Egyptian Cultural Attache Says UKBA ‘Unresponsive’
The Egyptian government has threatened to shun the UK as a destination for postgraduate students on state scholarships because of frustrations over visas. Egyptian officials have said that they find the UK Border Agency to be unresponsive and have difficulty arranging visas for doctoral students’ dependants.
Speaking at The New Student Visa System – Impact, Enforcement and UK Competitiveness, a conference organised by the Westminster Higher Education Forum and held in London on 8 November, Nadia El Kholy, cultural counsellor at the Egyptian Embassy, said there were “enormous problems” with the UKBA.
Ms El Kholy went on to state that the Egyptian government “is thinking of a very serious paradigm shift in terms of the policy relating to sending students” to the UK.
Ms El Kholy stated that the UKBA sometimes rejected applications with no explanation, and the UKBA was very difficult to contact with queries.
It was hard to obtain visas for the families of doctoral students (who were often married before they began their studies in the UK), and extending their student visas so that they could remain in the country to complete their vivas was often challenging, Professor El Kholy complained.
She went on to state that ‘In Germany, fees were “minimal” and there were further alternatives in Canada, Australia, the US and throughout Asia’.
