Wav, I think it was Ruth on another thread, Scarborough Fair? gave the most pertinent answer to your question. Apparently it's all about economics/money and bums on seats. Ireland and Scotland can attract more students to their own causes from the native stock. We can't as yet, so we end up with those horrible foreigners in our universities! Horror of horrors! I live near Hull Uni and you can't step outside the door without tripping over half a dozen Chinese students.

Then again I organised a Traditional Song Forum meeting last year at Sheffield Uni Music Dept and the stars of the show were 3 Chinese singers/musicians, students on the Ethnomusiclogy course. How dare they invade our wonderful English folk song meetings!