New UK immigration rules update

There is one industry that is recession proof and some research actually shows that it does better when the economy is bad. I am referring to the billion pound education industry. British universities have been highly successful in attracting thousands of bright foreign students to the British Isles.

A BBC report in 2008 showed that fees from International students amounted to £1.7bn. The Universities are interested in attracting foreign non-EU students because they can charge them higher. In my case I paid approximately £10300 this year and the fees are increasing. Local and EU students only pay one third that amount. In other words I am paying for the cost of two local/ EU students. I don't mind because a degree from a reputed British University is looked on favourably by employers all around the World (at least I hope so).

The Malaysian Government itself spends millions of dollars every year sponsoring the education of thousands of students in institutes of higher learning all over the UK.

However, recent changes in immigration regulations may change all that. First were the requirement to carry biometric identity cards. I didn't mind that even though there were a lot of protests because I am used to carrying an ID card all the time in Malaysia.

Yesterday we received an email from the University informing us of Pending changes to the immigration rules for student visa renewals. Based on the new rules which will be implemented from the 31st of March 2009, students would need to provide evidence of any remaining course fees to be paid plus £600pm (up to a maximum of £1200) living costs for visa extensions of nine months or less. If more than nine months you will need to provide evidence of your first year’s fees plus £1200 living costs.

The most worrying part of the new rule is the part of dependants. Namely the fact that you will need to show evidence of funds to support them. The amount has not been fixed yet but is tentatively £533 (per month) for each dependant (including children).

I guess this is part of their policy to toughen immigration rules and it has got worse since the economic recession started. All of us can feel a deepening anti-foreigner sentiment - from politicians, newspaper articles and even bloggers.

Now we are blamed for all short of problems ranging from health care to employment. This is plain ridiculous. Instead of creating more employment and reducing the number of people on the dole, foreigners are the perfect bogeyman to take the blame for past planning, economic and financial mistakes on the part of the Government.

I do agree that there is a problem of illegal immigrants but the new policies will affect the students legally staying and contributing to the British economy. I guess they are frustrated because they can't do anything about the rest of the Europeans (since the UK is part of the EU) or the illegal immigrants or the asylum seekers.

The ones worst affected will be the PhD research students with families. Officially most PhD courses are supposed to be of 3 years duration and the visa are given accordingly but apart from rare cases, most will extend to the fourth or fifth year. For example, in the Warwick Business School, I don't know of any single student (foreign and local) who has completed their PhD degree in the stipulated 3 years duration. The only guy I know who completed in 3 years in the whole University of Warwick was a Malaysian in the Engineering faculty and he was lucky because all his experiments went as planned. Sometimes it is not even the fault of the students as some supervisors can take their own sweet time in passing the students.

My friend has 4 kids and he has to have approximately £24588 £29385 + (based on the details given to us) in his account in order to extend his study for another 9 months. Failure to do so might mean going back to Malaysia without completing the degree (after 3 long years of research). It's scary.

First Commentator
Hapi

Ryanair and bloggers

As we all know, if you are a big company, picking a quarrel with a blogger is not really a good idea. However, Ryanair recently did that.

Web developer and blogger Jason Roe was called an "idiot blogger" when he pointed out a flaw on the airline's website. The response from other bloggers was predictable. The comments are hilarious and as someone who's in marketing, I simply couldn't believe it. Is it possible that one of the biggest low cost airline in Europe is that arrogant?

Read the Telegraph's article: 'Ryanair calls blogger lunatic'.

In spite of that, I was really surprised to find the level of negative perception towards the airline prevalent among my friends here. Not even one had a nice thing to say about the company. This is a case of extremely bad PR and they clearly need to do something about this.



I have flown with the airline only once to La Rochelle and I simply flew with them because they were the cheapest. I had no problems with the airline apart from the one thing - there was no information on the tickets on how to contact their customer service by telephone (do they even have one?) when we had problems.

They can learn a thing or two from Air Asia, a low cost airline based in Malaysia and one of the fastest growing the World. They start flying to London this year.

You just have to compare the websites of the two airlines to see what I mean:


Air Asia


Ryanair

This is an interesting case because I can always use it as an example of "what not to do" for my marketing students.

Anyway, enjoy this ad:

First Commentator
D

Where are the non-bloggers?

There is a strange phenomenon that I have noticed while going through my blog as well as as a couple of others, namely, most commentators on blogs are bloggers themselves.

I am sure that a number of non-bloggers visit my blog as well but somehow very few leave comments. Maybe this is an indication of why certain people become bloggers. It is likely that there is something in the psychology of bloggers that makes them bloggers - something that makes them different from other people. These are people who want to voice out their views and opinions. More often than not, they are also the opinion leaders in their communities.

Another trend I have noticed is that a number of non-bloggers who used to leave comments eventually became bloggers themselves.

Trying to gauge the awareness of blogs amongst undergraduate students, I recently asked a group regarding their favourite blogs and I was shocked to discover that less than half knew what a blog was. The fact is that a lot of people can't differentiate between a generic website and a blog and many who think they know what a blog is defines it as a personal diary. Most blogs are personal diaries I guess but there are many others which are based on specific topics and I wouldn't call them "personal diaries".

What do you think?

1st Commentator
Nana

The happiest countries

According to the results of a study survey carried out by researchers at the University of Leicester, Denmark is the happiest nation in the world.

They have come out with a "World Map of Happiness". It was found out that the significant factors that decided the "happiness" of a country were health, poverty level, and access to basic education.

Only two Asian countries are in the top 10 - Bhutan and Brunei Darussalam coming in at 8th and 9th places respectively.

I was surprised to find that Malaysia did quite well, coming at 17th place. The United Kingdom came in at a distant 41 (I am not surprised). The US of A came in at 23rd.

Apparently the most miserable people on the Earth are those that live in Burundi closely followed by Zimbabwe.

Mr. Mugabe! Please pity to your people and just step down.

Read the BusinessWeek article.

1st Commentator
Nana

Rewarding the 1st commentator

Following in the footsteps of the extremely talented Emila, I have decided to add a link to the blog/ website of the first commentator on every post at the bottom of the post.

This will help increase traffic to their own sites as well. My way of saying a big Thank You to supporters of my blog.

1st Commentator
Metallman

Hooked on house makeover show

Homes under the hammer, 60 Minute Makeover, Grand Designs - these are but some of the TV programmes I am hooked on right now. I guess the common themes that run in all these programmes is making a house a home.

It surprising because I have never done much DIY work before I moved to the UK - we just hired someone to do it because labour is cheap in Malaysia. Some may disagree but I assure you, it's way cheaper than in the UK.

My wife hates these programmes but I think that it is something amazing - watching people turn a dilapidated house into something beautiful. I think what really appeals to me is watching how these people overcome the obstacles to make their dreams a reality.

Homes under the hammer comes on weekday mornings on BBC 1 and shows how people buy people buy properties in auctions and do them up. Not all of them are successful and I have learnt a number of tips that I should keep in mind should I ever decide to buy in an auction. 60 Minute Makeover is on ITV1 and a team redesigns a house in exactly 1 hour. My favourite is of course Grand Designs. It is on Channel 4 and presented by Kevin McCloud. Watch people build the houses of their dreams (which sometimes turn into nightmares). I have blogged about it before. Read My Grand Designs.

I would have loved to do up this house that I am living in and God knows that it is desperately in need of a huge makeover. I have actually done quite a lot. Unfortunately, I am just renting it and I guess I have to wait until I get my own house.

A chance to win 6 Ryanair gift vouchers

My friend Amrul in The University of Nottingham is doing a study on the online travel experience of UK customers.

If you are a UK resident and have used travel websites such as Ryanair, Easyjet, Lastminute, Ebookers, Travelocity, Expedia etc. for your travel needs during the past 12 months, please go over to http://www.surveymonkey.com/Online_Travel_Experience.

He's giving out 6 Ryanair gift vouchers to 6 lucky winners and he has also promised to make 50p donation for every completed survey to Cancer Research UK. So even if you don't win, you still get to do some good.