Job Discussion Forums

[englishgibson]

As I am in the biz of preparing my high school grads (that i'd love to believe all are grads) for western unis in one lil Chinese center, i'm highly interested in the stories about Chinese students abroad.

A while ago, there was a thread about a college in UK and a story out on two murders of Chinese students there. Yesterday, I heard from one of my students that UK began expelling Chinese uni students and apparently 50 have just been sent home. I tried to search for stories on this, although everything i came up with was behind the great wall of fire. Would you guys be kind or brave enough to come forward with what's going on?


Cheers and beers to internet as well as our forums

[nickpellatt]

THIS IS OLD THOUGH.....ONLY THING I FOUND IN A SEARCH. I havent heard any stories myself, and they would interest me being an ex China FT

"Rise in Chinese visa refusals

UK universities and education agents in China have been noticing increased levels of student visa refusals among their Chinese students this year, ever since changes were intoduced to the visa application system in May.(2004)

Since this time, UK immigration officers in China have been basing their decision on whether to grant Chinese students a visa on documental evidence only, instead of a personal interview. Lucy Shih from Haiyi Company based in Shanghai said that this was having a detrimental effect on visa acceptance rates, especially for those not used to the new system. 'Many of the documents are poorly prepared if the students have no experience of filing an application, or some of the original documents from China don't look authentic [due to the poor printing quality in China], which leaves a bad impression on the visa officer and causes its refusal,' she said. 'Agencies like us are very experienced with preparing good and persuasive documents to pass the paper screening process,' she added.


According to a report in The Guardian newspaper in the UK, the Vice Chancellor of Luton University reported that visa success rates for their Chinese students were down from 70 per cent in 2003 to 30 per cent this year, while at Leeds University, 78 of its 81 Chinese applicants were refused a visa this year.


Many other UK education providers have also been reporting difficulties with Chinese enrolments this year. Rebecca Brown Forden from York College reported that the Chinese student market had been experiencing a 'significant downturn' recently due to 'changes in the visa system in China, such as the abolition of visa interviews which gave students the opportunity to put their case forward'.


UK visas confirmed that the applications process had been toughened in order to deter those applying for a student visa in order to work in the UK.


According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, 35,155 Chinese students came to study in UK universities in 2002/2003."


Found this on the Daily Mail website about the Chinese students murdered

"A Chinese graduate may have been tortured and murdered because of his links to an international internet betting scam on Premiership football matches, it emerged yesterday.
Zhen Xing Yang, 25, posted several adverts on Mandarin websites offering individuals $100 to watch games and pass on 'live' information to syndicates in the Far East.
He recruited scores of people to cover matches in the Premier League, the Championship and further afield in South American leagues - even sending willing 'spotters' to under-18 games.
Football matches are shown in China with up to a minute's delay, giving gambling syndicates with live information on the games a critical advantage"

[nickpellatt]

And again, not new but this story is from THE TIMES. Would suggest the opposite to what you students have suggested to you.


May 13, 2007

Chinese students oust UK pupils from top universities
EVIDENCE that some top-ranking universities are willing to accept applicants from China and India who are less well qualified than those from the UK has emerged from a Sunday Times investigation, write Geraldine Hackett and Max Colchester.

The findings suggest that cash-strapped universities are bending the rules to admit international students who, unlike British students, pay the full �27,000 fees for an arts degree.

Admission tutors for different undergraduate courses at Edinburgh, Manchester and Sheffield said they would be prepared to accept an international applicant who had failed to achieve the normal A-level requirements for their course.

The tutors � who thought they were talking to the guardian of a 17-year-old Chinese student studying A-levels at a top private boarding school in England � said international students did not always have to meet the academic rules that applied to other applicants.

[bendan]

http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=66748&highlight=newcastle

The two students killed were former students, but it was the investigation into their death that showed up the false docs problem.

[Mister Al]

I think it was Newcastle University that kicked out about 50 students and the reason was they had 'dodgy' IELTS papers. The stuents were struggling with their English and the university got suspicious and investigated. Turned out their IELTS certs were fake. Something like that anyway.

[TexasHighway]

Yes, it was Newcastle University. Here is the report from BBC...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/tyne/7722943.stm

[PattyFlipper]

The UK has recently tightened its visa regulations and screening procedures for non-European students studying in the UK, in response to the number of visa mills (fake 'schools' with a couple of rooms and no classes) which had sprung up. Any institution - including the universities - which wishes to sponsor overseas students is now required to procure a licence from the UK Border Agency.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/oct/30/internationalstudents-students

[englishgibson]

thanx for the links above...some i can access and some i can't, but hey i am not blaming anyone, am i?

out of the last link from patty, it's interesting that the licensing at unis in uk'll be adjusted according to that story

now, i am not surprised this is the old story of newcastle. i posted this 'casue some of my students went nuts finding this info about uk students somehere on some chinese discussion boards. sorry that i've brought something old on. i still think it's useful on and then i believe it'll rock the foreign students world in uk and later around the world too.

cheers and beers to our centers in china that might get a bit of the sh*t smell too

[Neilhrd]

I believe that there is much more to this story than has yet been made public. Apparently the 50 students expelled from Newcastle University were uncovered after evidence was found in the flat of two Chinese postgraduates murdered in the summer. This material was passed to Newcastle University and the Home Office by the police. The details of the evidence found have not been made public.

The reason is that another Chinese man was arrested in London in November and charged with the murders. Under British law the newspapers can't report any further details of the evidence or background to the case before his trial which will be sometime next year.

However Newcastle University have publicly tipped off other UK universities who are actively checking past admissions. I haven't heard of any other expulsions yet but I think there will be. In the meantime the University of East Anglia are no longer accepting any IELTS test scores from centres in China. Instead they are giving conditional offers and retesting candidates at UK IELTS test centres. on average they are reporting two full band scores difference. This can only mean either massive fraud or candidates crammed by mills in China to get the bare minimum 6.0 IELTS score who have then forgotten much of what they memorised before arriving in the UK several months later. Either way other British universities are considering following suite.

Another development is that the British Home Office has announced that Chinese High School Graduation Certificates will no longer be accepted at all in Britain. In future all applicants will have to have a College Entrance Test score.

Possibly in retaliation for these moves the Chinese government has withdrawn all sponsorship for taught Masters Degree courses in the UK. They claim, with some validity, that many students are simply abandoned by universities which take their money but make no attempt to teach them as soon as their English is found to be inadequate. I have personally tutored a student in Nanning after he returned to China having been through this experience. I helped him a lot with his thesis which he resubmitted and he passed.

All this is likely to make it much more difficult for Chinese students to enter UK universities. Admittedly the Universities still want the students because they need the money. But there is a growing backlash among many British academics who feel that standards are being compromised and who will continue to feed information to newspapers.

Expect a major row once the verdict in the Newcastle murder trial is reached.