FT agrees to correct foreign student claim

UPDATE: The Financial Times has now published a correction to its original article.

"The government says visa changes will mostly affect sub-degree level programmes, so universities will still be able to glean the best talent. That is a miscalculation: nearly half of the students engaged in such studies subsequently advance to higher education courses," Editorial, Financial Times 7 February 2011.

Yesterday's Financial Times set itself squarely against the Government's proposals to limit the number of non-EU students coming to the UK, labelling the policy "misguided".

However in explaining why it feels the policy is misdirected, the paper itself strays from accuracy, so far as the stats are concerned.

The claim that half of foreign students engaged in sub-degree courses subsequently go on to degree level studies is wrong.

It based on a misunderstanding of research from higher education representative body Universities UK.

What the group actually found was that as many as half of international students do preparatory courses before doing their degree.

As their submission to the Home Affairs Select Committee explains: "It is estimated that between 30 per cent and 50 per cent of international students joining university programmes prepare for study by taking a range of preparatory programmes in the UK (such as English for Academic Purposes (EAP), pre-sessional and international foundation programmes) run by universities or run in partnership with other providers in the UK."

The briefing also references data from the Higher Education Statistics Authority suggesting that in 2007/8 46 per cent of non-EU students starting first year undergraduate programmes were previously at another UK institution. However, it correctly points out that there is no information covering over 60 per cent of the relevant students — weakening the strength of the statistic.

Such figures have previously been portrayed as suggesting that "the overseas degree students recruited by universities start out on these sub-degree courses".

This is clearly different to half of international students on sub-degree courses then going on to University.

However it is unclear exactly what types of students and courses Universities UK are referring to, making it difficult to show the degree to which the FT's wording is inaccurate.

Nevertheless, Full Fact has been in contact with the paper, who accepted the error. The FT will now be amending their article and printing a correction.

Such action is extremely welcome, and the nature of the response is an excellent example of how publications should respond in cases of factual inaccuracy.

However, beyond the FT's use of the figure some questions remain as to what this information from Universities UK actually tells us in respect of the student visa cap debate.

We are still trying to establish if the 30-50 per cent international students doing preparatory courses refers to non-EU students specifically, if the courses they attended were connected to universities, and how these people would have been classed in terms of the Home Office's statistics on the issue.

Such details will have important implications for how the data can be used in future debates.

We will update when we receive clarification on these points.