London Metropolitan University has had its Highly Trusted Status (HTS) for sponsoring international students revoked and will no longer be allowed to authorise visas, according to the institution's website.The move could mean more than 2,000 students being deported within 60 days unless they find another sponsor, according to the National Union of Students (NUS) .
Immigration minister Damian Green said there had been a "serious systematic failure" at the university. He said it proved to be a "very, very deficient" sponsor because more than a quarter of students sampled were studying there when they did not have permission to stay in the country. A "significant proportion" of students did not have a good standard of English and there was no proof that half of those sampled were turning up to lectures, he added.
Every international student looks crushed after the university became the first in the UK to be stripped by the Home Office of its ability to sponsor foreign learners. What these students fear most is that if they don't, by some miracle, get themselves a place at a new university within the next few months, they will be removed from the country.
Cecil Ezeja, 21, from Enugu state in Nigeria was the great hope for his family. Now he dreads the moment when he has to tell his family that his year of studying electronic communications and the £10,080 they paid has come to naught."I can't call them, I don't want to cause any heartbreak".
For Mohammed Islam, 23, from Bangladesh, it is the second time he has enrolled for a law degree and found himself at an institution suddenly stripped of its ability to host foreign students. He has not told his parents but hopes they are prepared to stump up another £10,000 to pay for his degree. "I have a dream," he said. "To finish my LLB from a good university from the UK. This is my main dream."
Ursula Rehman, from Dubai, looks desperate. She has just one semester to go to complete her degree in biomedical sciences and is not having any luck moving to another university. "I've spoken to so many universities now and they say, 'oh we don't do transfers, we don't do this, or we'll have to charge you this much'." She's exasperated. Everyone, she says, is worried and scared.
Emmanuel Egwu, international students’ officer at the university, was one of the many students angered by the decision. He was granted a visa to study at the university in 2009 and is in the final year of his course.
"I pay a lot of money. I've spent £30,000 to 40,000 in tuition fees - my parents sell properties and land to make sure they can pay my fees so what's going to happen to people like me," he told Sky News.
This video explains it all
This is sad oh....I pray the Home Office finds a better way to handle this issue with the university cos we know how much our parents pay for studies esp in UK.
Culled from Yahoo News and Guardian.co.uk
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