MPhil W4 Translation

STUDENTS face growing competition for jobs with Britain’s top companies from an elite of foreign graduates educated at British universities.

British undergraduates at good universities could no longer expect to walk into the best careers as businesses increasingly recruited from a pool of international talent, the Council for Industry and Higher Education (CIHE) said yesterday. Its study said that foreign students educated in Britain offered employers many of the same creative skills as their British counterparts, but with additional cultural and linguistic advantages.

Bill Rammell, the Minister for Higher Education, said that British undergraduates would have to cope with greater competition as universities sought out international students to boost their income. Foreign students were critical to the survival of some courses and income from their fees allowed more places to be created at universities for British undergraduates.

Mr Rammell begins a visit to China today with a group of vice-chancellors and college principals to promote British higher education and encourage more Chinese students to enrol in Britain. Tony Blair has said that he wants an extra 100,000 international students to come to Britain by 2011.

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