71% of students studying strategic fields in the UK are foreign, where are the British students?

Today is not a good day for me and education, my favorite subject. This is what the Sunday Telegraph is reporting. I can fully agree to this and this is what I have seen when i am trundling around the country lecturing in the Business Schools in Manchester, Bath, Swansea, South Bank, Cranfield, etc. Read this report in conjunction with the story. While we are indeed earning quite a lot, but life is more than just earnings. If students are studying media studies, wave surfing studies, and the history of film making, I am not sure how much value add these guys will provide.


All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Sunday telegraph

Unequal exchanges of knowledge - Liam Halligan

During a recent visit to one of our leading universities, a notice board caught my eye. Pinned on it was the student list for “Advanced Quantitative Techniques for Finance”. Every single name was Chinese.“Oh great,” I said to the professor hosting me. “An exchange programme. How many British youngsters have gone to Beijing University in return?”My academic friend gave me a grave, almost sorrowful look. “Oh no,”he said. “It’s no exchange. Only Asian students apply for thatcourse. British students say it’s too hard”.

Last week, an official study found that fewer than one in three postgraduates studying “strategic” subjects in the UK are actually British. No less than 71 per cent of those pursuing such advanced degrees in British universities – in areas like engineering, chemistry and computer sciences – are from overseas.I find this absolutely shocking. In an ever more competitive world, post-industrial nations like ours need desperately to move up thevalue-chain.

Yes, I know foreign post-grads pay through the nose subsidising British undergraduates. And I know we claim that technically adept foreign students “underpin the UK’s research base” – even though, increasingly, they now return home.But Universities Minister John Denham needs to think hard about what’shappening. We are failing to train a new generation of world-class British eggheads. And that will seriously hinder our economy in the years to come.