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Summary Government and education bodies to help legitimate cases hit by withdrawal of university's rights.
Ministers and universities have joined forces to help legitimate students affected by London Metropolitan University being stripped of its powers to teach and recruit students from outside the European Union.London Mets vice-chancellor said the action threatened the UK university brand, but the UK Border Agency insisted that problems over the enforcement of visa rules lay with one university, not the whole sector.The government and university chiefs have begun trying to help up to 2,700 students from abroad affected by the UKBA ruling which means London Met is no longer able to teach even its current international students. It is the first UK university to be stripped of this licence.Those affected need to find alternative courses elsewhere and get new visas within 60 days of receiving curtailment letters, or leave Britain voluntarily. Otherwise they will be removed from the country.The Home Office clarified that the 60-day deadline would only begin once the letters had been delivered to individual students.The Guardian understands it could be weeks before the notices, which are a legal necessity, are sent out in order to give genuine students more time to relocate.The government has also set up a taskforce consisting of the UKBA, the Department of Business, Universities UK, the higher education funding body HEFCE, and the National Union of Students to deal with the situation.It is expected to have its first meeting on Friday to attempt to go through every London Met international student file to identify legitimate cases and help them enrol at other universities.About 290,000 students and dependent visas are issued by the UKBA each year, and 110,000 extensions to such visas.Malcolm Gillies, London Mets head, said the loss of its ability to authorise visas sends a fear through many universities in a way that I think is going to be detrimental to their confidence as higher education institutions, but also the projection of brand UK abroad.He said responses from other universities included commiseration, worry, anger, but also a feeling of probably, well thank God it wasnt us this time.I think that shows the nervousness that many in the sector have, especially at a time when clearly government policy is changing but also when the [UKBA] guidelines have been changing very rapidly.Gillies has warned that the future of the university, which has 30,000 students, is at risk because the punishment for its immigration failures will leave a £30m hole in its annual budget, a fifth of the total.The UKs lucrative higher education business in teaching international students involves about 300,000 students and is worth an estimated £5bn a year to the economy.About 500 private higher education colleges have already lost their power to recruit abroad following crackdowns on bogus students.The immigration minister Damian Green said London Met had displayed a serious systemic failure to know whether its students had the right to be in the UK. He denied making the university a political football over immigration controls and insisted such action would not be replicated across the university sector.Green said people entering Britain as students but seeking work exploited one of the biggest loophol
