Oxford 'risking its reputation' by taking in wealthy foreigners

By Alice Philipson. Oxford University risks undermining its reputation by accepting wealthy foreign students with poor grades for “purely commercial reasons”, an internal report warns. The “associate students”, who generally have lower average grades than a typical Oxford undergraduate, pay as much as £13,000 a term and can stay for up to a year. Although the students are not officially part of the university, senior figures said they “pose severe reputational risk” because their academic standards are “often low”. The report said that colleges, which are independent of the university and are free to set their own admissions policies, granted them admission for “purely commercial” reasons. Read more...