Hilary Wong
Friday, August 01, 2014
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The British government's move to shut down at least 750 bogus colleges is part of Prime Minister David Cameron's plan to stop immigration abuses.
The action also includes cutting benefits to jobless arrivals and stopping advertising jobs abroad in a move to "put Britons first."
Cameron said his government has clamped down on abuses of the education system.
"Some of the most egregious examples were those new arrivals claiming to be students, enrolling at bogus colleges," he wrote in The Daily Telegraph.
"In one of these colleges, inspectors found no students at all; the excuse was that they had all gone on a field trip to the British Library."
More than 750 of the colleges have been shut down, he said.
"We are announcing a further step to make sure colleges do proper checks on students: if 10 percent of those they recruit are refused visas, they will lose their license."
Cameron said the plan will halve the number of immigrants from 200,000 a year to 100,000 and reduce jobless benefits to immigrants from the European Union from six months to three months.
He said the tightened policy aims at "putting Britain first" by "making sure the right people are coming here for the right reasons; and ensuring the British people get a fair deal."
Education specialist Cheung Man- bun said the tightened policy will not have a drastic effect on Hong Kong students who wish to study in Britain.
This is because the policy aims at eliminating bogus universities that recruit bogus students from countries like China, Russia, Africa, Ukraine or places in East Europe with poor economies.
"When these students are sent to Britain, they work instead of studying."
But it is rare for Hong Kong students' identities or qualifications to be forged. "Hong Kong students mean to study and enjoy a better quality of education in Britain," he said.
He added that studying in Britain as a means of emigrating there is not very popular.
"The high tax and unemployment rate is a concern. One also has to stay for 10 years in order to get permanent residency."
He said people's perception about emigration today is different from that before 1997 and most Hongkongers would opt for Canada or the United States rather than Britain.
