Salad Days without the Dressing? What British Higher and Further Education Institutions Can Do for Their Overseas Students

This article summarises the present status of overseas students in Britain. It then considers the responsibilities of the institutions towards them at various stages of the relationship: the quality of pre-arrival and orientation information; guidance about immigration; accommodation needs; dealing with the most common problems - loneliness and homesickness, finance, academic progress. It is suggested that overseas students should be seen as an asset and even a resource in the local community. Too often they are perceived as a passive entity but they are quickly waking up to their significance in the financial struture of higher education. Institutions which fail to recognise that they have considerable continuing obligations to the students they recruit from abroad will in the long run do no good to themselves or to the reputation of British higher education .