Never likely to be a popular topic…. especially for a Friday morning. A process that’s well known to be all pain and no gain introduced to tired and hung-over delegates. The reasons given for the process are the usual ones – bogus colleges etc
Number of institutions registered much smaller than the number that used to bring in overseas students. However, nothing in the data to indicate whether that is bogus institutions dropping out or just those for whom the admin overhead isn’t too much to make it worthwhile.
Transition exercise is pushed and takeup seems to be sparse (only one hand in the room) possibly due to the audience not being heavily involved with the process at their institution rather than institutions not having been through the exercise (apparently over 500 have).
Lots of details about process, timing, reporting duties etc. I won’t repeat them here as there was nothing surprising and I very much expect that everyone who needs to know already does. The news that most folks might yet to hear is that there’s a revised XSD to be released shortly (perhaps even today) – sponsors will be informed.
UKBA have been wielding the ban-hammer on sponsors via their audit process. They note that institutions are responsible for the actions of their agents and that dodgy agents will result in suspension/withdrawal of the system from institutions.
Controversially UKBA indicate they might introduce mandatory English language testing for potential students. I fear that if we applied that to home students we might have difficulties filling places…
Prepayment is now going to be available but only on the basis that any leftover money at the end of the year is scooped up by UKBA. Batch payments will be available from the start for up to 1001 CAS at a time.
I had to google that: http://www.urbandictionary.com/iphone/search?term=Ban+Hammer