The International Student Blog

The new visa rules that emerged last month for the UK were unveiled Wednesday (10th February 2010) by the home secretary Alan Johnson. There were large concerns that the new proposed rule changes would impact English language schools, as it would increase the level of english required by applicants to a level that would rule out most students who come to the UK to study English.

The new rules to the “Points Based UK Visa System” was partially in response to a scam where older international female students were applying as a student to also bring in their husbands to the UK as dependents, and as such the changes are as follows:

1. Require overseas students to have higher standards of English (the equivalent of just below GCSE),
2. Halving the amount of time students can work each term-time week to 10 hours
3. Banning dependents of anyone studying for less than six months.

The new changes, however, will not only affect English Language Schools as University Vice-Chancellors are also now concerned about this affect on university funding. At the moment international students are a major source of funding for universities in the UK, and these new changes, along with the suspension of visa applications in India due to a recent large surge at the tail end of last year – could see a large drop in the numbers of international students in the UK.

To read the full original article and for more information about the visa changes, please see the Guardian story.

Are you an international student trying to apply to the UK? Or are you concerned by these new regulations – post your comments below and let us know what you think!

We have just added two new schools to our online university video profiles page for schools in the UK. If you are looking to study in the UK, our video profiles are a great way to learn more about schools in the UK. The new schools added include the University of Westminster and Swansea University – and you can see the new profiles below:

If you would like to add your schools video to our site – please contact us.

English as a second language is a thriving industry in the UK, with an estimate 600,000 students traveling to the UK each year to study. More than half of these also then go on to higher education courses – and for this reason the English Language industry brings in over £1.5bn to the British economy each year.

However, the booming industry has some major concerns regarding the new points based visa system. Brought into use back in April 2009, the new points based system was originally designed to close down bogus colleges and institutions – and for a large part the system succeeded. However there were still concerns that the system could be abused, and at the tail end of 2009, the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown ordered a review of the system in order to tighten it up.

This review led to new proposals being put forward to raise both the level study and the standard of English for any applicant coming into the UK on the points based system. Although this new proposal will almost certainly remove further abuses of the system, it will also certainly exclude all students who want to come into the UK for six months or more to develop their English skills from a basic level.

Philip Hopkins, principal of the English Language Centre in Brighton, says that if the government’s proposals come into force, about 40% of the school’s business would be wiped out. “We are an educational charity founded in 1962 and many of the students we get for long-term courses are students who go on to a foundation, undergraduate or master’s programme and will be in the UK education system for the next four or five years.”

Clearly the UK Government needs to review their current proposals, otherwise we could see some serious knock-on effects to the English Language sector in the UK. For more information about this article please see the original news source at the Guardian Newspaper.

You can also search for a range of ESL programs from all around the world through the ESL Directory.

The Guardian Newspaper in the UK has published its 2010 league table of University listings in the UK. As one of the leading sources of university listings for UK Universities, its an excellent guide to know what schools are the top performers. This year, Oxford has topped the table again, holding onto its position as the number 1 university in the UK.

Following Oxford is its long term rival Cambridge, with St Andrews University in Scotland jumping from 5th to 3rd and the University of Warwick and London School of Economics rounding out the top 5.

This year has also seen the move of more modern Universities making a charge up the rankings, with some big jumps for schools that were founded in the 1960’s – this includes Bath in 9th position, Loughborough in 10th position and Sussex in 19th position (up 15 places).

The full list of universities are now available online at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2009/may/12/university-league-table

You can also find out more information about studying in the UK at InternationalStudent.com

A feature that not many of your will be aware of on InternationalStudent.com is our video profiles for various schools around the world. The video profiles are of schools from the USA, UK and Europe and offer you the opportunity to learn more about campuses and what a university is really like through online videos.

A few of the schools that we currently have online video profiles for include:

• University of Richmond, USA
• Columbia College, USA
• Georgian Court University, USA
• Nottingham Trent University, UK
• UCL, UK
• University of Greenwich, UK
• InHolland University, Holland

You can also see all the college/ campus video profiles online at:

http://www.internationalstudent.com/school-search/video-profiles/

As we have announced recently, we have a brand new student blogger who is joining the InternationalStudent.com blogging team. Laura is now our resident study in the USA student blogger and will be blogging throughout the year on all aspects of being an international student in the USA. She has already started her blogs as she starts her new college in the USA and you can follow her at:

http://www.internationalstudent.com/study_usa/blog/

We are also excited to announce our new study in the UK student blogger who has just started on our sister UK site. Juan is an international student who has just started to study art at the Glasgow School of Art and will be blogging throughout the year on all types of topics that affect an international student in the UK. You can follow Juan online at:

http://uk.internationalstudent.com/blog/

How can these blogs help me?
We have student bloggers on our site as we feel it provides you with a fantastic insight into life when you are abroad, and what better way to share information and advice than from current international students who are experiencing it all first hand.

To keep track of all the blogs, you can either subscribe to the RSS feed or sign up to receive the latest blog posts to your email address. If you need more information about student RSS feeds, please see our previous post.

You can also post comments on the blogs, so if you have any input about what our bloggers are writing about or you would like to ask them questions – please post comments!

Although the USA is a huge draw for many students that want to study internationally, the UK is easily the number 2 destination for international students. Traditionally funding to study in the USA can be very hard to find, however with the International Student Loan Program and the International Financial Aid Center that we have now developed, we are making access to funding for students much easier.

The UK, however, does not have the same sort of funding channels for international students. There is no specific loan program yet for students looking to study in the UK – however scholarships are a great source, but finding them can be hard.

The new UK International Financial Aid Cetner for students studying in the UK has been launched that offers a international students a source to get help and advice for funding their education in the UK. The main highlight of this new section is the Universities that Award Financial Aid – this database provides you with access to schools in the UK that provide financial assistance, such as scholarships, to international students that are enrolled or plan to enroll.

Please check out the new International Financial Aid Center for Studying in the UK.

2007 is going to be a huge year for InternationalStudent.com as we embark on an ambitious plan to totally revamp the site and the content. As part of this over the coming months you will see some great new additions, and also some updates to old favourites.

Our Study in the UK section of UK InternationalStudent.com is one of the areas that has recently been re-written to provide students with more detail and content. This section now provides you with detailed information about the UK as a destination to study and will hopefully assist you in your decision making process of where to study abroad.

Also be sure to check back over the next few weeks as we plan to roll out a brand new international student tax service which will feature a new online tax refund interface. From my post last week you will also have noticed that our Study Abroad Center has a new search and blog with updated content from Matt Brattin as he prepares to study abroad in Spain.

We also have grand ideas for the main InternationalStudent.com website, and the next time you visit it might be to a brand new site – so keep coming back and help grow our community!

Technorati Tags: international student, study abroad, study in the uk, study uk

Whilst researching some new material for our Study in the UK section of InternationalStudent.com, I came across some really interesting (and funny) statistics that I thought I had to share with everyone – there are over 390,000 official Jedi Knights in the UK that recognize “Jedi” as their main religion!!

I found this as we are redeveloping our Study UK pages and wanted to include information about the ethnicity of the UK and what religions are represented, so I went to the National Statistics archive for the UK and from the last census in 2001 they have reported over 390,000 people as following the religion of Jedi.

How did this come about? Well back when the census was being taken, there was an email hoax going around that said if enough people selected Jedi as their religion, the UK government would be forced to recognize this as a religion. Of course this was not true, but there were still over 390,000 who put this down which equates to roughly 7 in every 1,000 britains.

To learn more about the UK, and studying in the country with over 390,000 Jedi’s please see:
- Study in the UK – with InternationalStudent.com
- Cheap Calling from the UK – with iCallAbroad UK
- International Student Loans – from InternationalStudentLoan.com

You can also learn more at the National Statistics Website

DIGG this story – click here

Technorati Tags: jedi, jedi knight, study in the uk, study uk