York College achieves ‘Highly Trusted Sponsored Status’

York College is delighted to announce that it has achieved ‘Highly Trusted Sponsored Status’ (HTSS), granted by the UK Border Agency. The HTSS is a quality mark that states York College can continue to recruit international students who require visas.

York College satisfied the requirements of the UK Border Agency (the government department that looks after immigration matters) that it has the necessary quality systems in place to monitor and track its international students who come to study in York.

The new visa rules for recruiting international students state that all educational establishments must have HTSS. The regulations specifically apply to institutions offering post-16 educational programmes; this includes A Levels, the York International Foundation Programme and English as a Foreign Language courses at the college. The government say that without the HTSS accreditation education institutions cannot recruit international students.

Says Bob Saynor, Assistant Principal at York College: “We are proud of our international students’ achievements and appreciate the different cultural perspectives and knowledge that they offer to our local students. This year we expect to recruit around 160 students from up to twenty different countries around the world. Our international students have a very high success rate, they study with us and progress to either the University of York or other top universities in the country.

These students will bring in appprox £750,000 in fees and the same amount again in contributions to the local economy. The overall contribution of overseas students studying in York is significantly increased when you add the recruitment of other providers in the City such as the Universities of York and York St John University, and Askham Bryan College. This year will be the highest cohort of international students we have had at York College for several years.”