Sooner or later, one of three things is going to happen. The government can accept and embrace high international student numbers. It can increase the money being paid to universities from domestic sources, either by increasing taxpayer subsidies or – if you’d prefer a plan that does not currently feel less likely than, say, war with Spain – raising fees. Alternatively, it can sit back, do nothing and watch a university go bust. As things stand, this third option is by some distance the most likely.
This is not one of those false dilemmas you often get in politics, of the “minority rights or economic growth” variety. In a very real sense, it’s not actually a question of politics at all, but one of maths: universities may simply not have enough money to keep going. Redundancies have been made, courses have been cut, but even so, last month the Office for Students, a regulator, warned that the sector’s finances were “towards the most pessimistic end” of its modelling, and the risk of what it called a “sudden market exit” had increased. This shouldn’t be a surprise – the risk of one or more universities falling over was on the “shit list” of looming risks compiled by Keir Starmer’s chief of staff Sue Gray (remember her?) in the run-up to the election last year. And yet, the government seems blissfully unaware. Perhaps no one finished reading the list.
At any rate, Britain’s universities need more money. They can find it at home, or they can find it abroad. But if they don’t find it, sooner or later, some are going under.
There are reasons to think the “find it abroad” option might remain open. The UK has long been an education superpower, home to many of the best and most prestigious institutions in the world. That’s made it one of the most popular destinations for international students, generally second only to the United States, a country which is currently doing all it can to make itself as unappealing to visitors as possible. In theory, British universities could be cleaning up.
In practice, however, there’s a problem: a large and influential part of the government doesn’t want it to. The Home Office is deliberately trying to make studying in Britain less attractive. The latest wheeze is to make graduate visas – which allow students to stay in the UK for up to two years after completing their courses – dependent on getting a job with a salary of over £30,000 a year.
Not everyone supports this plan: according to the FT, Home Office officials have accused the Department for Education of essentially colluding with universities to oppose it. The Home Office is also out of step with the public who, whatever their views on immigration, do not for the most part view students as part of it. In 2023 a YouGov survey found that less than a fifth of people felt we should reduce international student numbers. Last year, Survation found that only 1 per cent of voters – read that number again – think they should be a priority for reducing immigration. A pity, then, that those who set government immigration policy all seemingly hail from that 1 per cent.
But reducing international student numbers amounts, among other things, to attempting to throttle a lucrative British export industry. Such students bring money to parts of the country that need it, both through direct spending and by supporting institutions that would otherwise be in trouble. They’re a soft-power tool, too, creating friendships and cultural links that persist, and give people warm fuzzy feelings about Britain when they return home, which most do, to take up jobs in government or business.
And even as they do all these things, they subsidise university education for home students, by providing income that allows institutions to keep operating at all. Last month’s comments from Caroline Baylon, international pro-vice chancellor at the University of Reading, are typical: “We wouldn’t be able to run on just the funding that we receive from the government and UK tuition fees.” The idea that international students are stealing places from domestic students is the exact opposite of the truth: they allow them to fund courses and offer places they otherwise could not.
Elite opinion has somehow persuaded itself that “people want to pay a fortune to study here for three years, make a load of friends whose educations they’ll subsidise, and then leave again” (Office for National Statistics data shows that 80 per cent of international students leave within five years of arrival) is in some way bad. A more robust defence of international students, and an attempt to capitalise on the sort of education export business that many countries would kill for, is surely the least bad solution to the higher education funding trilemma – politically easier than higher domestic funding, less economically damaging than letting a university simply implode, possibly taking the economy of a small provincial city and its Labour MPs with it. But the Home Office thinks we should reduce the numbers, and there’s a hefty chance it’ll get its way. It’s quite mad.
[See more: What is school for?]
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