I never understood the prejudice against poor English speakers. How else are you supposed to learn a language than to be immersed in the culture before you are fluent?
The issue isn't just that they dont speak English, but its highlighting the trend of just buying your degree and thus taking up the position that someone who is in a position to actually learn would be in.
You don't need to pay to a university degree course to learn English. In fact there are other dedicated courses you CAN take to learn English. As per the article :
> Most students paid other people to do their coursework, she explains, and some would pay people to register their attendance at lectures for them.
In the UK there might not be a slot for the person to actually learn without the international student: they effectively subsidize residents.
the universities are swimming in money, it's not an actual subsidy and in my experience ends up just crowding out native students
Everything thinks of Oxbridge (which are not representative of most universities) as being really rich, but even then it's maybe a few of the colleges that spend a lot of their money propping up the rest of them (the average oxbridge college has some very old and very expensive to maintain buildings and more or less has to beg alumni for that money).
> "How is it possible to continue this coursework without understanding a British accent or English properly?" she tells BBC File on 4.
> Most students paid other people to do their coursework, she explains, and some would pay people to register their attendance at lectures for them.
Because they aren't taking English courses, these are Masters.
At least read the article, it's in the first paragraph.
I started losing interest there. Nobody wants police-style schooling, but if a university allows students to graduate who have cheated on all of their coursework (and presumably on the exams), then it's not really a "selling prestige" problem, it's more of a "this university is a joke" problem.
Some UK masters courses are only 12 months, so they're intensively taught. By the time you've learned English by immersion, you've already fallen behind.
That means either you spend a lot of money and fail; or you cheat; or the university drops their standards a lot.
And none of them are an outcome we’re happy with.
This is not a matter of prejudice but basic competence.
Is it also bad that a masters program might expect knowledge of the subject?
Rich kids who can't speak English seem to have no trouble buying their degree.
For research, and for taking UK students. NOT for taking overseas students.
Universities are private institutions that get paid by the state to do specific things. A few do opt out of this.
At least that's how it works in the Netherlands where I've looked into it, and that's with subdidies available for EU students who often don't stay here and don't contribute to taxes later. Source, in Dutch but the graphic near the top is a good summary, where the lower bars are "costs" (kosten) and the higher bars "benefits" (baten): https://www.cpb.nl/de-economische-effecten-van-international...
You don't need to be immersed in order to be fluent. I spoke English fluently years before ever coming to an English speaking country.
But that is, to me, one of)the points of this story. The constant dumbing down of everything under the sun in our society. You could demand that someone has to do their homework and learn to speak English, but instead we accept that the only way to do it is just by hanging around and acquire effortlessly it via osmosis. Why? Why is it acceptable that people don't have to make an effort?
My prejudice isn't against people who don't speak English fluently. It's against lazy people. Someone might be hard working and disciplined and just have no interest in moving abroad or learning English - there's nothing wrong with that.