This policy can cause delays, and leads to people deterring from their original career plans. Humanitarian protection is offered to those people who face general risks posed by the death penalty, torture and other inhumane treatment. However, refugee status is given to people facing danger due to their nationality or religion.
Emma Williams, director of Student Action for Refugees (STAR), said that the fact these people have already lost their families is bad enough, but the added challenge of having to wait to be funded to gain an education makes things worse.
"Having to the sit and wait for three years, having been told that you can stay in the country and we agree that you have a well-founded fear and you should stay here, to then have to wait is very challenging," Williams said in a recent interview.
According to Ms. Williams there have been instances where people have been forced to abandon their career plans and have changed jobs. This means that someone who was once a doctor in another country, when they arrive in the UK, they end up becoming taxi drivers.
"You see underemployment with refugees, significant underemployment, so I challenge anybody to ask their taxi driver where they are from and what they did before they came," she said.
"It's a very depressing conversation to have, many, many people are refugees and they say 'Yeah, in my country I was a doctor, but retraining was going to take me seven years and was going to cost me too much money, so I didn't,' " she added.
Campaigners are calling for the UK government to grant the same rights that they have given to Syrian refugees to those who come to the UK seeking humanitarian protection.
The UK government recently amended the Higher Education and Research Bill, so Syrian refugees were given the same rights to education as British students.
The UK government has yet to comment on whether any changes will be made to the law.
