Universities hoping for a helping hand from Government at the spending review, will have shuddered to read the front page splash and Op Ed from the Education Secretary highlighting a new scandal in international student recruitment. A major Sunday Times investigation highlighted a £ multi-million scandal in franchising in which substandard institutions have recruited international students for courses that never took place but received the funding from the taxpayer as if they had. Bridget Phillipson’s eye catching headline “This is one of the biggest financial scandals universities have faced” missed or perhaps deliberately glossed over an important point. The offenders were not Universities, at least not in the established use of the term.

The Sunday Times discovered that individuals with “absolutely no academic intent” are enrolling on degree courses every year to take out loans, with “no intention of paying it back”. Its article highlighted that the key suspect institutions were “so-called franchised universities” — small colleges paid to provide courses for established universities but often with lower grade requirements. The article goes on to say there are at least six franchised providers where fraudulent claims from students have been identified. It does not claim that any University regulated by the OFS or with the title of University in its own right took part. Other media rushed to report on the scandal but notably did not suggest Universities themselves were to blame.

As the VC of Oxford Brookes highlighted in a cri de Coeur in the FT last week, the sector is facing a range of challenges already and a flight to quality from both domestic and international students is already hurting red brick universities. The Education Select Committee has launched a timely one-off session on funding.

Highlighting loopholes being used by Romanian students and Potemkin style fake academic institutions could hardly come at a worse time for a sector anxious to make the case for welcoming international students and the contributions that they can make to stabilise the perilous finances of Universities. It will weaken sector wide calls to reduce the burden of regulation. A cynic might argue that ahead of an already contentious spending round in which some eye watering hits to education have been leaked, it gives the Treasury a neat excuse to avoid committing funding.

As with previous scandals under the Conservative Government and Tony Blair, it will strengthen the argument for those, including the Home Office, who want to crack down on international student numbers regardless of cost and create a wider suspicion that Universities who recruit internationally are somehow doing something wrong. Something that is not currently backed by the economic evidence or public opinion.

As Chair of the Education Select committee, I launched a cross-party inquiry into Universities and international students but due to the timing of the 2024 General Election we were never able to complete it. It is vital that the sector makes the case, not only for the financial contribution that they can make to its own financial stability, but also for the qualitative benefits that the right kind of international students can bring to the student experience for their British peers and to UK soft power globally.

It is no accident that the top performing UK universities in the global rankings are also those who have some of the highest proportion of international students. The question that the sector needs to address is how it can sustain these benefits whilst rooting out the risks of fraud, something that properly established Universities who take their responsibilities seriously should be well placed to do. They also badly need to diversify their income streams as even if the International income were to continue, it would be a high and rising risk on any register as even Scotland’s fee free Universities are beginning to recognise.