‘No clear way’ for UK sector to grow international student intake

The UK faces little prospect of being able to hit its targeted international student recruitment numbers, a leading consultancy has warned.

Public First warned that there was “no such thing as a reliable market anymore” after developing a tool which explores the gap between hoped-for growth in overseas student numbers and the economic and political reality.

This is despite a government-supported International Education Strategy encouraging universities to “help stabilise and restore sustainable growth in international student recruitment” and to “focus on improving market diversification” in source countries.

According to Public First’s predictions, the UK cannot expect to beat attractive competitors in Australia, Canada, New Zealand or the US without changes to visa policy.

The Home Office’s commitment to reducing immigration has included tighter rules for overseas students looking to study in the UK, including the 2023 ban on most international students bringing their dependents, as well as the coming imposition of the international student levy.

According to Annie Bell, an associate director for higher education, Public First was partly inspired to create a predictive model in response to the dependents ban, which along with a currency crash had resulted in decreased numbers of Nigerians coming to study in the UK.

“I think, or at least I would hope, that that was a wake-up call for many in the sector because obviously you had a lot of universities who had placed quite big bets on Nigeria and had had massive growth in Nigerian students and then something that no one had foreseen happened,” said Bell of the restriction on dependents.

“Suddenly a lot of institutions were in quite big trouble.”

The Public First modelling echoes other recent research showing that while China and India will remain important markets for the UK’s universities in the short to medium term, student numbers from the two countries are ultimately likely to decline.

The findings show stricter thresholds for Basic Compliance Assessment (BCA) – regulations governing universities that enrol foreign students – are “already” having an impact, while demographic shifts will also come into play, for instance as China’s university-age population shrinks.

Meanwhile, stable recruitment markets predominate in high-income countries like those in Europe, but Public First finds that either the UK is already well-known as an education option to potential students there, or they are relatively small in overall population size, leaving limited room for further growth.

Just nine territories offer both stability and headroom to fall, Public First finds, with the potential to provide around 52,000 additional students across the UK sector – equivalent to 7.3 per cent of the current international intake.

Those nine are the US, Ecuador, the United Arab Emirates, Paraguay, Oman, Italy, Ireland, Hong Kong, and South Korea.

Meanwhile, Public First warns that its model assumes the “competitor scenario” will remain the same in terms of competitive higher education sectors overseas – but notes there are a number of emerging rivals that could “conceivably begin to attract students away from the UK”, such as Japan or Malaysia.

Nevertheless, the single biggest issue remains hostile policy.

“The 2012 visa restrictions, the 2021 Graduate Route and the recent restrictions on dependents each turned the trend within three years, faster than any shift in the underlying demand for UK higher education,” Public First’s research states.

“Nonetheless, as reducing immigration has climbed up the list of the public’s policy priorities, successive governments have focused on reducing international student numbers. In this environment, securing policy change which supports growth in international students would be highly challenging.”

“I hope that no one is horribly shocked to discover that some countries where there is growth potential are actually not very reliable or sustainable for the long term, but I do think that this [modelling] hopefully throws that into relief in a way that hasn't been done before,” continued Bell.

One of the three options Public First’s research believes is facing the sector is simply accepting a shrinking operating landscape.

Many UK universities, the modelling finds, will face financial deterioration and, in some cases, possible closure.

“This perhaps serves as a kind of potentially nasty reminder that the strategy of just chasing after the next big growth market is risky,” Bell suggested of the findings.

She added: “I think that is increasingly a likely scenario that we get outcompeted by more regional markets.”

“China is declining, which hopefully people would already know because of the demographic decline that's happening there, and our modelling also shows that actually India is a risky market.

“I think one of the most surprising findings in our model is just how much lower we think the stable core of potential Indian students is compared to how much we're actually recruiting at the moment – the risk there is high, and perhaps higher than some had anticipated.”

Ultimately, Bell concluded: “There is no such thing as a reliable market anymore.”

georgia.luckhurst@timeshighereducation.com