Special Branch officers are operating in British universities.

Higher Education Minister David Lammy said the government was concerned about a number of institutions.

Mr Lammy has refused to be drawn on whether university Islamic societies should be monitored more closely.

The London Daily News also understands that there are "funding queries" over several Islamic societies at various high profile London Higher Education institutions.

"Universities are autonomous," he said. "They work closely with the police and the intelligence services, and I'm not going to comment further than that."

He told BBC Radio 4's The Report:

"We have identified universities for whom the risk is greater and they have to work closely with Special Branch, and so I think it is a partnership between leadership at universities and the police.

We do not recognise a caricature of a significant risk across Britain.

But we do recognise that threat levels have been raised and that this is an extremely serious issue and that there are particular institutions - and those institutions are aware of this because we have brought it to their attention - where the risk is greater and those institutions are working very closely with the police and are working closely with Special Branch and those institutions (police and Special Branch) are present on campus."

Blacklisted Collages take Border Agency to court 

Numerous State and private collages are set to take the Boarder Agency to court after they were suspended.

142 organisations had been blacklisted – including all applications from northern India, Nepal and Bangladesh.

This move came soon after news broke that failed Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was allegedly radicalized whilst studying at University Collage London.

The Home Office and Border Agency have long tried to clamp down on bogus students and phony collages that resulted in overstayers and present a security risk.

A ‘surge’ in applications led to the suspension of student visas from these areas – but the affected institutions claim this was because of a switch to an online system

Several UK colleges are taking the UK Border Agency to court after they were suspended from approving student visa applications.

Under the government's points-based immigration system, properly accredited colleges were able to give a visa-sponsoring license - essentially a letter verifying that a student was enrolled, and had paid, for a course in the UK. The student could then take that offer letter to their local embassy or consulate to get a UK student visa. If they didn't get a visa, the money would be refunded.

52 of these state collages apparently did not even have a licence to issue verification to embassies.

Collages “angry”

Colleges complain they are punished for being honest.

An angry college administrator told The Register website that the system was a spectacular example of the government achieving the opposite of what it said it intended to achieve. He said:

"There's no doubt there were some dodgy colleges out there, but clearing them out would be easy with a 'mystery shopper' type inspection.

Instead they are trying to turn colleges into arms of the state and rewarding the truly dodgy colleges, which will simply walk away with students' money."

The 142 suspended colleges will now have to be inspected by a Borders Agency Visiting Officer although some will be reviewed without a visit.