Romanians claiming record number of student loans in ‘widespread fraud’

In 2023/24, 78,325 Romanians were claiming the funding, a massive rise from the 25,046 who did so in 2019/20.

They were second only to the 1.1 million British students accessing loans.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has acknowledged that Romanians are receiving a "disproportionate" share of student finance and has committed to tackling the issue at franchised colleges, where the majority of these students enrol.

These privately operated institutions, which deliver courses on behalf of established universities, allow students to access loans worth up to £13,000.

More than two-thirds of franchised course students come from backgrounds where English is not their first language, where Romanians are “over-represented” among the student body.

The National Audit Office has identified evidence of multi-million-pound fraud at such colleges, with potential connections to organised crime.

Investigators have discovered that individuals are signing up for courses solely to claim loan money before abandoning their studies, with no plans to complete their qualifications or repay the funds.

Enrolment at these institutions has more than doubled in five years, now approaching 160,000 students and representing between five and 10 per cent of all higher education learners, per The Telegraph.

Department for Education data shows that students at franchised providers are more than twice as likely to withdraw from their programmes as those on conventional degree programmes.

Completion rates stand at just 75 per cent, significantly below the 90 per cent achieved across the wider university sector.

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The Office for Students (OfS) has raised concerns about third-party recruitment agents targeting individuals unfamiliar with the English higher education system.

An OfS spokesman said: "These concerns include using financial incentives to attract students onto courses that are not right for them, or asking students to pay recruitment agents for services they could undertake themselves, like applying to a university or college, or additional registration fees."

The regulator noted that prospective students are sometimes given misleading information about courses or loan arrangements to encourage sign-ups.

Ms Phillipson has pledged to bring franchised providers with 300 or more students under the OfS's mandatory regulation, requiring them to meet university standards or lose access to student loan funding from 2028/29.

Independent MP Rupert Lowe, who obtained the Romanian student figures from the Department for Education, has called for a thorough inquiry into the scale of the problem.

"It is abundantly clear that there is widespread fraud occurring, yet nobody seems to care. That is not a surprise. I am calling on the Government to instigate a comprehensive review into where this money has gone, and more importantly, how we can get it back," said Mr Lowe, founder of the Restore Britain party.

A DfE spokesman defended the current system, stating that eligibility for student support depends on residency and immigration status rather than nationality alone.

"We will stop at nothing to protect public money where unusual patterns indicate abuse, or show franchised providers misusing student funding," the spokesman added.

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