Northern Star Sheds Light on International Recruitment

Universities and their mouthpieces might be drawing a collective sigh of relief and thinking that some of the heat has gone out of the discussion around the inequity of International Year One (IYO).  We certainly haven’t seen any of the private providers, the main beneficiaries of this route, stepping forward with authoritative data about this route.  But the Northern Consortium¹ UK (NCUK) do give us traces of performance over the past decade or so.

Nothing in the NCUK numbers gives any relief to the core point that IYO is a route which, in many cases, allows international students to start the first year of a degree on without the necessary grades for direct entry.  The scale of the NCUK operation is used to demonstrate that IYO is not a niche activity and so deserves full attention from the Quality Assurance Agency and Department of Education reviews.

Of fundamental interest is the suggestion that NCUK has a long-term annual Progression Analysis that “considers the performance of all NCUK students at member universities and associates”.  This could be the gold standard of analysis reflecting everything from enrolment through attrition to degree outcomes.  At a single stroke NCUK might be able to answer many questions about the efficacy of pathway programmes albeit that its courses are not on campus.

In that respect there appears to have been an NCUK Report “Evidencing Success” from May 2018 launched at the NAFSA:Association of International Educators Conference in Philadelphia, which tracked ten years of NCUK student performance.  The snippet from it in the 2017/18 Annual Report indicates that 80% of NCUK students receive a first- or second-class degree but that IYO students “have a higher-than-average pass rate when progressing to the second year of their degree at university”.  It goes on to say that “over 90% of students meeting or getting higher than the required grades go on to pass their first year” and for “students who have been offered places with lower than the advertised entry requirements, the pass rate remains high at 88%.”

It seems reasonable to suggest that domestic students who miss their offer grade by one level and are rejected might do even better if allowed to start a degree, with extra academic support, on campus alongside direct entrants.  They just don’t get the chance.  Even more regrettable is that the Report is no longer available on its website – makes one wonder².

The Trail Begins

The NCUK annual report and accounts for 2015/16 show that “International Diploma (Int Diploma-equivalent to 1^st year degree level)” was offered as an “established pathway” programme.  It was “renamed as the International Year One” that year.  The report noted an upcoming triennial review in 2016/17 which might imply it had been first introduced in 2013/14 after the closure of post-study work options for international students in 2012.

As a small aside and for those that believe in history being cyclical it is worth noting that the Annual Report also notes NCUK had unconditional offers for 1,205 students.  It was an increase from 1,119 the previous year.  There was, however, a note of caution on eventual enrolment because of “…Nigeria where the economic circumstances are posing challenges for students and their families.  

Getting To Scale

The chart below reflects the data made available in NCUK Annual Reports and Reviews from 2016/17.  Not all of the information is provided for each year but we are able to see the following:

• Students placed at UK university partners (all years)
• Students “continuing onto the NCUK International Year One or moving to degree completion programmes at The Sino-British College in Shanghai” (2016/17 to 2018/19)
• Students admitted to non-partner UK universities or to universities outside the UK (2016/17 to 2018/19)
• The total number of students progressing to university or continuing on an NCUK qualification (all years)
• The overall number of students on NCUK courses (2020/21 and 2021/22)

The final number is important in considering the IYO volume because NCUK also offer a percentage breakdown of the numbers on each of International Foundation Year, International Year One (IYO) and Masters Preparation.  For 2020/21 and 2021/22, where those overall enrolments are available, the percentage doing IYO was shown as 16% and 12% respectively.  The maths suggests that 507 and 452 were doing IYO courses in those two years.

Source: NCUK Annual Reports and Reviews

How Big Is International Year One for Private Providers?

A glimpse into the scale of IYO also comes from the only NCUK provider delivering it in the UK – INTO Manchester.  We can know for sure from a Quality Assurance Agency report in 2014 that in that year, of the 822 students, there were 99 on the NCUK “International Diploma” (later renamed International Year One) course.  That’s 12% which seems in keeping, if a little low, with the broader percentages shown by NCUK in later years. 

It is reasonable to add that in the May 2019 QAA Report 77% of students (82 out of 106) at INTO Manchester were reported as being “on a Level 4 International Year One (IYO) course” which might suggest a signficant upward movement in the course.  As pathway providers have come under increasing pressure to perform they have accelerated their provision of the most attractive offers to international students.  Universities who are equally keen to increase international numbers have become complicit in allowing those courses and the progression degrees available.

The other point is that INTO Manchester is not on a university campus so it is reasonable to suggest that the IYO here is more akin to the potential for domestic students who fail to get their grade offers to university to go and do an HNC at a local college.  All that really means is that the attraction of a course on a university campus, often sitting with direct entry first year students and taught by the same lecturers is likely to be immensely more attractive.  It seems reasonable to suggest that the likely IYO percentage in on-campus pathways is much higher.

As noted in a previous blog the growth of IYO and the propensity of universities to allow them has grown rapidly over the years.  More than half the partners of the six main pathway operators have IYO options leading to over 1,000 degree options.  Each partner usually has two to five IYO options.

	UK University Partners	Universities offering IYO	IYO linked degrees
Navitas	12	7	430
INTO	7	4	102
CEG	8	5	81
Kaplan	15	7	219
Study Group	14	11	219
Oxford International	5*	4	51
Total	61	38	1,102

*Only partners where an International Foundation or International Year Zero is offered

A 2023 British Council report into “Pathways and recruitment channels to undergraduate study in the UK” reflected the paucity of information on the number of students coming through pathways into universities³.  However, my own research from public sources indicated that there were likely to be at least 20,000 students in pathways in 2018 and there have been additional partnerships announced since then.  Even staying with 20,000, a count of 12% of them being on international year one reaches 2,400 international students on campuses sitting the first year of an undergraduate degree in a way that is not available to domestic students.

As previously established these students have been accepted on significantly lower grades and often at lower language capability than even direct entrants from their own country.  A domestic student who missed a university offer by one grade could be rejected by that institution and IYO is even offered below contextual grades of domestic students from educationally challenged backgrounds.  It is very difficult to see how that is equitable.

How Do International Year One Student Perform?

The NCUK data is interesting but the gaps in it suggest a number of avenues for further consideration.  Of particular interest is the relative performance of IYO students compared to students progressing from Foundation Courses.  In this respect it’s worth noting that most pathway statistics about degree success tend only to reflect those that made it to the exam so dropout rates are hard to come by.    

A blog in The PIE in May 2018, by Georgina Jones, NCUK Market Development Director, indicates that 80% of NCUK students graduated with a first or second class degree but “around 50%” getting a 2:1 or higher.  On lower admissions criteria she notes, “…students who are admitted with below the published admission criteria, 88% go on to pass their first year, compared to 92% and 95% for those who met or exceed the criteria.”

In the 2018/19 Annual Report NCUK state that 59% of International Foundation Year students graduated with a 1^st or 2:1 but that International Year One saw 74% of students achieving a 1^st or 2:1.  89% of the International Foundation students secured a 2:2 or better compared to 96% of International Year One students.  There is a hiatus, presumably COVID-related before the story picks up again in the 2021/2 Annual Review, which indicates the 2:1 and above success rates were 69% (International Foundation Year) and 91% (International Year One).

It seems to tell a story that International Year One candidates may be more likely to drop out or fail in the first year but then go on to secure better success rates on completing the degree.  The comparative completion rate for domestic students is around 2.7% which might suggest that if those narrowly missing direct entry were allowed to start year one with additional academic support, more  would go on to finish and achieve academically than international students.

Summary

It is regrettable that Universities UK seems to have wilfully chosen not to explicity include International Year One in the review it has requested from the Quality Assurance Agency.  The existence of Foundation Years, which are often available to domestic students on a comparable basis, has not been questioned by most informed observers of the sector.  Notwithstanding that point, the NCUK figures bring into question the quality of study outcomes for international students who complete Foundations. The 59% with a 1^st or 2:1 quoted by NCUK for 2018/19 is a very long way behind the aggregated 76.4% with a 2:1 or first shown by HESA for that year.

The fact remains that IYO is likely to be a successful proposition for commercial providers intent on boosting profitability and universities looking to protect falling international applications.  Equally true is that there is no comparable on-campus, year one of an undergraduate degree option for domestic students who miss their grades so the underlying allegation of privilege for international students is difficult to resist.  It seems that the only motivation for universities is likely to be having higher fee paying international students sitting in seats that could be filled by better qualified domestic students.

NOTES

1. The Northern Consortium was incorporated as a company limited by guarantee (company registration number 02788226) on 9 February 1993. The Company was registered with the Charity Commission (registration number 1018979) on 23 March 1993. It had ten founder universities and describes itself as “a consortium of leading universities dedicated to giving international students guaranteed* entry to universities worldwide” The star alongside the word “guaranteed” is on the website and probably tells us all we need to know about the types of messaging that prevails.
2. The summary of NCUK data reflects the incomplete picture across several annual reports. The Evidencing Success Report is still flagged on the website but the link leads to a 404 error page. It would be helpful if the data was available and particularly so if a comprehensive successor document could bring the material up to date.
3. The British Council report is as polite as it can be about the fact that there are thousands of international students joining UK universities without any consistent way of determining their route to enrolment. This has been a feature of the growth of commercial providers in the international recruitment space. It is also another gap in data which makes the sector vulnerable to politically driven focus on student visas.

Image by Mario Aranda from Pixabay