International PhD students are waiting 10 weeks on average for UK government security checks to be completed, leading some world-class early career scientists to go elsewhere, leading universities have warned.
According to Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office guidelines, pre-visa checks on postgraduate researchers in security-sensitive areas should take no longer than 30 working days.
However, a survey of 1,450 students and staff in UK universities conducted by the Russell Group found that student applications under the Academic Technology Approval Scheme (Atas) were taking 53 working days to approve on average, with just over half of students waiting for more than 30 working days for their approvals.
In one case, a postgraduate student was forced to wait almost six months for their approval, with other delays reported to the survey causing some fully-funded PhD students to go to other countries or postpone their arrival in the UK for many months.
