Visa delays in key UK market see students miss out on January starts
Students from Pakistan hoping to join courses across the UK in January are having to withdraw their applications in droves as visa decisions have not been made fast enough.
Students from Pakistan hoping to join courses across the UK in January are having to withdraw their applications in droves as visa decisions have not been made fast enough.
A suite of LanguageCert’s tests have been approved by the UK Visa and Immigration Authority as Secure English Language Test for both student and work visas.
Stakeholders have questioned whether VFS Global should have such a “monopoly” on the visa appointments system, as students struggle to get them amid a scam being run on the ground in various countries.
The UK has seen a rise in student visa risk factors such as fraudulent documents and English proficiency, despite being a generally compliant route, UKVI has said.
Companies offering students short-term loans to prove they have enough money to study abroad continue to operate in Nigeria, leaving agents concerned about students applying to UK universities without the funds to support themselves once they arrive in the country.
A boom in professional short course numbers has indicated that six month visitor visas were at a bottleneck in the spring, and could be at the same time in 2023, according to stakeholders.
Stakeholders in the UK sector are reporting increasing numbers of international students dropping out soon after enrolment in order to accept employment offers in the care sector.
According to recent data from Enroly, the average number of dependants brought to the UK by an international post-graduate student is 1.6.