Opposition is slowly growing in the academic community to the government's most recent guidelines for universities on foreign students. They fall foul of human rights legislation and will also fundamentally affect the relationship between academics and those enrolled on their courses. These rules are just part of the government's distrust of foreign students. Last year, lecturers were asked to monitor and report any suspicious activity on the part of Muslim students, a move strongly opposed by academic staff. Despite the opposition, the request resulted in the arrest of a masters student at Nottingham University who was studying terrorism for his dissertation. This type of shocking mistake will no doubt be replicated through the introduction of further monitoring of foreign students.
There are some understandable rules contained in the guidelines, including the need to report those who fail to enrol on a course. It is obvious that institutions must shoulder some responsibility for ensuring that they are not being used by sham students to flout immigration rules. However, any such sensible rules are overshadowed by the Home Office asking university staff to act as border police. Universities are now forced to report any foreign students failing to attend seminars or lectures, or those who do not submit assigned coursework, as well as those who interrupt their studies. The institutions must also keep copies of foreign students' passports and visas, and have to provide the government with any update to their contact details.
University staff are essentially being asked to police their students through these rules. Any failure to do so will result in potential loss of their higher-education licence. Academic staff are being asked to act as immigration officers rather than educators, fundamentally altering their relationship with any foreign students on their courses. This may be necessary when it comes to pupils in primary and secondary schools, but the role of teachers in those circumstances are very different to that of university staff. Academic staff support students as they undertake in-depth study in their chosen field. They act as mentors in enabling students to achieve their intellectual potential. To ask them to become an immigration or police officer, or any other authoritarian figure, is to detract from the essence of their role.
University students are expected to take initiative for their own studies. This often results in students – especially first years – socialising too much and attending too little. This is part and parcel of the learning curve, of the experience of higher education. Registers are not taken in lectures, as there are core differences between universities and school; one being a place of compulsory attendance and the other being an institution of choice. The expectation that foreign students should fulfil requirements over and above that of national or European ones is highly unfair and makes a mockery of the system.
Article 8 of the European convention on human rights (ECHR) guarantees the right of all to respect for his or her private life. This should protect the private choice of a student as to which classes he or she attends. This should also protect the private choice of a student as to whether to interrupt his or her study. The private choices made by national and European students will be respected under this article, but those of foreign students will not. Similarly, Article 3 of the ECHR has also been ignored. This article guarantees the right of a person not to be subjected to degrading treatment. The latest requirements will result in foreign students being treated significantly differently to others. The need for them to sign registers, provide extra documentation, and account for their movements will become degrading when compared with the treatment of other students.
The Home Office has reserved the right to "impose further restrictions on the admission of international students in the future should these prove necessary, including potentially restricting access to nationals of high-risk countries." This statement, alongside the attempts to implement spying on Muslim students, reveals the government's aim of stopping students of certain nationalities from attending our universities.
June Edmunds wrote last week that "The government's reaction to new security threats, in particular an increasing surveillance of Muslim students, is a public-relations exercise to satisfy popular demands for tough action." She argued that the evidence from university campuses shows that Muslim students do not pose a disproportionate threat to our society. Yet the government's surveillance tactics seem to be increasing, despite evidence to suggest how unnecessary such moves are.
Foreign students provide a significant proportion of the income for our universities, as well as enriching the campus through their range of backgrounds and experiences. Allowing these requirements to become entrenched in the higher education system will not only alter the relationship between academic staff and students, but will limit the ability of foreigners to attend our universities, making them poorer in every sense of the word.