Loss of EU students in UK ‘hitting degree outcomes’

The changing make-up of the international student body in the UK, following a fall in European Union student numbers after Brexit, is having “significant” impacts on overall degree outcomes and continuation rates, consultants have warned.

Analysis from Education Insight also shows that the UK increased international student market share compared with rivals such as Australia and the US in 2021-22.

Janet Ilieva, founder of the consultancy, said that “on the surface” it appeared that the UK had performed well, with the reintroduction of the post-study work visa in July 2021 giving it a competitive advantage.

However, she told Times Higher Education that it was a completely different story when looking “under the bonnet” at the individual metrics in her company’s annual Global Engagement Index.

Looking at full-time entrants across all levels of study, Dr Ilieva said, the concentration in certain markets that was seen in 2020-21 had grown even further.

The “seismic shift” in the diversity of the international student body was already having consequences, she added, most notably the collapse in demand from the EU.

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Her analysis shows that, although there are variations between institutions, EU students tend to get the best grades – and outperform home students by a large margin.

“EU students are no longer coming to the UK, which by default is having huge impacts on the degree outcomes of the students,” said Dr Ilieva.

The figures also revealed a significant drop in the continuation rate of full-time undergraduate students.

This could be driven by the decline in the numbers of Chinese students coming to the country, who traditionally were unlikely to drop out and had comparably high graduate outcomes as well, said Dr Ilieva.

“The universities on the index that might have the highest continuation rates of first-degree students are most likely the ones that had the highest proportion of Chinese students,” she added. “A lot of these characteristics are determined by the make-up of the student population on campus.”

Chinese students – who have tended to be more positive in student surveys – can also affect a university’s overall satisfaction score in polls such as the National Student Survey.

The UK has the highest completion rates across the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and Dr Ilieva warned that one of the UK’s main “selling points” globally could be affected by changing demographics.

International students, she continued, “have higher completion rates, so one can actually argue that part of the excellence of the UK HE system is attributed to top performers from overseas because they’re a significant contributing factor to maintaining that high completion rate in the system.”

Dr Ilieva said she hoped the index would serve as “self-help for university practitioners”, allowing them to measure changes year-on-year and benchmark themselves against others.

“I hope universities use the index to have a more informed conversation about the state of their global engagement and to measure the success of their engagement strategies,” she added.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com