In my country of origin, the prestigious universities were all public and (almost) free. The most sough after degrees are difficult to get in and difficult to finish.

There, the mentality is that the only reason why would you pay for a private university is if youre not smart enough to finish the degrees on your own. I always found it intriguing that the logic is reversed in the US - the good ones are the expensive ones and the only reason you wouldnt go there is if you cant afford it. But Im glad to see that the logic in my home country does have some merit, as evidenced by the quote from your professor.

At this point I just try and avoid selecting people for interview who fit this profile at all.

To put it simply, there was a principle of reciprocity: if the Chinese students passed their years, the French students would also pass theirs. If it became too difficult or the results were not as expected, it would become difficult for our students.

There were lots of tricks, with special exams in English or Chinese, catch-up work, etc. Who corrected the Chinese assignments in France? No idea.

It was also common knowledge that they had to bring back research documents to China. The lab manager left uninteresting documents lying around everywhere to control the phenomenon.

So nothing new, nothing has changed.

China has been very successful with its university rankings, with everyone scrambling to increase their foreign student numbers and collect tuition fees at the expense of academic results.

All this for the prestige of being ranked by a Chinese university.

About 10 yrs ago, I had 3 students in my chem class from Saudi Arabia who:

- could barely speak English (this is relevant)

- would fail my weekly quizzes miserably, using nigh incomprehensible English when they had to explain an answer.

- aced my first exam (3 highest grades!) using idiomatic English in all of their explanations (and they used the same idioms!).

Obviously, they were cheating. It's far too complicated to explain how they cheated, but man oh man my Dean did not want to hear about a group of cheating foreign students.

The Dean never told me that I couldn't fail them (I did fail them), but he did not want me to bring this 'problem' to him--and I could tell that if there were any political blow-back associated with their failing grades, it was going to be 'my fault.'

The main cheater even emailed me near the end of the semester and admitted he cheated, but explained that if I failed him, he would have to stay an extra semester to complete the course.

I would take a guess and say most of their parents are also rich so accomodation even in West London is no problem.

This is not a poor student who worked their ass off to get to the UK storyline, this is a foreign program set up in the UK. Makes you wonder what the fuck is going on.

£9-10k a year sounds like a lot but it is eg not that far off the amortized cost of the various computer hardware I use for development at work. Similarly, the maintenance loans tend to be much lower than typical living costs for someone with a job but they were sufficient when I was a student. Maybe I was particularly fortunate as a student or I have a particularly expensive development environment at work.

I do think the dependence on foreign student fees is bad. Part of this is the government cutting funding massively and part is terrible management of the student visa system – universities should not have been allowed to be a backdoor way of paying for a U.K. visa as this hurt the legitimate use of the system.

When I was a student not so long ago but before the recent REF/funding/immigration changes, the international students (typically from the EU paying home fees, but also those from outside the EU paying full tuition) were clearly very able, often more so than home students. The most suspiciously moronic students seemed to be on de facto sports scholarships.

Vice chancellors earn salaries that are often multiples of what the prime minister earns and pay at the senior levels is scaled from that - at the same time they take advantage of people who are full time academics at the start of their careers.

The whole system is old, creaky and probably needs widespread reform but it also won't get it until external factors force it.

"low birth rates"

fwiw, this was such a insane non sequitur that I immediately became skeptical of everything else you said

No, this is not made-up FUD at all.

The story is very different for "ex-polys" like Sheffield Hallam, or oxford brooks many of whom absolutely trade on the basis of foreign students essentially propping up the entire operation more or less.

It probably could but Universities as with all organisations are going to take the easy path and trading in on the prestige of UK universities for foreign students is easier and more profitable.

Two things:

1. converting all the old Polytechnics to Universities, in 1992, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universities_in_the_United_Kin...

followed by

2. trying to get '50%' of kids into further education https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/mar/08/johncarvel

The state already paid for education to the age of 18. Another 3 years of specialized education costs (the state) more. Getting more kids into HE, costs more even when they fees that are still state subsidized. Hence the increase in unsubsidised foreign students.

It's debatable whether the desired outcome of better educated and 'more employable' 21 year olds was actually achieved, or whether it simply removed a large cohort from the unemployment figures.