While the Government has decided to accept the Migration Advisory Committee’s (MAC) recommendation to retain the Graduate Visa Scheme (GVS), it has also announced a number of restrictions on international students. This includes ensuring that face-to-face teaching is the primary mode of teaching, restricting remote learning.
Before the pandemic, the visa rules for international students included requirements for classroom-based study to ensure that students on fully online courses (‘distance learning’) would not be able to get a student visa. However, since the pandemic began, many universities have embraced varying arrangements of hybrid learning. While most universities haven’t had regular classes held online since 2022, there are often cases where students wish to join online due to illness, including COVID-19, or travel problems preventing them getting to campus.
Since the academic year 2022/23, we have heard anecdotal reports of universities cracking down on hybrid learning, which these new proposals around international student visas seek to explicitly enforce. This change in approach to hybrid learning, particularly in its focus on international students and visa compliance, is concerning. Not least due to the effect it will have, and is likely already having, on disabled international students.
The benefits of hybrid learning
Hybrid learning has particularly benefited people with disabilities who struggle to consistently physically go to campus. This includes chronically ill students, as well as people with chronic pain, chronic fatigue and/or limited mobility, where forcing them to attend classes in-person can worsen their condition. The consequences of missing a class can be serious for international students, who risk being reported to the Home Office for falling short of required attendance levels.
The extra cost of disability also means that students may have to spend more money on commuting than non-disabled students, which is exacerbated for international students, who are not entitled to public funds, like Personal Independence Payment (PIP) or Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA). This compounds the existing cost of living crisis that has been affecting international students particularly hard and leaving many destitute with no access to financial assistance. These issues have been demonstrated by international students at Bangor University, many of whom sleep on campus as a result of a lack of affordable housing and high commuting costs from the nearest cities.
While the policy doesn’t outlaw the use of remote learning completely, we know anecdotally that universities have been restricting the ability of students to join classes online, and so it is possible that this would (and already has) resulted in an effective ban. We also know all too well that disability accommodations often take too long to implement, should this be presented as an option for disabled students.
The Government is ignoring the 84.5% of disabled students, including international students, who have said that they would benefit from the option of ongoing online learning post lifting of Covid restrictions. This has consequences for attainment gaps, which narrowed with hybrid learning, and is exacerbated for disabled international students by an awarding gap between UK and non-EU students.
Access to remote learning is both an immigration and disability issue. While a hostile immigration system makes university administrators and lecturers into border agents and denies financial assistance to disabled migrants, restrictions on remote learning function as a significant barrier to equally access education.