Over 500 colleges lose the right to sponsor students
The UK Border Agency (UKBA) have announced that as a result of their new rules and enforcement action over 450 education providers are now no longer able to sponsor new international students.The UKBA estimate that these colleges could have brought over 11,000 students to the UK every year.
To date 474 of these colleges have lost the right to sponsor new international students after they failed to sign up for the new inspection system. The UKBA hopes that these new measures, such as the introduction of the Highly Trusted Sponsor regime, will help cutting abuse of the system and ensure that genuine international students receive the highest quality education.
Further to the new inspection system, the UKBA has also stepped up enforcement activities on bogus colleges which has lead to 51 education bodies having their licence revoked. Recent investigations follows a spike in applications from South Asia just before the English language requirements were raised. As well as the colleges closing over 4,500 applications from students have been withdrawn or refused as a result.
As part of this announcement the UKBA has cited examples where a college advertised classes even though the website said it was shut for maintenance, while another could not even produce a list of students enrolled or a timetable of classes. On inspection, others could not produce any records of student attendance, or evidence of checking student qualifications.
Further changes in April 2012
The UKBA have confirmed that further changes designed to ‘tighten the student regime’ are due in April 2012.
Next year the post study work route will be closed and any graduates wishing to stay in the UK and work will need to apply for a visa under Tier 2 of the points based system. There will also be new time limits introduced on students’ length of stay and restrictions on work placements during study.
The UKBA will also continue to monitor sponsoring bodies and will take action, such as revoking sponsorship licences, against any that are not complying with required standards of education or immigration control.
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