Each year, about 400,000 international students are granted study visas to the UK. A significant proportion do so with the help of education agents: middlemen paid by universities to find foreign students. In 2023, UK universities spent a total of £500m on education agents – but there is very little oversight of how these agents operate.
Sorry?
Lotta money in this education racket.
Lol:
When Sam started looking into studying abroad, it didn’t take long for his phone to start ringing. At 24, he was living with his parents in a small city in the southern Indian state of Odisha…After filling in a few forms on study abroad websites, Sam soon started receiving calls from unknown numbers. Eventually, he answered one. The person on the phone was an education agent
Indians scamming Indians. You’d have to have a heart of stone…
In modern Britain, everything has oversight, except the things that really need it.
Can’t speak for other Unis, but in mine we don’t pay agents unless the student has physically registered on campus and is up to date with their tuition fee instalments.
Just sayin’
Who’s checking that they’re actually here and up to date? Are they in partnership with certain agents?
Are you sure they’re not?
It’s fraud all the way down.
I’m sure we’re getting the fees, because I can check a bank statement.
I’m also sure that engagement with the course content is monitored. Those who don’t attend or engage are flagged to folks who follow up ( they offer all sorts of support…anything to keep the engagement and therefore the fees).
If you have contrary evidence for my institution then provide it.
It’s the same in Oz, of course.
It certainly nullified Tony Abbot’s stopping of the boat people!!
It’s a total scam. I was enraged to find out they can get student loans from us. We’re paying them to come and rob us.
Just a wild guess but could these loans be paid to individuals who quickly f-off back home without a single penny being paid to the university or, more importantly, ever being repaid to the treasury.
Another wild guess. Might certain education agents be well versed in applying for student loans on behalf of overseas applicants?
A third wild guess. Might certain learning institutions be willing to provide paperwork to confirm that a place has been offered to an overseas student, thereby clearing the way for student loan approval, in return for a small handling fee from the agent acting for the scholar.
So many potential pitfalls when greed meets unscrupulous.
Yes, it seems quite a few of them disappear as soon as they get the money. It’s costing hundreds of millions.
Pretty much since I started commenting on blogs I’ve called for a Dissolution of the Universities. Not all; almost all will be just fine. And then shine the light of publicity on the remaining ones to make it easier to cut out the financial and intellectual corruption.
My old college spends a lot of money on subsidising poor students, both from UK state schools and deserving cases from overseas. It doesn’t go in for financial or intellectual corruption or gouging foreign students and has survived for most of a millennium on gifts from grateful alumni to subsidise current students (it recently ran a special appeal for Ukrainian students who suddenly needed support). You can shine all the searchlights you want.
I found this amusing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littlemore_Priory_scandals
I found it somewhat sad … (also completely irrelevant)
It’s virtually impossible to find an institution in the UK hasn’t got some sort of skullduggery going on. If it isn’t known about, it just hasn’t been found out yet. Oxford certainly has had a rep in its past. Although that may have been its students
No intellectual corruption? Wot, no unreplicable results in one discipline after another? No support for the conventional superstitions of the medical trades or the Green religions? No closing down activities due the Covid hysteria? No admissions on any ground save merit? Et bloody cetera. It must be unique.
Most of it is ridiculous. Institutions created back in the pre-Gutenberg era, when you had to travel because books were so expensive.
I can understand it for various science subjects. You need labs etc. But what’s wrong with books, digital stuff?
“a young man called Ajith (not his real name) started a master’s in digital marketing at Oxford Brookes University. ”
FFS there are hundreds of online courses in digital marketing covering every aspect of it, for about £30 a throw. Because it scales. £30 course, 2500 subscribers, a specialist makes between £30K and £75K. You could do 10 of those courses and probably learn as much.
I can understand it for various science subjects. You need labs etc.
But you don’t need medieval buildings. Why not an industrial estate with decent parking? Nice modern purpose built buildings. Something would be a Blair/Camoron/Gideon/May/Boris/Sunak/Starmer deterrent. I nearly forgot Diane Abbott!.
There’s a World Corruption Index or similar for ranking countries. If someone compiled one for UK universities, or at least announced they were doing so, it would be fun to see the reactions from the top 15-5% who are basically socialists in corduroy.