LONDON - HALF the private colleges admitting foreign students in Britain investigated by officials have been dropped from an approved register for irregularities or for being bogus institutions, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

Colleges on the list can endorse visas for overseas students to come to Britain.

The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills said trading standards officers found enough reason to drop 124 institutions from the list out of the 256 investigated.

Colleges that have been dropped from the list can no longer endorse visas, while trading standards officers may also impose fines or other penalties including putting them out of business.

The overall list includes some 2,000 private colleges ranging from legitimate, well-known universities to what were effectively front organisations supporting fraudulent visa applications.

The department said it was examining other private colleges, targeting those where it believed there might be problems.

'In some cases they did not have the sufficient premises or resources to deliver that training,' a spokesman said. 'Some were simply bogus institutions.'

Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government has been attacked by opposition Conservatives who accuse it of losing track of immigration, both legal immigration from new entrants to the European Union as well as illegal from elsewhere.

A Home Office spokeswoman said students who discovered their institution was no longer on the approved list could remain in Britain providing they then switched their studies to another approved centre.

'It will be their responsibility to do that and inform us,' she said. -- REUTERS