International students do not have unfair advantage – review

Universities UK, which represents 142 institutions, commissioned the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) to carry out the review in February.

QAA assessed programmes at 34 universities that volunteered to take part.

It said it had “no concerns that providers were not following their published entry requirements”, and that those for international programmes were similar to equivalent courses for UK students.

QAA said that in the “vast majority of cases”, students on both types of courses “were achieving at an appropriate level”.

However, it said international students had a greater choice of courses, and on foundation programmes had “more opportunities” to succeed through resit than A-level or Scottish Higher students.

Its recommendations for universities include:

Vivienne Stern, chief executive of Universities UK, said the number of students on these programmes “represents a small proportion of the two million undergraduates studying in our universities”, but that the review was important to give students “confidence that university admissions processes are fair”.

She said “swift action” was needed in some areas and Universities UK would update its code of practice for fair admissions.

The Russell Group said its universities were “committed to fair admissions and delivering high-quality courses”.