Universities UK, an organisation representing universities across the UK, and the UK’s Department of Education, announced they are taking action following news reports of preferential treatment received by international students.

Last week, The Times (paywall), announced that its investigation revealed that wealthy foreign teenagers can gain access to highly competitive degree courses with just a handful of C grades at GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education). The same degree courses require British students to achieve an A or A* at A-level. While tuition fees for UK students are capped at £9,250, overseas students are typically charged about £25,000.

Responding to the Sunday Times article about international student recruitment, Vivienne Stern MBE, Chief Executive of Universities UK said, “International students are a key part of the success story that is UK higher education. The Sunday Times story fails to distinguish between entry requirements for International Foundation Years and full degrees. International Foundation Years are designed to prepare students to apply for full degree programmes. They do not guarantee entry to them. They are designed for students who come from different education systems where, in many cases, students might have completed 12 rather than 13 years of education.”

Last week, Universities UK published a statement on fair admissions.

“There has been a significant focus on recruitment practices relating to international students in recent weeks,” the group stated. “While many aspects of the reporting misrepresented the admissions process and criteria, we recognise the concern this has caused for students, their parents, and the public and it is vital that they all, along with government, have confidence that the system is fair, transparent, and robust. Where there is practice that falls below the standards expected of our universities and their representatives, we will take action.”

The Universities UK Board has agreed the following immediate actions:

• Review the Agent Quality Framework (AQF) and make recommendations to enhance the system. This means it will with its members and partners to ensure adoption of the AQF across the sector.  It will make recommendations on how the AQF and wider UK data infrastructure can be enhanced to identify and address bad practice and improve resilience.

• Review of quality and comparability of International Foundation Programmes (IFPs) and Foundation Programmes for Home (UK) students. It will commission the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) to undertake a rapid review of IFPs (International Foundation Programmes). The review will compare requirements of International and Home Foundation Programmes, including entry requirements.

• It will update the Admissions Code of Practice to clearly state its applicability to international recruitment. It will review the Admissions Code of Practice to signpost where the code is expected to apply to international recruitment and update the code if appropriate.

Stern continued, “We entirely agree that the entry requirements for international and domestic students to full degree programmes should be equivalent. It is essential that the integrity of entry routes be protected. However, it must also be understood that entry routes for international students will reflect the diverse countries and education backgrounds that these students come from, and that some will need bridging courses to enable them to progress to UK degrees,” Stern said.

The investigations were announced after Robert Halfon, the higher education minister, summoned Stern and the vice-chancellors of nine Russell Group universities named in The Times article and questioned them about the revelations.

Halfon said, “These reports are extremely concerning to me, but also to parents and hard-working students across Britain, which is why I met with Universities UK and vice-chancellors to get to the bottom of why this is happening and how we can further crack down on bad practice.

“We have launched an investigation that will look at the agencies that are driving this. I recognise that international students bring a lot to our universities, but we need a level playing field for admissions for domestic students, and confidence that our universities are selecting people based on ability, not how much [the universities] can make from fees,” Halfon added.

According to The Guardian, Robert Halfon, speaking in the Commons during education questions last week, said he was “very disturbed” by reports, adding it “clearly showed bad practice in the use of agents and that’s not acceptable”.

The full scope of the DfE investigation will centre on two special one-year pathway courses, called International Year One and International Foundation, which the universities’ official representatives were secretly filmed admitting offer back-door routes into the prestigious institutions. Applications for these courses are typically made outside the normal Universities and Colleges Admissions Service process, and so there is no official data on how many students are using them to get onto undergraduate degrees.

The DfE is seeking more transparency from the universities over the routes.

The Russell Group said in a statement to The Times, all students were chosen “on their academic merits according to their suitability for the course, grades and overall capacity in the subject”. It added, “Typically universities set separate admissions targets for international and domestic students.”