Tag: Advisory

Higher Education Inquirer : MEDIA ADVISORY UPDATE: ‘Hands Off!’ March at San Diego Civic Center, April 5 Noon
SAN DIEGO, CA — Community members will gather at the San Diego Civic Center Plaza for
a “Hands Off!” march on April 5 to protest DOGE and the Trump
administration’s attack on programs and services used by San Diego
residents. The local march will coincide with a nationwide day of
demonstrations expected to be attended by hundreds of thousands…

Organizers
describe the event as a collective response to policies impacting our
community. “San Diegans who are veterans, who are postal workers and
teachers, who rely on Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare, and who are
horrified at the Trump-Musk billionaire takeover of our government are
coming together to protest the Trump Administration’s attacks on the
rights and services they depend upon, many of them for survival” said
Angela Benson, a member of the organizing coalition.

Event Details:
- What:
  Over 10,000 San Diegans expected to peacefully demand “HANDS OFF!”
  their rights and services in one of over 1,000 HANDS OFF! events
  scheduled nationwide on April 5
- Who: Coalition of San Diego Pro-Democracy Groups
- When: Saturday, April 5, noon, 1 mile march to leave approximately 12:15 PM
- Where: March starts at Civic Center Plaza Fountain by 1200 Third St., ends at Hall of Justice at 330 W Broadway
- Transportation: Participants are encouraged to take public transit to the event
Planning group:
- Change Begins With ME
- CBFD Indivisible
- Indivisible49
- Indivisible North San Diego County
- Democratic Club of Carlsbad and Oceanside
- Encinitas and North Coast Democratic Club
- SanDiego350
- Swing Left/Take Action San Diego
- Activist San Diego
- 50501 San Diego
Media Opportunities:
- The following representatives will be available day-of the march for interviews.
  If interested, please coordinate with Richard (770-653-6138) prior to
  the event, and plan to arrive at the location marked below by 11:30 AM
  Pacific
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April 4, 2025
Agent Advisory Groups set to strengthen UK-East Asia recruitment links

Addressing the audience at the British Council’s East Asia Education Week 2025, held in Hong Kong, Xiang Weng, visa outreach officer for South China/ West China/ Hong Kong and Macau Visa, British Consulate – General Guangzhou, described a “new concept” which would see agent advisory groups set up to enhance collaboration.

“One of our colleagues from Vietnam set up what we call our Agent Advisory Groups and tested the concept there. Now, we plan to expand it across the rest of East Asia,” said Weng.

“By having these advisory groups, UKVI can build a much stronger connection with agents, gain valuable local intelligence, and share insights with our Home Office colleagues. This will help us introduce and improve our visa services across the region.”

Though UKVI didn’t confirm plans to introduce agent advisory groups in the broader East Asian region to The PIE News, it noted that it continually works with overseas stakeholders, including the British Council, to support prospective students by addressing their questions about the UK visa system.

Over the years, Vietnam has played a pioneering role in the UK’s efforts to increase transparency among agents in East Asia.

By having these advisory groups, the UKVI can build a much stronger connection with agents, gain valuable local intelligence, and share insights with our Home Office colleagues.

Xiang Weng, British Consulate-General Guangzhou

Just last year, over 130 education advisers in Vietnam earned the prestigious “I am a UK-certified counsellor” badge, as part of the Agent Quality Framework, showcasing their expertise and deep understanding of the UK as a study destination.

According to Weng, the concept’s success in Vietnam can be emulated in the broader East Asian region.

Though visa approval remains high in East Asia, students still fall victims to common mistakes, she explained.

“Some students forget to provide a TB (tuberculosis) certificate or evidence of finances which can impact their applications,” stated Weng.

“In countries like Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, China, and Hong Kong, when applying for a student visa, you only need to submit your passport and TB certificate. That’s it. You don’t even need to apply for IELTS or provide evidence of finances.”

Though visas challenges have not proved to be a major barrier for UK universities accessing the East Asian student market, intra-regional mobility and price concerns are leading to fluctuations in demand for UK education, as reported by The PIE News.

According to Daniel Zheng, managing director, HOPE International Education, safety concerns and career prospects have also become key factors influencing student choices in East Asia, particularly in China.

To tackle these challenges, UK universities are increasingly turning to in-house employability services and other affordability options for international students.

“In terms of affordability, many UK universities, including ours, have in-house employability service teams. Their role is to enhance students’ employability and expand their career opportunities after graduation,” stated Scarlett Peng-Zang, East Asia regional head, University of Nottingham.

“So I believe that there’s something everyone is working on regarding addressing the economic uncertainty. I found lots of UK universities offer alternative payment options to improve affordability. So is the same for Nottingham University.”

As rankings of East Asian universities rise and the countries set mammoth targets for international students, agencies are also looking inward for recruitment opportunities, expanding beyond the UK.

“In the past six months, my colleagues and I have traveled to Singapore and Malaysia three times, visiting UK university campuses like Southampton and Nottingham, as well as boarding schools like Epsom College,” stated Zheng.

“This indicates that there is significant interest – not just from us, but also from our partners and institutions – in the Malaysian market, particularly from China.”

These changing trends come at a time when UK institutions are under pressure to measure the return on investment of their agents, according to Fraser Deas, director, client success, Grok Global.

“We are noticing that UK institutions are under pressure to measure the ROI of their agents. How can we work with them, along with in-country staff, to ensure that agencies provide evidence that these partnerships are going well? There’s important work to be done in that sense,” stated Deas.

“I think there is a genuinely good understanding in the sector of the difference between in-country staff and agents. The role of a third party should be to facilitate that relationship without interfering, but it remains very important.”

Agents and universities having a direct relationship has also become important for UK-East Asia relations, with organisations like BUILA demonstrating how agents can be compliant with the UK National Code of Ethical Practice as the Agent Quality Framework comes in focus.

As per Dave Few, Associate Director, Jackstudy Abroad, while education agents are already performing well, there is a concern about maintaining quality as more agencies enter the market, particularly through aggregators.

“In my unbiased perspective, I think agents are already doing a fantastic job. The key factor is the quality of information – ensuring that as the barrier for entry for new agencies lowers through aggregators, the quality remains consistent,” stated Few.

“Whether that means requiring a year of training from the very beginning or another measure, the priority should always be keeping the student at the heart of the conversation, not revenue.”

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March 28, 2025
Former Rep. Justin Amash joins FIRE’s Advisory Council

When former Representative Justin Amash announced that he would not be seeking reelection to the House of Representatives in 2020, a lot of people wondered what he was going to do next. Voters in western Michigan first elected him to the House in 2010, and Amash won reelection four times. In office, he developed a reputation as a principled independent who wasn’t afraid of calling out members in his own party — including the president — when he thought their actions threatened Americans’ civil liberties.

Since leaving Congress, Amash has remained an outspoken advocate for the individual freedoms protected under the Constitution, especially free speech.

“The value of free speech comes from encountering views that are unorthodox, uncommon, or unaccepted. Humans learn and grow by engaging with ideas that challenge conventional thinking,” he wrote on Twitter back in 2022. “Free speech is a barren concept if people are limited to expressing views already widely held.”

FIRE is excited to announce that Amash has joined our Advisory Council, where his expertise in constitutional law and federal policymaking will support FIRE’s mission to defend and sustain the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought — the most essential qualities of liberty.

Amash remains politically active and is a vocal opponent of all efforts — from both the left and the right — to undermine constitutional protections and individual liberty.

Amash was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and has spent most of his life there. His father, a Palestinian refugee, and his mother, a Syrian immigrant, inspired his dedication to the cause of liberty.

“When I was a child, they spoke often about the value of freedom and how blessed we were to live in America,” says Amash.

A graduate of the University of Michigan, with a bachelor’s degree in 2002 and juris doctor in 2005, Amash practiced law until his election to the Michigan House of Representatives in 2008, where he served one term before being elected to Congress in 2010, where he served until 2021.

While in office, much of Amash’s work focused on civil liberties issues and protecting constitutionally secured rights. He was the chairman of the House Liberty Caucus — a nonpartisan congressional caucus supporting limited, constitutional government — and he was a member of the Second Amendment Caucus and co-chair of the Fourth Amendment Advisory Committee. His sponsored legislation included bills to rein in warrantless government surveillance, eliminate civil asset forfeiture, and end qualified immunity for government officials who violate constitutional rights. Since leaving office, Amash has also called for repealing the Espionage Act, which the federal government has used to punish protected free speech for more than 200 years.

Amash was known for explaining his votes online as part of a commitment to government transparency and accountability. Amash remains politically active and is a vocal opponent of all efforts — from both the left and the right — to undermine constitutional protections and individual liberty. His commentary can be found on X and Substack, and his words have recently appeared in Reason Magazine, The Free Press, and other outlets.

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February 6, 2025
National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity Meets February 19-20. (US Department of Education)

Education Department

Hearings, Meetings, Proceedings, etc.:

National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity

FR Document: 2025-01459
Citation: 90 FR 7677 PDF Pages 7677-7679 (3 pages)
Permalink
Abstract: This notice sets forth the agenda, time, and instructions to access or participate in the February 19-20, 2025 meeting of NACIQI, and provides information to members of the public regarding the meeting, including requesting to make written or oral comments. Committee members will meet in-person while accrediting agency representatives and public attendees will participate virtually.

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January 22, 2025
The Migration Advisory Committee thinks about skills and long term net migration

The Migration Advisory Committee’s annual report for 2023 ended up being one of the publications with most policy influence on the subsequent year.

Though it was released the week after then Home Secretary James Cleverly announced a review of the Graduate route, it clearly reflected ongoing Whitehall discussions and concerns over the post-study work visa, and much of its conclusions ended up being quoted incessantly through the subsequent debate around the MAC review – especially by those in favour of the route’s abolition or restriction:

The graduate route may not be attracting the global talent anticipated, with many students likely entering low-wage roles.

Our concern that the graduate visa would incentivise demand for short Master’s degrees based on the temporary right to work in the UK, rather than primarily on the value of qualification, may well be borne out in the trends that we have observed.

As we have already shown, the rise in student numbers is almost entirely focused on taught Master’s degrees, and the growth has been fastest in less selective and lower cost universities. The rise in the share of dependants is also consistent with this.

Given all that, it’s probably a relief to all concerned that the 2024 edition of the MAC annual report doesn’t go in depth on any international student-related issue, reflecting what feels like a (welcome) period of stasis in visa policy affecting higher education under the new government.

Nevertheless, the MAC has a beefed up role under Labour – additional civil servant resource, plus we now learn that chair Brian Bell’s role will move from two to five days a week – and this time around the questions percolating away are worthy of some long-term thinking, even if they are not going to lead to knee-jerk policy decisions.

Staying or going

The annual review kicks off with consideration of long-term net migration trends, noting that the general election saw all main parties commit to bringing headline figures down.

Thinking ahead, it notes:

In the long run, work routes will have a greater impact on net migration compared to study routes as a greater percentage of those on the work route stay in the UK, whilst students are more likely to emigrate when they finish their course. Put simply, whilst students increase net migration in the year they arrive, they will reduce it by the same amount if and when they leave.

This is a helpful soundbite for the sector, after last month’s ONS figures started to make clear what has been evident for a while – that historic claims around the “vast majority” of international students leaving the UK after completing their courses no longer hold much water. The ONS net migration stats estimated that the proportion of those on student visas who had transitioned to another visa three years after arriving was 48 per cent for those who arrived in year ending June 2021. This was up from nine per cent for those who arrived in June 2019, largely driven by introduction of the Graduate route.

But the detail is still uncertain, as the MAC goes on to acknowledge. It cites recent Migration Observatory modelling (director Madeleine Sumption is now the MAC deputy chair) which estimates that the “stay rate” after eight years is around 26 per cent for those on study visas, compared to 56 per cent for those on work visas. The consequence of this is that – again, according to the Migration Observatory’s heavily caveated modelling – is that student visas contribute to 19 per cent of long-term net migration.

(The modelling also lets you adjust the assumptions around stay rate and annual international student numbers – the baseline is rather simplistically 250,000 new student visas every year from 2024 to 2032, though to be fair recent volatility means that putting a firm prediction on international recruitment is a brave bet in itself.)

All in all the MAC notes that stay rates are “highly uncertain” – but it’s an issue that will continue to inform the wider political debate, especially as the post-pandemic bulge is gradually smoothed out of net numbers. It’s notable in this context that think tank Labour Together – which typically has the ear of the government – has just put out a proposal for a “national migration plan” based on nationally set targets for different routes. Student visas, it says, would only be included in the analysis “to the extent that they have an impact on long-run net migration” through the Graduate and Skilled Worker visa routes.

The skills puzzle

The central piece of this year’s review is driven by the observation that the new government’s intention is “to more closely link migration and skills policy.” Given that starting point, the MAC carefully explores to what extent this can work. It’s of course written in the careful language you would expect of a government-sponsored committee with a Home Office secretariat, but reading between the lines there’s a cautionary note to it all (and not just in the observation that “skills” is an “ambiguous term both conceptually and empirically” – don’t tell Jacqui Smith).

“In theory”, MAC observes, skills shortages lead employers to recruit using the immigration system. “If this were true,” the government can bring down work-related immigration via the reduction of skills shortages.

In practice, there are some complications. Most obviously, skills investments take a long time to translate to the labour market – the last government repeatedly took the quicker route of facilitating international recruitment, especially in the health and care sectors, but also in not insignificant ways in areas like filling teacher vacancies.

The MAC also stresses how employers will not deliberately make choices around whether to hire UK-based workers or those from overseas (speaking to The Times, Brian Bell specifically points to academic recruitment as an area where employers – universities – would not change their hiring practices if the domestic labour force had better qualifications). We are also told that labour demand and supply are not independent (“employers look for what they think they can get, and employees try to match what employers want”), and that skills aside there are other differences between domestic and international recruits.

For the construction industry, this latter point was vividly illustrated by the Financial Times last week, which argued that many businesses in this field prefer “pay-by-the-day” labour and self-employed staff, and hence hire internationally and typically not via skilled worker routes – another consequence of this is that they are unlikely to commit to training apprentices. (The article also cites Brian Bell saying that high net migration leads to “real strains on our ability to manage housing and infrastructure,” in case anyone was thinking the MAC will take a more dovish approach under Labour.)

All in all, bringing about a join-up between the skills and migration systems is a tough ask – or, more cynically, an unrealistic policy goal. It’s clear that the MAC is trying to temper expectations about what can be achieved:

Linking immigration and skills policy is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach and it is important to consider the individual circumstances within sectors and occupations, including diagnosing whether shortages are genuinely driven by a lack of skills or are due to poor pay and conditions of certain roles.

And the elephant in the room is pay. In the care sector, the MAC has repeatedly stressed that wages need a significant uplift for other visa-related tinkering to have an impact. It stresses this again here, and makes the point that a large proportion of work visas go to public sector workers.

This is a point for Skills England to take on board as well, you would hope. Its initial report was notably incurious about the role of low pay (especially in the public sector) in driving “skills mismatches”, rather presenting employment more as a simple supply and demand relationship between skills available and skills needed. The MAC annual report has some more persuasive analysis here, showing a lack of correlation between so-called “skills shortage vacancies” (SSVs) and skilled worker visa usage. That is to say, it’s by no means a given that those industries facing skills shortages are the ones more likely to sponsor workers from overseas. There are all kinds of factors at play.

Quad to the rescue

You get the sense that the team of economists who make up the Migration Advisory Committee are being careful about the government’s plans to link up skills and migration in a coherent way (it’s also noted at one point that skills is devolved and immigration is not – another challenge).

What we’re getting to make this all fit together is a new “Quad framework” (I believe this is the first time it’s publicly been referred to in this way). As promised in Labour’s manifesto, the strengthened MAC will be working with the newly launched Industrial Strategy Council, the Department for Work and Pensions, and Skills England – the manifesto in fact promised “skills bodies across the UK”, but this hasn’t been fleshed out yet.

This Quad will cooperate “to address systemic long-term issues that have led to reliance from certain sectors on international recruitment, and where appropriate, to reduce that reliance.” The MAC anticipates that the Quad will help identify priority sectors (following the industrial strategy, when ready) and determine which have a high reliance on migration, after which the MAC will – if it sees fit – recommend policy levers the government might pull, while Skills England will be drawing up workforce and skills plans, of some sort.

It’s all a recipe for an incredibly complicated set of moving parts, and given Skills England’s involvement and the importance of overseas staff and student recruitment, one that the English higher education sector would be wise to keep an eye on and work out how it can contribute to.

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December 18, 2024