( whilst wondering if it is some kind of oxymoron to have a thread called PhD "life"...:p)

I am wondering what people think about the future of UK universities. As an international ( American) student, there were many things about the UK system I liked, and many I found mysterious. With the recent scramble for university places over, and reports of international students being let on to courses whilst UK home students were told the same course was full, it causes me to pause and think about what a system is like, what it should be and etc....

The obvious advantages of the UK system for home undergrad students is that if they get a place it seems like they are able to financially manage it to attend. UK tuition is much less on the whole than US undergrad tuition. But does the cappin gof places for UK home undergrads make sense? Does it somehow start to turn the unis into degree mills for international students, when the unis are cash strapped and looking for ways to increase revenues? Where is the quality assurance about the qualifications of the fee paying foreign students--do they need to be more qualified than to have money in hand? What ensures that the unis do not collapse into degree mills at least as far as international students go?

Are private unis the wave of the future? Certainly in the US there are priviate unis, and yes, the costs can be high, but this is set off by generous financial aid packages and government loan schemes. One nice advantage of the government loan scheme is that it is available for postgraduate work, and not just limited to the US. You can attend approved non US universities and be eligible to get the student loans--which is a nice way to get wide opportunities to study overseas.

Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages. The UK system seems to be on the cusp of change and I am curious what people think about the current system and the options for change in the future.

At my University, international students are offered a provisional research place for three months, if they can fund themselves. Many of them arrive on campus to start a PhD with no idea of what that PhD is going to be in. They then have three months to design a project and show to the supervisors that they are competent and suitable for postgraduate study.

Regardless of social and ethical debates, I simply feel a lot of empathy for any student who leaves everything familiar behind to start a new life for three years, with cash in hand but no idea about what they are going to be doing. This isn't a scientific argument, but it seems a strange way of conducting research.

This becomes even more of an issue when government-funded research, particularly in science, is facing criticism about not being commercial enough. So, I think a few people think it is unfair that home students are going to find it harder and harder to study non-commercial branches of science, whilst a student with a large wad of cash can appear and study anything they want...

...of course, the reality is that science funding cuts is going to affect not just students but facilities, and so those self-funding overseas students aren't going to be "replacing" home students in cutting-edge research, but perhaps there is more of a risk of those external candidates being shoe-horned into more commercially viable topics and therefore being treated more like unpaid research assistants than PhD students.

I have focused this on postgraduate research, whilst I know that the topic of your thread concerned undergraduates. I don't think I am particularly well informed on this subject, but this is just my particular opinion. I would be interested in hearing other viewpoints on this.

Thanks Cornflower, that is really interesting, and postgrad as well as undergrad is certainly important in this topic. The unis seems to be turning more and more to expansion of postgrad as that does not ( as far as I know!) carry any placement caps since the government does not fund home student places in the same way as undergrad. In a way that system seems to unfairly advantage students with cash over students with ability, as getting the funds to study could be hard, I imagine, and funded places at universities are very limited. Someone with a great deal of ability but lack of cash could be deprived a study opportunity but someone with less ability and more access to cash carry on....that does not seem to be very fair, nor, in the bigger picture, a way to advance the most able getting to carry on with cutting edge research. If anything it seems to perpetuate a system of haves and have nots.