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United Kingdom: foreign students to the rescue of Brexit

2023-01-27T12:57:30.157Z


The lack of manpower pushes the British government to seek emergency solutions. One option being considered is to make the working conditions of foreign students more flexible.


Correspondent in London

In order to cope with the shortage of workers in sectors such as hotels, restaurants and retail, the government is considering allowing British and foreign students to be able to work longer.

According to the

Times

, the hourly limit per week for a part-time job would thus be pushed back from 20 to 30 hours.

A provision that would affect the approximately 680,000 foreign students present in the kingdom.

This 20-hour limit was intended to prevent student visas from being used as backdoor routes to jobs in the country.

But labor shortages continue to plague the British economy.

On Monday, the chief executive of the CBI, Britain's main employers' organisation, lamented the obstacles to bringing workers from the EU to the UK.

The "

hole

" in the workforce affects many sectors, including agriculture or hotels and restaurants.

There would be 1.3 million vacancies, almost half a million more than before the pandemic.

Read alsoIn the United Kingdom, the “Brexit festival” turns into a fiasco

This track of the use of foreign students comes up against the will of the Minister of the Interior Suella Braverman, who wants to reduce their number.

In order to keep Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's promise to reduce overall immigration, the latter plans to reduce the number of foreign students, who accounted for 476,000 of the 1.1 million people who arrived in the country last year.

“Serious consequences for recruiting international students”

The bubbling boss of the Home Office would thus like to reduce from two years to six months the duration of the stay of foreign students in the United Kingdom after the end of their studies.

His ideas would meet opposition from the Ministry of Education, which considers tuition fees for foreign students as an essential means of financing universities, as well as that of companies which see it as a source of qualified labour.

The

Universities UK

group , which represents 140 British universities, said on Wednesday that the scheme

“would have serious consequences for their ability to recruit international students and ultimately have significant negative consequences for economic growth and the reputation of the United Kingdom. ".

Read alsoThe paradox of Brexit: in the United Kingdom, everyone regrets it but no one wants to admit it

Enrollment of European students at UK universities has already more than halved since Brexit, which resulted in an explosion in tuition fees, according to data from the Education Statistics Agency British Higher Education (HESA).

There were thus 66,680 students at the start of the 2020 school year against only 31,000 in 2021/2022.

Before the divorce, EU students paid the same tuition fees as their British counterparts, a maximum of 9,250 pounds (10,500 euros) per year.

Since then, they often have to pay more than 20,000 pounds per year - sometimes up to 38,000 pounds - depending on the university and region.

Now in the same boat as the rest of the international students, these young Europeans can no longer take out student loans, must obtain a visa and pay to benefit from the NHS, the public health service.

SEE

ALSO

- Rishi Sunak: "I voted for Brexit, I believe in Brexit"

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2023-01-27

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