I've always found the discourse around 'struggling universities' bizarre. If they're struggling to stay afloat financially then that shows that there is not enough demand for their product in the market, and therefore like any other business they should be allowed to fail. If in order to stay afloat they need to basically sell UK visas not an education, this is not a legitimate business.
Imagine if I had a failing say, events planning business. I could surely get more customers by giving UK visas to each customer of my events and lobbying for me to be allowed to do this. But any government would rightly treat this as an absurd request, as they should the universities.
I'm not sure it's so much that that there is not enough demand for their product in the market as that government has stepped in to cap the fees and prevent them rising with inflation, as the costs do. So government has essentially created the system by which businesses can only keep themselves afloat by outsourcing their income to foreign students. Which, I'd argue, is even worse.
Yes there's two things. What I meant was that the official product the universities are selling is an education, but in reality a lot of the reason international students 'buy their product' is the attached visa. So to assess the true demand for their official product, you would have to remove the visas from it (and demand would be then be lower).
But yes the original reason for them needing to do this is indeed the fee capping. Though you could also see this in the same way i.e. there would be less demand for university education if students had to pay the actual cost of it.
I've always found the discourse around 'struggling universities' bizarre. If they're struggling to stay afloat financially then that shows that there is not enough demand for their product in the market, and therefore like any other business they should be allowed to fail. If in order to stay afloat they need to basically sell UK visas not an education, this is not a legitimate business.
Imagine if I had a failing say, events planning business. I could surely get more customers by giving UK visas to each customer of my events and lobbying for me to be allowed to do this. But any government would rightly treat this as an absurd request, as they should the universities.
I'm not sure it's so much that that there is not enough demand for their product in the market as that government has stepped in to cap the fees and prevent them rising with inflation, as the costs do. So government has essentially created the system by which businesses can only keep themselves afloat by outsourcing their income to foreign students. Which, I'd argue, is even worse.
Yes there's two things. What I meant was that the official product the universities are selling is an education, but in reality a lot of the reason international students 'buy their product' is the attached visa. So to assess the true demand for their official product, you would have to remove the visas from it (and demand would be then be lower).
But yes the original reason for them needing to do this is indeed the fee capping. Though you could also see this in the same way i.e. there would be less demand for university education if students had to pay the actual cost of it.