A new UK visa aimed at attracting the best graduates from across the world risks excluding talent from African countries, scientists and policy-makers have warned.
The , due to be launched by the UK Home Office on 30 May, is aimed at people who have graduated in the past five years from one of what are often regarded as the world鈥檚 top universities.
People with a recent undergraduate degree or PhD from one of these universities will be able to move to the UK for up to three years without needing to have a job lined up beforehand. Typical UK visas for foreign researchers require a pre-existing job offer, a fellowship, certain research grants or that the individual is a notable prize-winner.
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The Home Office has produced a list of foreign universities it considers to be the best in the world by compiling institutions that appear in the top 50 at least twice across global university league tables.
The resulting list includes no universities in African nations, effectively excluding anyone who has studied in Africa from the scheme. There are also no universities in Central and South America or South Asia on the list.
鈥淭hese ratings are based on criteria that favour universities which have been around for hundreds of years and have access to a lot of funding,鈥� says at the University of Ilorin in Nigeria.
鈥淎s someone from Nigeria who did their PhD in Britain, it鈥檚 heartbreaking to see that there are still processes being put in place that inadvertently exclude Africans,鈥� she says. 鈥淒oes this visa mean that there are no individual graduates from African universities with high potential?鈥�
鈥淚 think this is a deeply inequitable approach,鈥� says at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. 鈥淭he exclusion of African universities strikes out many graduates with in-depth knowledge of major challenges facing humanity this century, such as climate change, food security and expanding access to technology.鈥�
鈥淚f UK businesses and government want to play a role in solving these challenges, they need to be recognising and including the diverse skill sets held by many graduates from universities in developing countries,鈥� he says.
Global university league tables have previously been criticised as a .
鈥淭here is a wealth of evidence across social sciences that rankings produce a skewed idea of what constitutes quality in higher education and science, especially on a global scale,鈥� says at Bielefeld University in Germany. 鈥淢aking a new ranking by combining existing rankings does nothing else but create an illusion of an added layer of objectivity.鈥�
鈥淢any governments use various rankings to make important decisions, often because that鈥檚 just the easiest and the cheapest way of dealing with complex issues,鈥� she says. 鈥淏ut it鈥檚 a highly problematic one, with potentially serious negative consequences, and should never go unquestioned by the public.鈥�
鈥淭his is the sort of idea the Home Office loves because it allows them to look liberal while maintaining close control,鈥� says at the Higher Education Policy Institute in Oxford, UK. 鈥淚鈥檓 sceptical about it because 鈥榯op鈥� universities and the best universities are not the same when it comes to teaching quality.鈥�
The Home Office didn鈥檛 respond to specific questions about why the visa relies on a potentially flawed league table system or why it excludes graduates from African universities.
鈥淭he new High Potential Individual route will make it as simple as possible for internationally mobile individuals at an early stage of their careers who demonstrate high potential to come to the UK,鈥� says Home Office minister .
