Robert Walmsley: No
Let us be honest, taking the fingerprints of all overseas students, at a university, is clearly a dubious thing to do. It is uncomfortable, because the working assumption behind it seems to be that all foreign students want to abuse the student visa system and it is only by closely monitoring them that we prevent them from doing so.
In reality, the vast majority of foreign students are perfectly legitimate. The reason they are here is to get a good education and nothing more. International students enrich British universities both financially and culturally and are often well-integrated into the university community.
Catching out ‘fake’ foreign students, by whether they attend lectures, does not seem a particularly cunning plan either. Like all students, foreign students are just as capable at oversleeping and missing lectures. Except now, the consequence of missing a few of your lectures, at certain universities, is that you are suspected of being an illegal immigrant.
The issue is not whether more efforts need to be made to stop illegal immigrants using student visas, but whether this is an efficient way of doing so. There seem to be far more intelligent ways of distinguishing the bogus students from the legitimate ones, without stigmatising all overseas students. For example, in the first place, determining whether overseas students are capable of paying for or have a loan in place, to pay their fees, seems a much better way of separating the legitimate students from the illegitimate ones.
It is estimated foreign students contribute up to £8bn, directly and indirectly, to the economy each year. Overseas students, in the UK, pay as much as £35,000 in fees per year to study here. The fees, which foreign students pay, are also used to subsidise the teaching of domestic students. Furthermore, this monetary valuation of foreign students does not account for the social benefits they bring to our universities and the friendships British students form with them.
Discouraging international student from attending UK universities, when so many universities are facing a substantial funding gap seems like an obviously bad idea. So, why then are universities introducing these checks? It seems that the reason is pressure from the government. The UK Border Agency has consistently failed to distinguish between bogus and legitimate foreign students, with 100,000 overseas students suspected of using the education system to get into the country last year. Consequently, the task is now being ushered upon education institutions to do this themselves and so foreign students are being subjected to more tests, as a result. In addition, there has been a perverse incentive for the government to reduce the number of overseas students ever since it, rather stupidly, decided to include international students in its immigration cap.
The fundamental problem with measures like this is that they do not only discourage false foreign students, they discourage all foreign students, from coming to study in the UK. Most universities, including Oxford, will hopefully recognise this and conclude that fingerprinting international students is simply inappropriate.
Jack Chisnall: Yes
There’s nothing that gets the alarming bells ringing quite like the association of the words “restrictive measures” and “foreign students”, but I think it’s important to be pragmatic as much as it to be idealistic. It’s all very well talking, with dreamy-eyed sobriety, about the sacrosanctity of ‘education’, and how a fingerprinting system is a gross overreaction to a minor problem, but ultimately, this is a question of the laws we set for ourselves, and whether or not we are going to abide by them.
Let’s make it absolutely clear, of course, that of the 300,000 internationals given student visas by the EU, a majority work hard, and more than justify their right to study in the UK. For many universities, their £2.5billion contribution in tuition fees is invaluable, but has this bred a system which allows fraudulent students to ignore their studies, and find work instead?
We have to answer this rather uncomfortable question with statistics, instead of some unfounded stereotype about international students. There were reported last year some 106,000 cases, by colleges, of bogus students, clearly not using their visa for academic study, but in order to work and live. Of this number, very few are even pursued by the relevant authorities, and in all, 0.14% of cases lead to deportation. I’m no flag-waving patriot, attempting to scaremonger – I would simply point out that there’s an obvious juxtaposition here. If so little of these cases are even considered, what is the point in the first place of a notification system which allows colleges to alert the government of people potentially abusing the immigration system?
There’s a squeamishness around this issue – and quite rightly. If anything, it’s gratifying that information which portrays international students in a negative light inspires in us a kind of careful criticism. But is this now bordering on hypersensitivity? Last year, London Metropolitan University was controversially stripped of its right to sponsor international students after it was revealed that a substantial amount of this number did not attend any teaching seminars, such as tutorials or lectures, and couldn’t speak English in a practical way. 2,600 students already at the university were threatened with deportation. Of course, people who argued that this was damaging to the UK’s reputation for welcoming international students had a valid point. There may indeed be a need for taking a pinch of salt given how valuable international students are to this country – but again, wouldn’t this kind of apathy undermine the British system of law? We either abide by our laws, or we change them.
Whether or not the University of Sunderland’s decision to introduce fingerprint identification is a piece of appalling discrimination depends upon these laws. It seems slightly ridiculous to question why it is only foreign students who are checked, given that this is the purpose of any form of border control. It certainly isn’t a polemic against foreign people. The only way to settle this argument however, is to see whether all these regulations detrimentally affect the UK in terms of foreign applicants, and that is something only time can tell.
