I know an international student from Asia. Them and their large group of friends already all know each other from their home country, come from the same couple of high schools, have a big society where they just party together for 3 years and then are given work visas. Pretty much a whole pipeline ready made. They just need to enter certain high schools in their country, get the bare minimum grades and it is all set for them in the UK (work, social life, accomodation).

I would take a guess and say most of their parents are also rich so accomodation even in West London is no problem.

This is not a poor student who worked their ass off to get to the UK storyline, this is a foreign program set up in the UK. Makes you wonder what the fuck is going on.