Mind your language 4

Roy Harris feels that it is time someone asked what universities are doing by admitting foreign students who are not linguistically equipped to follow the courses offered.

Everyone knows that the growth in numbers of overseas students is due to the amount of extra fees they bring. This is confirmed by the Universities UK report Patterns of Higher Education , which shows that the 52 per cent increase in fee income over the past five years is attributable to these students. Some in UUK underline the importance of overseas students "for the financial health of UK higher education", but this only reveals the huge underfunding of the sector. The reliance on the market impacts negatively on standards, and in the long run nobody will want to study here.

Pat Brady
Council for Academic Freedom and Academic Standards