Vice-chancellor denies systemic failure over international students, saying Border Agency changed requirements 14 times
The vice-chancellor of London Metropolitan University said the institution would "fundamentally contest" the UK Border Agency's decision to revoke its licence to sponsor international students.
The university is going to the high court this week to try to stay implementation of the decision, which it says affects up to 2,600 overseas students and could result in it suffering an annual loss of £30m.
Its vice-chancellor, Malcolm Gillies, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Tuesday: "My university is going to seek for this revocation to be stayed … because our analysis with leading immigration lawyers demonstrates that this report of the UKBA is wrong … We fundamentally contest the claim that there is systemic failure here."
The government stripped London Met of its "highly trusted" status last week after the UKBA found a quarter of overseas students it checked on for an audit did not have permission to stay in the country.
Gillies said the Border Agency's requirements for checking overseas students had changed substantially at least 14 times in the last three years, that it had failed to keep London Met aware of its concerns over the past six months and that the agency had not checked the details of its findings with the university.
"If it's based on something that's wrong or substantially wrong then we have to get that overturned," said Gillies. He said the decision was unfair on the overseas students at the university who face being thrown out of the country but also warned that it had wider repercussions, damaging not only the university but the reputation of British higher education as a whole.
Speaking in the Commons on Monday, the immigration minister, Damian Green, said: "UKBA found systemic failures that meant that London Met had not been able to ensure the appropriate admission and tracking of students from abroad."
The government accused the university of "failing to address serious and systemic failings" identified six months ago.
The vice-chancellor's comments coincided with intense criticism of the UK Border Agency by MPs, who accused it of causing chaos in the student visa system with a "poorly planned and ill-thought-out" change in the rules for overseas students.
The agency's failings meant an extra 50,000 people abused the system, coming to Britain to work rather than study, the public accounts committee said.
The committee of MPs said in a report published on Monday that the UKBA had enforced new rules for overseas students in 2009 before controls were in place.