The UK’s National Union of Students (NUS) has called for more financial security for international students hit by hardship following new research released earlier this month that revealed over two thirds of institutions did not have a separate fund or procedure for students affected by external crises.
The report calls for more coordinated institution-wide responses to students in crises and for a national hardship fund scheme to be piloted in the UK.
“Unlike home students, there is no systemic hardship provision and many struggle as a result”
“Whether internal strife such as the civil war in Syria or natural disasters like an earthquake or flooding, or financial issues which result in a sudden devaluation of currency, international students’ funds can be affected by events beyond their control,” David Malcolm Head of Social Policy at the NUS told The PIE News.
“Unlike home students, there is no systemic hardship provision and many struggle as a result. There is limited pre-existing research and so this work was carried out in order to provide some context and information where it is lacking,” he added.
The research, which used several different datasets and examined 49 different universities on its most recent survey, found that the most common major hardships students undergo were personal crises such as the death of a parent.
But many students also were found to be victims of political crises, economic or natural disasters, illness of themselves or their family, or money promised to them by a sponsor or family that was then not available.
The report urges institutions to consider relaxing their criteria to cover the impact caused by minor hardship and increase allocations for individual students as well as for aggregated funds.
It argues that the annual cost of a comprehensive fund for unforeseeable hardship would be between £37- £98 million paying out loans or grants of up to £1,000 for minor hardships and £10,000 for more serious situations.
The UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA) has come out in strong support of the campaign and if it is successful, the UK will join Australia in providing a sovereign safety net for students’ finances.
In 2012, the Australian government introduced a Tuition Protection Scheme to protect students from default on the part of the provider.
