as 'a risk'. 'We will not grow our home undergraduate population significantly,'
