Lost in translation: Is the University of Manchester letting down its overseas students?

By Mollie Simpson and Joshi Herrmann

At a recent meeting at the University of Manchester, student representatives raised a “sensitive subject” with their lecturers, a problem that has caused increasing concern as the university has pursued a bold strategy of global growth. Namely: the number of international students “with very limited English language skills,” as one participant in the meeting put it. 

At issue is whether the university is allowing students to enroll without thoroughly assessing whether they speak good enough English to fully understand what they are studying and make the most out of their courses. It’s a problem that The Mill has heard about from a range of university staff and students over the past few years, but that has rarely been aired in public for fear of putting unfair blame on the overseas students involved. The blame, most insiders seem to agree, should fall squarely on the university for prioritising lucrative revenue from international fees over academic standards and the wellbeing of its students.

“Many of these students cannot communicate at all when asked questions during lectures and are completely silent when undertaking seminar activities, therefore you are often sat in silence for a whole hour,” a master’s student who attended the meeting told us. The student says one lecturer nodded along and another agreed that the English language requirements had been set too low. But the outcome was vague, and the students got the impression little would change. 

“It’s obviously a sensitive subject as no one wants to ‘other’ these students and it’s not their fault that the English language requirements are set so low,” the student told The Mill. “The head of my course stated that he thinks it is set too low and many other lecturers agree it is a struggle to teach and communicate, but the university itself won’t raise them to what is actually required for everyone to learn properly.”

A spokesperson for the University of Manchester defended its English language entry requirements, saying they mandate “high levels of competence in listening, reading, speaking and writing, with a particular focus on writing”, and are “set at a level where we are confident and experience shows that students are able to succeed”. 

But that doesn’t tally with what we have heard from multiple students and staff at the university. Lecturers and administrative staff have told us that the increase in students who aren’t able to follow seminars has made it more difficult to teach classes. More importantly, they say it has created a situation where many overseas students struggle with their courses and find it difficult to immerse themselves in university life, a point raised by some of the students themselves. 

‘Hidden in plain sight’ 

This summer, two professors at Russell Group universities published a blog on the website of the Higher Education Policy Institute about what they called a “scandal” that has been “hidden in plain sight”. Given the sensitivity of the issue, the professors, who said they had a combined 60 years of teaching experience, chose to write the blog anonymously to address “a quality crisis — which, though widely known about, is barely being discussed except amongst direct teaching colleagues.” 

As the professors put it: “in many universities, a significant proportion of international students do not meet the basic requirements, especially English language skills, necessary to obtain a degree — and yet degrees are being awarded.” They write that whereas master’s-level classes are supposed to be highly interactive environments involving advanced discussions, the language problem has changed that. “Now, our typical seminar experience is that material must be delivered in a lecture style, and preferably as a written document so that it can be translated using one of the many translation apps.” 

For the students, this creates “an extremely stressful and challenging environment”. And for the academics teaching such classes, “The knowledge that one’s teaching has negligible educational value can feel life-sapping, demoralising and deeply exploitative.” 

The blog didn’t say which universities the professors work at, but their observations chime with what we have heard about the University of Manchester, which has aggressively expanded its recruitment of international master’s students to make up for declining income from government grants and home students. The university admitted more than 18,000 international students in 2024, up from around 8,000 in 2011, and in 2022 it was estimated 40% of the university’s students came from overseas. According to the Financial Times, the university has six education agents who work to recruit overseas students and help them with their applications. 

Requirements for English proficiency vary by course, but most are in the range of 6.0 (defined as “competent”) and 7.0 (defined as “good”) in the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). The university offers pre-sessional courses in the summer months to help prospective international students improve their language skills before they start their degree, but it’s unclear whether these systems are working. 

One lecturer mentions a case where an international student was allowed to enroll even after failing the pre-sessional course and an admissions officer tells us that he’s “never seen a single student not be accepted” after completing the pre-sessional course. He says whenever an international student applies to the university, “we’re always encouraged to process them, we’re encouraged to accept them”.

The admissions officer also suspects some of the applications received from international students are not written by the students themselves, noticing that their personal statements are sometimes written in “pristine English” while their language proficiency is described as “modest” (or 5.5 IELTS). 

Again, the university has a starkly different account of things. “In order to be offered a place on our Pre-sessional courses, a student has to demonstrate a very strong English ability pre-arrival,” a spokesperson told us. “If a student does not achieve that level, then they will unfortunately not be able to join us. In this way, we focus our attention on those who have significant language proficiency and we expect to be able to progress to Manchester.”

A researcher who worked at the university until a few years ago says it “was quite evident” that many of the students in her seminars didn’t have good enough English to take part at a high level. Her overriding concern was for the welfare of the overseas students, who had been admitted onto a course which they struggled to keep up with.

 She recalls seeing students using translation apps during seminars to try to make sense of words on the screen, and having to explain key concepts slowly in order to be understood. When it came to marking dissertations, she says there was an understanding among staff that Chinese students, who represented a large proportion of the cohort, shouldn't be penalised for poor English. “We were encouraged not to mark them down as long as it was intelligible,” the researcher told us. 

Several staff we have spoken to say that the problem varies greatly from one course to the next depending on their popularity with overseas students, and that it would be unfair to generalise across the entire university. One lecturer also notes that cultural differences — not just language proficiency — might also explain why some students take a less active part in seminars. For example, students from countries like China are generally less used to being asked to take part in a “critical discussion” and might be more reluctant to speak up unless they are specifically asked to do so. 

But the master’s student who raised the issue with lecturers recently in her capacity as a course representative recently describes feeling uneasy about how her class started to segregate itself because of the language issue. Her course is partly assessed on group presentations, where up to four students put together a presentation on their topic, and she says home students have formed their own clique in order to avoid being disadvantaged. 

“A lot of people rushed to be in a group where people speak English,” she says. “They all literally crammed themselves on a table rather than sit down on a table where there’s someone else.” That dynamic, she says, is awkward for both groups of students and doesn’t create a positive atmosphere in the class. 

‘Cash cows’

Attracting overseas students has become the main financial lifeline for universities struggling to make up the gap created by the capping of home fees, which have stayed the same since 2017/18. A lecturer at the University of Manchester remembers sitting in a department meeting where the programme leads were discussing what they should charge international students where “It was like, ‘Sheffield are charging this, so we should charge this’. It doesn’t take a maths whizz to work out that the more of those students you can attract, the more money you’re going to make.”

A spokesperson for the university says the number of places for UK students has increased in the last few years “despite the fact that fees have not kept pace with inflation and therefore don’t meet costs in many areas.” 

Two years ago, the researchers Sylvie Lomer and Ying Yang wrote in a study that the financial incentive of recruiting international students was in danger of dehumanising them, who have come to be seen as “cash cows” for elite universities wanting to survive in a broken market. As Lomer and Yang put it: “International students act as an economic resource for universities but are not themselves resourced.”

A lecturer who says he is positive about the contributions that international students make told us that he worries that students in his classes do not feel included in university life. “They are not immersed in any way in British life, they feel they are kind of disappointed in their experience of being in the UK,” he says.

For him, that’s the biggest downside of the language barriers at the university. “I think any criticism of that cohort and their language skills is more to do with the fact that they can’t immerse themselves,” he says. “If the university wants to pursue this strategy, it’s going to have to change its curriculums.”

On top of that, more thought needs to be given to how to help students to improve their language skills and feel supported. “I don't think the university really understands what it's got itself into here. It's taken such a huge cohort from a large part of the world and not really put in place any mechanisms to help them immerse themselves.” 

An administrative staff member at the university says they have referred a lot of international students to mental health and wellbeing services because of loneliness. “It seems to be a bit of a theme of students — and I don’t want to generalise — who don’t mix with other students, and don’t want to socialise, and just stay in their accommodation all day, and are just trying to stay on top of their work, get their assignments done,” they say. “Obviously, it's having a big effect on their mental health.” 

The university says it offers “a huge amount of welfare and support services to all our students” — some of which are listed at the end of this article — and adds: “We also take great pains to ensure that all of our students settle into university life, wherever they’re from.” 

Life for many international students is already challenging enough. They find themselves many miles from home and having to adapt to a new country and new forms of learning, not to mention financial and visa worries. “I have to stress about visas,” says Una, a student from Taiwan who we meet in the gardens of the Alliance Business School just off Oxford Road. “It’s harder than it is for local students. With scholarships, there’s very few options offered to international students. The fees are triple. More than triple.”

Gao, a first-year chemistry student who lives in a 19-storey student accommodation block near Piccadilly Station, admits that making friends in a new country is difficult too. “Maybe, it’s quite hard for me to start conversations sometimes,” he says, describing himself as “not very outgoing”. 

But neither Gao or Una have the additional handicap of struggling to understand what their lecturers are saying, an extra factor that can only compound the other pressures. The Mill has been told about Chinese students on the education master's course writing dissertations about this very subject, including gathering evidence from fellow overseas students about the anxiety and stress they experience when asked to speak up in seminars. 

Will anything change? One lecturer quoted in this story is sceptical that the university will try to fix the problem by tightening up its language requirements. “I’ve been part of departmental meetings where it’s like, well, if we change it, and no one else does, then we lose out on quite a number of students,” he says. “And yeah, that would put my job at risk.”

The University of Manchester offers a professional Counselling and Mental Health Service for students, a 24 hour mental health helpline and wellbeing app and other services detailed on their Support page. 

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