Surveillance on UK International Students

New rules for international students in the UK "could breach the European convention on human rights." British universities will be required to follow the movements of foreign students.  You would think the Bush administration is running the UK.

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Academics balk at 'spying' on students to nail migrant scams

* Polly Curtis, education editor
* guardian.co.uk, Monday November 10 2008 00.01 GMT
* London - The Guardian, Monday November 10 2008


Universities are being asked to set up surveillance units to monitor the movements of international students in a government-led crackdown on bogus student immigration scams, academics say. New rules to force universities to report overseas students who miss too many lectures to immigration officers will harm the academic-student relationship because lecturers are being asked to act in a "police-like" manner, according to a group of 200 academics and activists opposing the moves.

A letter to the Guardian, organised by Ian Grigg-Spall, academic chair of the National Critical Lawyers Group and signed by leading academic lawyers, the head of the lecturers' union and Tony Benn, claims that the rules could breach the European convention on human rights, which guarantees the individual's right to privacy. "This police-like surveillance is not the function of universities and alters the educational relationship between students and their teachers in a very harmful manner," it says. "University staff are there to help the students develop intellectually and not to be a means of sanctioning these students..." more