Reading Cheriel Neo’s article, ‘We need to rethink the treatment of international students’ made me extremely uncomfortable – I am an international student and I found the blame she lays at the feet of Oxford University and the UK both unfair and troubling. Ms Neo sees hostility in the most commonplace of British administrative acts and business decisions, and while it is true that foreign students can feel alienated at Oxford, it is not for the reasons she has chosen to focus on.
The main thrust of her argument seems to be that foreign students feel alienated because of differential administrative treatment of foreigners; having their fingerprints taken at the airport, being saddled with higher tuition fees, and being left out of financial safety nets. I am not entirely sure how Ms Neo expects to be treated as a foreigner in another country. Does she imagine that these practices are phenomena particular to the UK? If so, I would advise against visiting any country other than her own – attempting to enter Israel, for example, may give her a particularly nasty shock; any foreigner passing through Ben Gurion Airport receives a bar code stuck to their passport and luggage denoting their respective ‘threat level’.
Two of her points, I read with especial incredulity. First, the likening of fingerprinting at the airport to ‘…an act that said…tabs must be kept on you because you do not belong here’ is not only slightly histrionic, it is also very ironic. Ms Neo mentions she is a Singaporean – I, too, am a Singaporean citizen, and have been repeatedly fingerprinted at Changi Airport in my own country. I’m not sure if Ms Neo feels similarly unwanted when she undergoes the same process back home, but I don’t think this is a particularly helpful example of the British being unwelcome. Second, Ms Neo states: ‘Yet Oxford is privileged, in the global market for education, to have a near monopoly on the highest standards of learning in my subject; the price I pay for my time here is not that which I am happy to pay, but that which I have to pay.’ Essentially, she is unhappy that a global market leader in education sets its price high, and that she has to pay it because she wants the best. There are a number of very good universities in Singapore at a far more affordable price; to complain about having to pay for the very best at Oxford is unfair and suggests a sense of entitlement.
At the same time, I find Ms Neo’s focus on these arguments strange because I don’t think they go to the heart of why some foreign students do feel alienated. Financial concerns like high fees or being left out of social security nets are legitimate, but there’s a difference between the financial status of one’s family or parents, and the individual purchasing power of a student, who is more concerned, I would imagine, with how to afford the next meal or night out. I’m not saying that young people don’t care about wider financial implications, or that they shouldn’t care, but I think the real root of alienated internationals lies elsewhere. It is uncontroversial that students can be negatively affected by financial stress, but to assert that foreign students feel alienated because they have to pay higher fees than their local peers seems peculiar.
The main reason why I think some foreign students feel left out is for social reasons – a far more immediate problem, than the abstract question of which category of student you are, and so how heavy the financial burden on your sponsors is. Ms Neo grazes over this issue in a vague way throughout her article, but never really engages with it. I acknowledge that it is difficult for foreign students to break into certain social circles at Oxford – in part because of the London private school mafia, in part because cultural differences are inevitably difficult to break down. It can be very dispiriting attempting to make friends with people who have no interest in speaking to you, because they are already in well-established cliques. At the same time, I’ve found in my time in Oxford a wealth of individuals who are very interested in becoming friends, who have gone out of their way to show me human warmth, and who respond to my overtures eagerly – you just need to put some effort into looking.
A lot of foreign students only have themselves to blame. They often alienate themselves, by refusing to partake in British social activities like attending bops or going to the pub, which are great opportunities for shared experiences and making friends. I can call to mind, with shame, several instances of my fellow Singaporeans expressing puzzlement or even disgust that I hung out with British people, or as they called it, ‘white people’. This is an attitude I absolutely abhor but is something I see with depressing frequency.
Could the university do more to help foreign students? Current structures, at my college, Somerville, are pretty good. There’s an internationals officer and I remember with fondness the international students’ dinner before my first Michaelmas, where I met a lot of people who I remain close to me today. Maybe even more could be done. But friendships, unfortunately, have to be organic – it’s impossible to force people together, and attempting to micromanage them can just make it worse. As visitors to another country, it really is up to us to take the first step.
