London Metropolitan Uni - it's not often that I'm ashamed to be British...

[TAKTAK]

My uni is swinging for the legit students:

Help for London Metropolitan University international students.

Following this morning’s announcement, we are aware that London Metropolitan University has had its licence revoked.

Coventry University still have courses available for September 2012 entry – at both our London campus and main campus in Coventry.

If you’re interested, please contact us urgently by emailing results.io@coventry.ac.uk.

Make sure you include the following: your full name, email address, telephone number, name of your chosen course and entry year required.

Once we receive your email, we will contact you the same day – don’t panic!

[pctech2012]

Its the UK government via the UK Border Agency which hands out visas,not universities. If people are not having valid visas,it should be the UK Border Agency going after them - that is sort of their job,right??

From my understanding of the issue the Uni had highly trusted status meaning it could authorise visas on UKBA's behalf.

It would appear their auditing was not up to scratch and so its status has had to be revoked which makes any of the visas it authorised invalid.

Everything that can be done, should be done to help these students find alternative placement and to give them their fees back but you can't let such situations remain unchecked.

[OilSheikh]

Met uni is already closing down. Saw a pic in Metro yesterday showing furniture been put in vans.

[OilSheikh]

My uni is swinging for the legit students:

Coventry is miles away from London and in the middle of nowhere. You have to go to the city centre whenever you need something, unlike London

[TooNice]

From my understanding of the issue the Uni had highly trusted status meaning it could authorise visas on UKBA's behalf.

Hmm, I find that a bit weird. I've never seen a university with such status, they can assist students with their application but I've never heard any universities with the ability to *grant* them. I can't think of a reason why the LMU would be so special.

[TAKTAK]

Coventry is miles away from London and in the middle of nowhere. You have to go to the city centre whenever you need something, unlike London

An hour from LDN, very close to Brum and Leicester, the best part about the city is it's very easy to get out of either to a city or rolling countryside

Plus the uni has a London campus as well as the main campus

And Coventry IS the city centre
There's no reason to venture out of the centre, housing, shops, bars, uni etc all in one place

[peterb]

Coventry is miles away from London...

That's another bonus.

[directhex]

At the end of the day, if an instituion continues to flout the rules, a line must be drawn. What if you continue to speed on the road? there's only so many speed awareness courses and points the authorities can dish out before they deem it unacceptable.

This is more that the road was closed due to frequent speeders, and damn everyone else who needed that road to commute.

[directhex]

That's another bonus.

Not far enough. Maybe we could float Coventry out onto its own little island, and push it into the middle of the Atlantic, far from civilization.

There's a reason Warwick Uni pretends to be part of Warwick, not its real home (Coventry)

I mean, their Ikea charges for parking. What kind of hellhole has an Ikea where you pay per hour to park?

[pp05]

I am all for our universities getting a wake up call. At the moment they seem to have some kind of protected status where they are not allowed to fail.

We are letting down students and commerce when they don't act with integrity. We are already seeing employers run their own tests because they are not 100% sure if the paper people have is adequate.

[HalloweenJack]

i love all the `omg` comments

1/2 the students are on vbery very final warnings for not even showing up - ever to any classes.

and this has been going on for 2 years - its not like it happened over night - rememebr this is the same ` uni` that will let you buy and honours degree for £5k

[Rave]

My uni is swinging for the legit students:

"Swinging for"? Touting for, more like. I mean, fair enough, I'd expect any well run organisation to try and take advantage of an unexpected source of new and potentially lucrative business, but they're hardly doing it out of the goodness of their hearts are they? A more honourable course of action would be to join me in protesting about the dreadful way in which the legit students have been treated.

Everything that can be done, should be done to help these students find alternative placement and to give them their fees back but you can't let such situations remain unchecked.

Here's a suggestion as to how you could help the students affected- maybe allow them to complete their degree at the university they're already attending? Do you have a good reason why that Must Not Be Allowed?

i love all the `omg` comments

1/2 the students are on vbery very final warnings for not even showing up - ever to any classes.

and this has been going on for 2 years - its not like it happened over night - rememebr this is the same ` uni` that will let you buy and honours degree for £5k

Supposedly 2000 students are affected. Frankly, I don't care if 1999 of them were blatantly abusing our visa system- even if that was the case, the one remaining student who had come here in good faith should ABSOLUTELY NOT be being screwed this way.

I am so, SO angry about this, and I find it hard not to go on a swear laden rant. Let me put it this way. This is Britain, and for all that I think it's become a pretty rubbish country in many ways, I thought we at least maintained a sense of decency and fair play. Mo Farah came here from Somalia as a refugee aged 8, and now he's a national hero (rightly so, BTW). Yet a guy who comes here from Nigeria aged 18/19 to try and better himself and take a valuable qualification back home- which his family probably sacrificed a lot to pay for- can simply be chucked under the bus.

If you think that is acceptable you are a...

...well you're my sworn enemy, put it that way.

Doesn't look like there's going to be any backtracking from the UKBA on this issue. Solves a problem for me I guess- I had wondered what I was going to be doing with myself in 2015, becuase I'm pretty sure I'll have saved enough to quit my job by then. I had thought about doing a bit of travelling, or maybe starting a business. But now it seems I'm going to be stumping up a £500 deposit and buying a photocopier to stand against Damian Green as a representative of the Common Decency party.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

No it isn't. It may be a disaster for LMU, who failed to get its act together. It won't put genuine students off applying for other Universities that do have rigorous procedures for ensuring that only genuine students are sponsored for study visas.

If LMU does get its act together in time, my guess would be that those genuine students will have their visas renewed.

You see its the way it is being handled,and at least the people I know in academia think the same.

Legitimate students are being literally screwed over and I have lived abroad in a non-western country ,so I have seen it from the other side too,ie,the whole recruitment thing,and also from this side too. It will be just negative publicity for the UK as a whole,as it will seem like they don't give a flying rats arse about the students as long as they get their money. This is thousands of students we are talking about,and those which have not done anything wrong.

Remember,existing home students still can complete their courses,so why cannot legitimate foreign students??

This needs to be sorted properly and the students found alternate academic places.

If it had been a case of:
1.)Existing legtimate foreign students can complete their courses but no new ones were recruited

or

2.)Their were guarantees all legtimate students would be found alternate places in the UK

it would not be such a big deal.



However,basically the retards in the government thought it was a good idea to do all this mere weeks before the start of the new academic year! Right,so not only are there limited spaces already,how many will be there after clearing?? Would the foreign students be given priority over home students or not?? Would that even be fair??

Basically,it is more:

"you got two months to find a place,mr/miss foreign student,otherwise screw u hippy! Ha! Ha!"

So,not only are these people screwed over with regards to fees they have already paid for incomplete degrees,but moreover what about housing contract costs,etc? Waiting around for another year is also not an option - where is the money going to come for that??

So,when people go back to their countries,what do you think will happen??

Yet a guy who comes here from Nigeria aged 18/19 to try and better himself and take a valuable qualification back home- which his family probably sacrificed a lot to pay for- can simply be chucked under the bus.

Lots of people don't get the level of sacrifice here,and how long families save up to help their children. You do get the students from rich families,but many are not so lucky. Decades of the parents saving or selling everything possible to help their children,working past retirement,taking loans,etc. In many situations the children have to help look after the parents as they get older(for both cultural and economic reasons).

Remember,no money in a lot of countries equals being on the street,with no benefits or anything like that. So loosing out tens of thousands of pounds may seem nothing for some people here, if it happened to them(I assume that is why they are OK with it),with all the nice help you get here in the western world,but count yourself privileged to be in a position to get this help.

The more worrying thing is the way this will reflect on recruitment of foreign students to UK universities. People don't fathom how much money is brought into UK universities by foriegn students. Remember,the government funding shortfall is negated somewhat by this and UK universities are increasingly being pushed to take in more foreign students too.

UK universities also tend to get much lower endowments than their US counterparts from past graduates(the culture of giving back to the university by UK graduates tends to be very poor),so they really only have private funding to fall back upon after government cuts. Only Cambridge and Oxford have reasonable levels of endowment.

LSE actually has more foreign students than home students IIRC and is one of the better off HE establishments(for the number of students it contains) in the country.

During a recession,countries worldwide want this foreign income and if people are spending the money,the UK is not the only option.

[csgohan4]

Raise your glasses to the UKBA/ Government for common sense and decency........... not

Cat your right about the LSE figures, as someone who graduated in London.

[badass]

Supposedly 2000 students are affected. Frankly, I don't care if 1999 of them were blatantly abusing our visa system- even if that was the case, the one remaining student who had come here in good faith should ABSOLUTELY NOT be being screwed this way.

This attitude prevailing through our criminal justice system is what's causing so many people to suffer at the hands of repeat offenders. It's also the reason for our heavily bloated welfare spending on professional spongers. It's not like the one person out of 2000 gets a death sentence. They get inconvenienced. Some time in life something goes wrong through no fault of your own. It's called tough luck.
I don't agree with the UKBA's handling of this particular case, but this whole massive imbalance towards avoiding someone "innocent" being inconvenienced is similar to the desperate concern that "convicted by a jury or their peers" criminals aren't treated too unfairly without the slightest consideration for their near certain future victims is a complete mess. It also has parallels with the whole "won't someone think of the children" argument against capping benefits to the average household income. No one will starve - they'll just get less sky TV.
Our justice system at the top level is supposed to be about balancing the interests of one party (e.g. the individual) against others (e.g. society) yet in practice it's mostly balanced in favour of those who take the mick over those who don't.

[pctech2012]

My comments are based on what I infer from the reports, I am not sure on the specific technicalities I'll admit.


Yes the students should be allowed to finish their degrees but UKBA need to be sure that is what they are doing.