Universities that focus on recruitment over adequate language skills risk falling into a "death spiral" that will hamper them from attracting more international students, a conference has heard.“If all you’re doing is churning out students that can’t actually communicate, can’t do the job that they are required to do, or if you’ve got incredibly high fail rates, this will drive you down in the QS rankings,” according to Susan Kinnear, dean of education and student experience at the University of Dundee.