Universities close courses to British students, but say yes to foreigners who pay £20,000 a year tuition fees

• Edinburgh, Manchester and Cardiff are among those taking advantage
  

Universities are closing courses to Britons while offering places in clearing to overseas students who pay tuition fees of up to £20,000 a year.
Edinburgh, Manchester and Cardiff are among those taking advantage of rules which limit numbers of British students but place no restriction on recruitment from outside the European Union.
Some have closed their doors to home applicants but will accept international students through clearing, which opens as A-level results are issued tomorrow. These include York, Newcastle, Sheffield and Bath.

Controversial: Universities are closing courses to Britons while offering places in clearing to overseas students who pay tuition fees of up to £20,000 a year. Manchester, pictured, is one of those taking advantage of the rules

Others will offer more places to non-EU candidates through clearing or allow them a wider choice of courses.
Clearing vacancies for Scottish universities show that, in some subjects, places are available for overseas students on six times as many courses as for home students.
Critics said sixth-formers would be frustrated to learn that many universities had the capacity to take extra students but were turning away well-qualified British applicants.

 

The system will seem particularly unfair to pupils who do better than expected in their A-levels but cannot get into the university they wanted, even though it is still recruiting.
Despite a decline in applications linked to new £9,000-a-year fees, university admissions are still competitive, and as many as 150,000 applicants this year will be unsuccessful.
Universities which exceed recruitment targets for home and European Union students face heavy fines, but they can take as many non-EU students as their facilities will allow.

With international students paying market rates for their degree courses, usually £10,000 to £20,000 a year, they are critical to the financial health of many universities. One university vice-chancellor yesterday called for the immediate scrapping of student number controls.
Professor David Green, of Worcester University, said: ‘Other countries across the world, from China, to India, to Brazil to the US, realise that the best guarantee of a prosperous future is to have a more educated population, yet we are using these number controls, which is crazy.’
Clearing listings on the UCAS website show that places are available on 149 history courses for international students, but on only 24 for home/EU applicants.

Concerns: Some have closed their doors to home applicants but will accept international students through clearing, this includes Newcastle, pictured

Only universities in Scotland have posted their vacancies, since exam results north of the border are issued earlier than in England and Wales.
On its website, Edinburgh, which wants to recruit an extra 100 international students this year, says it ‘may have a small number of clearing vacancies available for well-qualified non-EU international UCAS applicants.
'We will not have clearing vacancies for other applicants.’ 
UCAS even has two search facilities on its website – one for home/EU students and the other for international applicants.
Of universities which responded to our survey, Manchester said it ‘may be the case where a course reaches the home target... places remain available for international students only’. Loughborough, Essex, Cardiff, Brunel and Queen Mary, University of London, all made similar comments.