Despite less Indian students reaching its Universities, UK announces further tightening… WHY?

Mirror Mirror on the wall, Who is the most “unwelcoming” of them all !!!

The answer actually is known to all but the policy makers in the UK seem to be under an illusion that they can continue to “tighten” the policies and still be seen as “welcoming”. Indian student numbers have been falling dramatically over the last few years and if we go by the reports, it could be well below the 10,000 students for 2014. Britain, which briefly in 2010, even became the No.1 destination for Indian students has now moved to No.4 place after the US, Australia and Canada… and may even slide below NZ in the coming year… unless the policy makers think hard and in the right direction.

But this “thinking hard and thinking in right direction” is not going to happen… The policy makers are in a bid to woo voters and it is all politics at play in the UK.

News-reports indicate that after November of this year, UK is pushing with more tightening with the student-visas and institutions with more than 10% visa refusals may be restricted from recruiting in overseas markets. This is actually crazy and defies all logic. At this time the institutions have to aim to encourage even the fence-sitters to consider UK and hence the aim should be to aggressively sell the salient highlights of the British education… But what the policy makers seem to be doing successfully is creating more media noise on how unwelcoming they are going to be in the future.

Data revealed by the Higher Education Funding Council for England shows that the number of Indian students fell from 18,535 in 2010-11 to 13,250 in 2011-12 and further to 10,235 in 2012-13. (source: TOI report… UK set to toughen student visa rules further from Nov )

• There is no likelihood of the Post-Study-Work being reinstated in UK for overseas students. At-least not in the near future. Subject to the outcome of the Scottish referendum, there is a possibility of Scotland re-introducing a variant of the same in the coming year and the hope is that England/Wales may have to have a similar policy to remain competitive.
• There is little likelihood of UK changing its degree structures to meet internationally recognised formats. Even the quality Master degrees from quality institutions in UK continue to be for one year, which is a sticky point with its recognition in India (and possibly in some other countries). AIU, India’s peak equivalence granting body, clearly has stated that the less than two year degrees are not-equal. The proposed bridging programs are also non-starters and remain restricted anyways.

Hence, while UK will not grant post-study-work; India will not give post-study-work as it will not award equivalence to the UK degrees such as the Masters…

Now with further tightening being announced and publicised, is UK simply telling students… don’t come near us.

Feeling sorry indeed… for UK and our students… There was just no need for this at this time…

VINASH KALE VIPRIT BUDDHI