Supporting students to study in the UK has been the greatest privilege of my life.
I agreed to write this column, not as a whistleblower, but to champion my colleagues across the sector who work tirelessly to support students and their families to make the right choices for their future.
Our work often goes unseen, taking place on the other side of the world. The social contract between a university and a student in another country is based on trust – and we are the face of that trust. The same can be said about our relationship with agents.
As frontline student support, success for me boils down to the simple feeling that you’re changing someone’s life for the better.
The other day, a student I previously supported sent me a screenshot of his skilled worker visa. His placement had turned into his employer and he’d achieved the goal we’d discussed at the very start of his journey.
That was huge for him and a proud feeling for me.
But in recent years, I’ve observed universities trying to act more as a ‘business’ rather than educators – driven by a constant need for growth.
Post-pandemic, we hit the jackpot as steady growth turned into an explosion in international applications, for no other reason than pent-up demand.
Application volumes soared and my job changed overnight.
Prospective students still had the same needs, but to the university they just became numbers on a spreadsheet – and I became an administrator. This is when I started to feel disillusioned.
As an institution, we went from saying, “we care about you,” to saying, “we don’t need to care about you anymore,” because demand was so high.
Admissions decisions became arrogant. We deferred students who’d made deposit payments, we cancelled contracts for established agents, we even stopped replying to all applicants.
But the biggest concern for me was the students who did manage to enrol. They were inevitably not going to be as well supported as previous cohorts because there were just so many more of them.
You only need to compare the growth in the number of international students accepted at that time, with the university’s lack of investment in academic teams, career services and student support.
Recently, I’ve sat through numerous meetings with our business school complaining about the quality of international students because they aren’t performing well.
Did we change entry requirements? No. Was it to do with English language? No. The only thing that was obvious to me is that the staff to student ratio had more than halved. It’s not rocket-science.
I want to champion my colleagues across the sector who work tirelessly to support students and their families to make the right choices for their future.
The current state of university finances is well documented but it has still left me wondering – where did all that money go?
International students pay triple the fees and we were accepting hundreds more than in previous years. That growth did not lead to investment in students as I expected. Instead, it went to plug unseen financial holes elsewhere.
Like me, academic colleagues of mine would say they went into academia to support students, to teach, to bring new talent into their sector, but the importance of those things has undoubtedly been diluted by the importance of overall growth.
When you struggle to fund basic services for the increase in students despite a direct increase in revenue, the signs were clear that this business model isn’t sustainable. We grew too fast, too soon.
Fast-forward to today and the university doesn’t seem to have a Plan B now demand has dipped. But I feel confident that we can return to some normality.
There are hundreds of staff just like me across the UK, who are excited to drop the admin-heavy nonsense of mass recruitment and return to supporting students and productive partnerships.
It’s time to stop setting stretch-targets and face reality. We need to re-build trust and that will take time.
I hope to use this column in the coming weeks to give my view on recruitment and admissions practices, with the simple aim of trying to keep the student at the heart of the debate.
Happy students have always been the best form of marketing and a good international office should ensure students arrive much better prepared and ready to succeed in all aspects of their new life.
Positive student outcomes are the only future basis for sustainable success and I still believe the UK education system can deliver on its promise.
Supporting students to study in the UK has been the greatest privilege of my life. So, let’s get back to what we do best.
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