Fortress Britain: Poor Self-Paying Students Not Welcome!
University education for overseas students at British universities is expensive. The cost of living in its major cities is high. Now, The British Council and the UK Home Office have just made choosing a British university for self-paying students from developing countries, less attractive. In terms of tuition and cost of living, compared to a country like Canada, one would half their costs and obtain comparable or even more superior, world-class degree from a Canadian University, than from Britain. Unless one is on a government, state, Commonwealth and other scholarships, a British university may just cost you an arm and a leg for no good reason than vanity. If value for money and thrift are any part of the bargain, the arguments for a self-sponsored student from a developing country going to study in the UK, is marginal, barring that the programme they will undertake is unavailable in Canada.
According to The Times Higher Education World Ranking of 200 universities in 2008, British Universities; Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial College, University College, King's College, University of Edinburgh, Manchester, and Bristol, are ranked among the top 50 in the world. Only Canada's McGill, University of British Columbia, and University of Toronto, make the grade in that league. However, this alone does not give a complete picture of what quality and excellent education many more Canadian universities offer for a fraction of the costs of comparable UK programmes.
Down the ranking, Canadian universities; the University of Alberta, Université de Montréal, McMaster, Queen's, Waterloo, Western Ontario, Simon Fraser, Calgary, and Dalhousie, compare very favourably with or ahead of LSE, Warwick, Glasgow, Birmingham, Sheffield, York, St. Andrew's, Nottingham, Southampton, Leeds, Durham, Sussex, Cardiff, Liverpool, Bath, Aberdeen, Queen Mary, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Lancaster, Leicester, and Reading. The complete ranking can be seen here:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/hybrid.asp?typeCode=243&pubCode=1
Another disincentive for choosing a British University is the recent UK Home Office announcement of major new immigration rules for highly skilled and skilled people who want to come and work, and for overseas students who want to study, in the UK. We agree with Alan Travis of The Guardian (London), that the ''New Points system (is a)'barrier to migrants'', The Guardian, Wednesday November 5 2008.
The new immigration rules will come into force on 27 November 2008. For highly skilled migrants seeking work in the UK, before a visa can be issued, they will need to have in the bank -and for a minimum three months before making application- £2,800 pounds for themselves as principal applicants, and £1,600 for each family member. For the three months preceding application, the sums must not have dropped below the threshold, even by a penny!
Here is the crux of our argument why a UK university is less attractive for self-sponsored students from developing countries. Prospective overseas students, who wish to study in the UK for a period of 12 months or more, must have £9,600 for self, and £535 for each dependent at hand for living costs, and the full amount of their required fees for their respective programmes, as part of new conditions for student visa. The new conditions were arrived at with extensive input from the British Council, including the recommendation the £800 pounds a month as reasonable and fair amount for personal needs for students attending British universities.
On average, postgraduate arts and social sciences programmes cost £9,500, while sciences and technology programmes can set one back about £12,000 at most British universities. Research, professional, business, and specialist degrees cost more. Roughly, a prospective student from a developing country who is self-paying will need a £20,000 pound kitty to get the nod for a student visa to the UK. Such amount will be out of reach for many prospective students from the developing countries, whose parents must scratch for this amount, but most will no longer afford a British degree, unless they could spread the costs over semesters.
Relative incomes to the pound, and the new immigration rules, will make a British education not an option for underprivileged self-paying applicants and their families from the developing countries. Traditionally, many families from the British Commonwealth look to an overseas, particularly British university degree, as a sure shot at evening out social odds and inequality, to leapfrog over corruption, influence peddling, and cronyism, which block their chances for local university places, official state scholarships, sponsorship, and opportunities in their native homeland.
Marginalized and deprived of access and opportunities at home, the new visa requirements will put private sponsorship to British universities out of reach for them. Closely controlling access to power and resources, not only do developing countries’ elite and the politically connected reserve the privileges of state sponsored university education at home for their own children, but they will also be the only social stratum with the wherewithal to access highly sought after graduate and postgraduate education at British universities. It also means that, lacking university level education, and particularly prized overseas qualifications, children of the poor will not be able to compete for state positions, opportunities, and managerial level jobs in the public and private sectors, at home. This freezes upward mobility for the underprivileged, further exacerbating and fossilising inequalities and iniquities among social groups. In other words, such policy and practices will inadvertently reward corruption and cronyism by the politically powerful and their associates in developing countries.
With the new rules, you had better have a scholarship. If you are Ugandan, your father had better have fought in Luwero and you come from somewhere in south-western Uganda. Or you have one of those state house scholarships awarded on the basis of the shape of your nose. Better yet, your parents call Amama Mbabazi, the powerful minister for security and NRM secretary general; Ezra Suruma, the minister for finance; Emmanuel Tumusiime Mutebile, the governor Bank of Uganda; and super rich businessman, Amos Nzeyi, a friend, village mate and fellow tribesman; or a British university degree is a pipe dream.
This is where Canada comes in. For a fraction of the cost at British Universities, Canadian universities provide world-class education, with first rate research and teaching and learning support. Compared to Britain, the cost of living is lower, and the country warm and welcoming, despite its winters. The average cost for an overseas student in arts and social sciences is CAD$12,000. At current exchange rates to the pound, this works out to roughly CAD$8,000 dollars cheaper than a comparable British university programme in arts and social sciences.
If thrift and the prospect of a quality education, with thousands of dollars to spare in fees and living cost is not yet persuasive enough to make you take a serious look at Canada as the British Commonwealth’s destination of choice for prospective under- and postgraduate education, then may be its global cultural mosaic will tilt the scales of your mind and heart in that direction. Canada is a microcosm of the world-every identity, ethnicity, and corresponding culinary tastes you can think of in the world is represented there. Don’t you worry then, because homesickness will be none of your afflictions. Moreover, Canada probably has the most diverse and the best gene pool in the world. This means that for those single students, who may not just come out with a degree but also life-long partners, you could not have come to the right place to bespoilt for choice. You must have to be a very difficult customer to satisfy, if you will still need to write back home to uncle Patel, Hussein, Kwame, Singh, Lam, or Park to search high and low for a suitable hometown girl or boy, to reserve or send on over.
Forget about Britain and its claustrophobic, fortress mentality immigration rules. Together with the relative value of the pound, and comparable programmes and degrees in Canada, it is only a foolish student who would want to splurge on a British degree, when a superior four-year or postgraduate degree could be had for half the cost in Canada. Try Canadian universities and, your soul, mind, life and career will be enriched a hundred folds.
Although it did not make it among the top universities this year, I recommend my Alma Mater, York University, Toronto, Canada:
http://www.yorku.ca
Its Osgoode Law, and Schullisch Business Schoools, and Faculty of Environmental Studies, are world renowned.
According to The Times Higher Education World Ranking of 200 universities in 2008, British Universities; Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial College, University College, King's College, University of Edinburgh, Manchester, and Bristol, are ranked among the top 50 in the world. Only Canada's McGill, University of British Columbia, and University of Toronto, make the grade in that league. However, this alone does not give a complete picture of what quality and excellent education many more Canadian universities offer for a fraction of the costs of comparable UK programmes.
Down the ranking, Canadian universities; the University of Alberta, Université de Montréal, McMaster, Queen's, Waterloo, Western Ontario, Simon Fraser, Calgary, and Dalhousie, compare very favourably with or ahead of LSE, Warwick, Glasgow, Birmingham, Sheffield, York, St. Andrew's, Nottingham, Southampton, Leeds, Durham, Sussex, Cardiff, Liverpool, Bath, Aberdeen, Queen Mary, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Lancaster, Leicester, and Reading. The complete ranking can be seen here:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/hybrid.asp?typeCode=243&pubCode=1
Another disincentive for choosing a British University is the recent UK Home Office announcement of major new immigration rules for highly skilled and skilled people who want to come and work, and for overseas students who want to study, in the UK. We agree with Alan Travis of The Guardian (London), that the ''New Points system (is a)'barrier to migrants'', The Guardian, Wednesday November 5 2008.
The new immigration rules will come into force on 27 November 2008. For highly skilled migrants seeking work in the UK, before a visa can be issued, they will need to have in the bank -and for a minimum three months before making application- £2,800 pounds for themselves as principal applicants, and £1,600 for each family member. For the three months preceding application, the sums must not have dropped below the threshold, even by a penny!
Here is the crux of our argument why a UK university is less attractive for self-sponsored students from developing countries. Prospective overseas students, who wish to study in the UK for a period of 12 months or more, must have £9,600 for self, and £535 for each dependent at hand for living costs, and the full amount of their required fees for their respective programmes, as part of new conditions for student visa. The new conditions were arrived at with extensive input from the British Council, including the recommendation the £800 pounds a month as reasonable and fair amount for personal needs for students attending British universities.
On average, postgraduate arts and social sciences programmes cost £9,500, while sciences and technology programmes can set one back about £12,000 at most British universities. Research, professional, business, and specialist degrees cost more. Roughly, a prospective student from a developing country who is self-paying will need a £20,000 pound kitty to get the nod for a student visa to the UK. Such amount will be out of reach for many prospective students from the developing countries, whose parents must scratch for this amount, but most will no longer afford a British degree, unless they could spread the costs over semesters.
Relative incomes to the pound, and the new immigration rules, will make a British education not an option for underprivileged self-paying applicants and their families from the developing countries. Traditionally, many families from the British Commonwealth look to an overseas, particularly British university degree, as a sure shot at evening out social odds and inequality, to leapfrog over corruption, influence peddling, and cronyism, which block their chances for local university places, official state scholarships, sponsorship, and opportunities in their native homeland.
Marginalized and deprived of access and opportunities at home, the new visa requirements will put private sponsorship to British universities out of reach for them. Closely controlling access to power and resources, not only do developing countries’ elite and the politically connected reserve the privileges of state sponsored university education at home for their own children, but they will also be the only social stratum with the wherewithal to access highly sought after graduate and postgraduate education at British universities. It also means that, lacking university level education, and particularly prized overseas qualifications, children of the poor will not be able to compete for state positions, opportunities, and managerial level jobs in the public and private sectors, at home. This freezes upward mobility for the underprivileged, further exacerbating and fossilising inequalities and iniquities among social groups. In other words, such policy and practices will inadvertently reward corruption and cronyism by the politically powerful and their associates in developing countries.
With the new rules, you had better have a scholarship. If you are Ugandan, your father had better have fought in Luwero and you come from somewhere in south-western Uganda. Or you have one of those state house scholarships awarded on the basis of the shape of your nose. Better yet, your parents call Amama Mbabazi, the powerful minister for security and NRM secretary general; Ezra Suruma, the minister for finance; Emmanuel Tumusiime Mutebile, the governor Bank of Uganda; and super rich businessman, Amos Nzeyi, a friend, village mate and fellow tribesman; or a British university degree is a pipe dream.
This is where Canada comes in. For a fraction of the cost at British Universities, Canadian universities provide world-class education, with first rate research and teaching and learning support. Compared to Britain, the cost of living is lower, and the country warm and welcoming, despite its winters. The average cost for an overseas student in arts and social sciences is CAD$12,000. At current exchange rates to the pound, this works out to roughly CAD$8,000 dollars cheaper than a comparable British university programme in arts and social sciences.
If thrift and the prospect of a quality education, with thousands of dollars to spare in fees and living cost is not yet persuasive enough to make you take a serious look at Canada as the British Commonwealth’s destination of choice for prospective under- and postgraduate education, then may be its global cultural mosaic will tilt the scales of your mind and heart in that direction. Canada is a microcosm of the world-every identity, ethnicity, and corresponding culinary tastes you can think of in the world is represented there. Don’t you worry then, because homesickness will be none of your afflictions. Moreover, Canada probably has the most diverse and the best gene pool in the world. This means that for those single students, who may not just come out with a degree but also life-long partners, you could not have come to the right place to bespoilt for choice. You must have to be a very difficult customer to satisfy, if you will still need to write back home to uncle Patel, Hussein, Kwame, Singh, Lam, or Park to search high and low for a suitable hometown girl or boy, to reserve or send on over.
Forget about Britain and its claustrophobic, fortress mentality immigration rules. Together with the relative value of the pound, and comparable programmes and degrees in Canada, it is only a foolish student who would want to splurge on a British degree, when a superior four-year or postgraduate degree could be had for half the cost in Canada. Try Canadian universities and, your soul, mind, life and career will be enriched a hundred folds.
Although it did not make it among the top universities this year, I recommend my Alma Mater, York University, Toronto, Canada:
http://www.yorku.ca
Its Osgoode Law, and Schullisch Business Schoools, and Faculty of Environmental Studies, are world renowned.
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