London Metropolitan University is having its ability to grant visas to international students revoked. And as a result, thousands of *current* students (who came in good faith and who were issued valid visas when they came) are being deported. You can sign a petition against this here.
5 thoughts on “Amnesty for London Met students”
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Feminist Philosophers 
I wish the petition said a bit more about what it hoped would be done. From the outside, it seems that the sensible path would be to allow current foreign students at the offending university who are not in violation of their visa status (the story suggests that quite a few are) finish out their current visas at the university or allow them to switch universities if they are able, while not allowing London Met to apply for new student visas. If that’s what they mean, I’m all for it. If they means something else, I’d have significant doubts. (I know nothing at all about this particular school, but I know that in the US there are a fairly large number of “schools” that are of extremely dubious character and that exist primarily to get money for people who want visas to come to the US and then do not actually study and that mostly get by on federal student loan money that’s never paid back. You can see many of these advertised on NY City subways, for example, though they are not the only cases.)
There was a short piece in IHE that said that the non-violating students are, in fact, permitted to find other universities to attend. Failing that, they all have 60 days to leave. (Whether this is adequate time to transfer, I don’t know.) To describe this as a kind of mass deportation seems imprecise, at least.
It is also worth pointing out that what is happening to these students is a result of the closing down of the university for its failures. Among these,it had admitted students whose English language skills are such that they would likely fail most of their courses. I do not know enough about this to characterize the university’s foreign students program as a scam; however, it did not seem to have those students’ best interests in view.
Bbc are reporting that ukba are setting up an emergency task force to assist current london met students in finding places in other departments and setting up new student visas thru these new departments. it’s obviously yet to be seen whether ukba will actually handle it adequately and get these students into good new programmes w minimum disruption to their studies–especially if some students indeed have inadequate language skills–but it isn’t quite right to say that they’re ‘being deported’. (and also, no, London met isn’t a scam college. it’s a regular, just fine university that’s made a terrible balls of its visa assistance admin.)
I am a graduate student at the university and have taught there. The university is not a scam, ithas just been badly mis managed for a number of years. The staff are very dedicated but have poor working conditions and some of the international students are excellent. I gave a lecture on feminism to a class of mostly girls from Muslim countries and they were brilliant and engaged. This university also accepts more kids from state schools than any other university in the country. It has a lot of failings (it is true that some students have poor English) but do not pass judgement on it when you are not in full possession of the facts. Furthermore 60 days would normally be fine to find another institution except that most institutions have already recruited their full quota of international students already for the start of the academic year.
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