In recent years and months, the UK has seen considerable debate over immigration policy, with proposed changes that could make studying here less attractive for prospective students.
The report’s findings present a striking varied picture. On one hand, it reaffirms the UK’s position as a leading global study destination, with one in seven respondents stating the UK’s high-quality education and globally recognised universities were their main motivations for studying here. For three in four students, the UK was their first-choice destination. Students are also attracted by the shorter course lengths, multicultural environments and post-study work opportunities offered through the Graduate Route.
Alongside this positive narrative, the report reveals a deeply challenging reality for many students once they arrive. Half of the international students we surveyed reported struggling with poor mental health during their time here, a statistic that will resonate with academic and professional services staff who see students day in, day out.
Living costs are also having a direct impact on student wellbeing, with monthly expenses (excluding tuition fees) averaging £1,402 and rising to £1,635 for students in London. For many, studying in the UK means short- and medium-term financial hardship and consignment to long-term debt. Over 30 per cent of postgraduate taught students rely on bank loans or credit cards. One in five worries about money all the time. Those most affected by financial stress are also more likely to report poor mental health.
Despite these pressures, current visa rules prevent international students from pursuing freelance work or self-employment, even in areas where their skills are in high demand. These restrictions are not only impractical but risk undermining both the student experience and the UK’s wider economic priorities.
Barriers to belonging
Just as concerning are the social barriers many students face. One in three international students reported they had experienced racism while in the UK. While 94% reported feeling safe and welcome on campus, that sense of belonging often didn’t extend to the wider community, with only 73% stating they feel safe and welcome in the UK more generally. These experiences can leave lasting impacts and send the wrong message to future students weighing up their study options against other international destinations.
Ultimately, these findings highlight a simple reality: the UK remains a top choice, but we cannot take that status for granted. Negative public rhetoric, which sometimes labels international students as a ‘problem’, ignores evidence that they contribute billions to our economy, volunteer in our local communities and improve our universities’ teaching and contribute to our world-leading research. International students are our peers, colleagues and future leaders. Therefore, it’s important we balance any concerns about immigration with the fact that international students are part of our future.
A roadmap for reform
This report centres students’ experience of studying here and sets out a roadmap for meaningful change. At a national level, we are calling on the Government to:
Freeze visa application fees and the Immigration Health Surcharge;
Allow greater flexibility in term-time work and permit self-employment and freelance work during study; and
Conduct a cross-departmental impact assessment on how immigration policies and public messaging affect the international student experience.
These policies are essential if we want to keep the UK globally competitive.
Shared responsibility across the sector
But change cannot come from Westminster alone. Universities and higher education sector bodies must also act. We’re asking universities to consider:
Fixing international students’ tuition fees at the point of entry;
Providing equitable access to hardship funds with clear eligibility criteria;
Delivering culturally competent mental health support that truly meets students’ needs;
Call on employers and careers services to better understand the Graduate Route and provide more tailored advice and job opportunities for international students; and
Adopt UKCISA’s #WeAreInternational Student Charter as a framework to improve the international student experience.
Working together for a welcoming UK
Our report is a call to action. We invite government ministers, MPs and Peers, and university leaders to work with their students’ unions to engage with the report’s findings and work collaboratively on solutions. The APPG for International Students and UKCISA have helped amplify the student voice; now we ask on all stakeholders to join the conversation and implement evidence-based policies.
By Huw Morris, Honorary Professor of Tertiary Education at the Institute of Education, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, and Richard Watermeyer, Professor of Education at the School of Education, University of Bristol.
Over the weekend, HEPI blogged on the possible consequences for universities and students of a new UK / EU agreement – see here.
The financial challenges currently facing UK universities, as revealed by last week’s report from the Office for Students, have focused attention among university leaders, government policy makers and media commentators, as well as higher education staff and students, on four things:
What has received less attention are variations between universities in the number of students recruited in general and international students in particular, as influenced by perceptions of institutional quality, and the wider incomes and costs of this provision. It is these things which impact on institutional margins, their surpluses and losses, and determine their longer-term financial sustainability. Most importantly, there are very big differences between universities when assessed by these measures. With a HM Treasury Spending Review and a Department for Education Higher Education White Paper expected imminently, it is these wider institutional economics and financial management issues which are the focus of this article.
Higher Education Statistics (HESA) data reveals a very mixed pattern of financial activity and performance among the 302 higher education institutions that filed accounts for 2022/23, the last year for which full records are available. Income from all sources, including tuition fees, research funds, government grants, endowments and other miscellaneous sources for these organisations, has ranged from £84,000 at the Caspian School of Academics to £2.5 billion at the University of Cambridge. Despite such wide variance, 88 institutions are responsible for over 80% of the income; within this group, the 24 members of the UK’s Russell Group of research-intensive universities account for the lion’s share (47.3% despite attracting only 25.8% of total student numbers). This mismatch between volume and income is explained by the financial margins of course provision.
The costs universities incur are similar. Salaries for academic, professional services and support staff vary, but national pay bargaining and pension arrangements mean that the differences are not great. Meanwhile, the costs of campus buildings per square metre and the unit costs of equipment are similar. So, while there are significant differences in the number of staff, size of university estate and scale of expenditure on equipment, most institutional leaders are alert to the key metrics that help to marshal these aggregate costs. The big difference in costs is in supporting research activity, with the Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) data revealing £4.6 billion a year of unfunded activity. This is a measure of the research activity undertaken by university academic staff, which is not supported by research funds and appears to be undertaken within hours nominally allocated to other things, such as teaching and administration. It is this and related figures that the Minister of State for Skills is referring to when she challenges universities to be more transparent with the information they provide on their use of public money.
At a UK level, information on this activity is not hard to find. Table C.1.2. of the OECD’s Education at a Glance reveals that the UK has a higher level of expenditure on research and development per HE student than the US, despite very much lower levels of Gross Domestic Product per capita. The proportion of unfunded research activity varies considerably between institutions and is lowest among Russell Group universities and highest among institutions that are seeking to increase activity from a lower base.
What is understood by most university leaders, but less commonly by policymakers and the media, is the vital role of operating margins in determining whether a university is financially sustainable. The role of margins is best illustrated by comparing two fictional universities.
University A is a large research-led institution that offers a wide range of courses to home and overseas students. In 2021/22, in keeping with the average Russell Group university, one third of its students were recruited from overseas and its position in the Chinese Academic World Ranking of Universities (AWRU) – and to a lesser extent the QS and THE World rankings – enabled the university to charge fees of £80,000 for its MBA programme, £60,000 per year for its Medicine degree to overseas students, and £20,000 per year for its doctoral programme. These high fees and the large volume of students applying for a limited number of places generated sufficient margins (gross surplus) to subsidise the costs of the less remunerative courses for home students in subject disciplines such as English Literature where the full-time undergraduate degree fee is £9,535 per year. This was important because the cost of these courses with the higher charging courses for international students was typically twice the £9,535 per full-time student income earned from UK students, not least because of the costs of the providing time and resources for staff research in these disciplines where there was no grant income to support this activity. These funds also provided the financial resources to underpin some of the research work of academic staff and their professional services colleagues.
The picture is less rosy at University B, a large former polytechnic, with a much lower ranking in international league tables and which is consequently less competitive in attracting Chinese international students. Instead, University B is dependent on recruiting first-generation international students; students typically from less wealthy families, unable to afford the premium fees charged at University A. At University B, the fee for an MBA is £20,000, although this is often discounted and then diluted by recruitment agency fees. The high sticker price and subsequent use of discounting is used because the advertised fee is a marker of quality and the discount fee is used to draw the student in by adjusting the amount to what they can afford and flattering them into believing the university wants them for their talents. University B does not have a Medical school and so a comparator fee is not available, but the fee for an international student on a science and technology degree is £18,000. When diluted by agents’ fees and discounted prices, this fee may drop below the costs of provision. Finally, the PhD course fees of £5,000 per year only cover half the running costs in order to attract students who will help to boost external assessments of the research undertaken by this university.
Figure 1. Course prices and costs compared
The net effect of the combination of different course prices and costs at University A and University B is that the former is making significant gross surpluses and the latter is making significant gross losses. It is important to note that this pattern of surpluses and losses is also evident in the financial performance of other university services, including, for instance, franchise courses in the UK and overseas, student accommodation, conference facilities, catering and other services. This is because the prices charged by institutions with less auspicious reputations and league table positions are lower than those of their competitors, but the costs are similar.
There are also issues associated with capital requirements (the need for funding to pay for the renewal and replacement of buildings and other assets) and risk exposure (the extent to which future activity is certain and predictable). The number of young British people wanting to study at UK universities has historically been predictable, and while there has been competition between universities, this competition has rarely led to institutional failure. Institutions may have got smaller, closed courses, and on occasion merged, but they have not been forced into insolvency. Such relative assurance may wane in future as risks rise and the need to renew and replace buildings and other capital assets grows.
We might, for instance, reasonably anticipate increased risk associated with international student recruitment where geopolitical and concomitant financial volatility impact the inward migration of students into UK universities. While we have already witnessed the inhibitory effects of visa rule changes, we can reasonably expect exchange rate fluctuations and changes to the proclivity of overseas governments to fund students studying in the UK to further increase these risks. In the medium term, a requirement to maintain a high ranking in international university league tables, as corresponding justification for high fee charges, compels sizable financial investment in buildings, equipment, and staff to maintain the research performance.
Assessment of university performance in the AWRU, QS and THE World University rankings is dependent on research performance measured by citations and, in the case of the QS and THE specifically, the reputation of the institution in the eyes of senior leaders in other universities and the opinions of employers. These ratings are influenced by past rankings and impressions of campus quality. In the long term, maintaining these league table positions is likely to become more demanding for three reasons.
First, the drive by governments in many other countries to create their own ‘world-class’ universities leads to an increase in the costs of competing and a consequent decline in margins.
Second, the growing prominence of philanthropy and alumni giving looks set to make up an increasing proportion of the funding of highly ranked institutions, though this is less of a feature in UK higher education. In the USA, for example, higher education endowment is around $800 billion and is growing by 150% per year. Endowments now account for 50% of the income of Harvard University and a very sizeable proportion of the income of other Ivy League and American research-led institutions. Of course, whether this remains the case in the face of challenges from President Trump’s new administration remains to be seen.
Finally, in the longer term (10 to 30 years), it seems reasonable to predict that developing countries in the Global South will develop their own higher education provision, and the number of young people travelling overseas to study will reduce, as is being encouraged by the China-Africa 100 University plan and similar initiatives.
The lessons of this analysis for institutional leaders and their governing bodies and councils are that they should broaden their focus to consider the operating margins on all their activities, (that is, teaching, research, accommodation, conferences, room and equipment hire) as well as the investment requirements to maintain this performance in the medium to long term. Without engaging in these types of analysis, the risks of cashflow problems will grow and the longer-term sustainability of these institutions will be jeopardised.
The lesson for governments is that they should look at the real costs of different courses and focus the funding that is made available through student loans and grants on those activities which will provide the greatest sustainable private and public benefit in the long run. This means aligning the funding with future needs, as defined by assessments in the NHS Workforce plan and the analyses by Skills England, Local Skills Improvement Plans and the UK shortage occupation list and, where this is not the case, subject areas where it seems probable that the student loans will be repaid. If institutions wish to fund programmes that fall outside these lists, then they can subsidise these courses with surpluses made from other activities. The issues outlined above also mean that the pressures facing institutions are different, and it is probably beyond the capability of the Department for Education and the Office for Students to oversee the transitions that will be needed in many of the 452 higher education institutions in the UK. To handle these changes will require additional leadership, management and governance resource and ideally greater local and regional stewardship for most institutions.
By Pete Moss, Business Development Director at Ellucian.
As resourcing pressures grow, the need for efficiencies in the UK higher education sector is well-known. Not only is every university reviewing its costs, systems and processes, but Universities UK too has set up a new Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce under Sir Nigel Carrington to accelerate solutions through collaboration.
The old adage, ‘don’t reinvent the wheel’ seems apt when thinking about shared services in UK higher education. In the USA, there is already a range of shared systems in operation in the university sector. While they differ on detail, they share the objective of saving money through strategies like systematisation, which can mean joining forces in a limited way, or full systems’ integration under one oversight. Forbes’ education writer, Derek Newton, explains in a report for education technology giant Ellucian, that ‘the benefits of system coordination or more complete integration are abundant and accessible, which helps explain the national trend in the direction of larger, more cohesive systems in higher education.’
Newton’s report, based on several weeks of interviews with US university experts and those going through change programmes, explores university systems’ consortia on the East and West coasts and everywhere in between, spanning private, non-profit and public institutions. Collaborations involve any or all of data sharing, regulation and compliance processes, course and resource management, procurement and cybersecurity. Even some competitor institutions have found ways to collaborate. The scale is eye-watering: California’s Community Colleges alone serve 2.1 million students, which is roughly the same size as the UK’s undergraduate population in its entirety.
Back in the UK, one voice which is critical to any efficiency drive is that of the Academic Registrar (AR). Most ARs lead teams at the coal face, delivering the best student experience that they can. Their insights are crucial to success both at an institutional and at a national level.
Ben Rogers, an experienced UK Academic Registrar, reflects below on the concept of collaborative models.
‘Higher education in the UK has been undergoing significant transformation. New initiatives, such as Degree Apprenticeships and Micro-credentials, have begun to reshape how institutions deliver education, particularly in terms of the skills and flexibility that they offer to more diverse and dynamic student body students as well as to employers.
Degree Apprenticeships combine academic study with workplace learning and require universities to collaborate closely with industry partners. Micro-credentials, on the other hand, offer short, targeted learning opportunities to individuals who want to upskill or reskill without committing to a full degree. Both models demand flexibility, responsiveness and innovation in educational delivery, all of which can be supported by a strong, unified IT infrastructure.
However, the current state of IT services in many UK universities is often bespoke and highly esoteric. Many institutions have their own systems which can lead to inefficiencies and inconsistent user experiences. The lack of standardisation often creates additional administrative burdens and can hinder new initiatives like the deployment of AI within their infrastructure.
This is where collaborative IT services can play a pivotal role. The concept of collaborative IT services refers to the practice of consolidating technology infrastructure, applications and support across multiple institutions.
The potential benefits of collaborative IT services for universities are significant. Firstly, collaborative IT services can provide a streamlined, consistent experience for students and staff. A centralised IT platform could allow students enrolled in Degree Apprenticeships to access both their academic materials and workplace-related resources through a single portal. Similarly, Micro-credential learners could benefit from a unified system that offers easy access to course content, assessment tools, and progress tracking, regardless of which institution or provider is delivering the learning.
Collaborative IT services can also enhance the flexibility and scalability of universities’ offerings. The rapidly changing nature of the job market, particularly in sectors such as technology, healthcare, and engineering, demands that universities are agile and can, for example, rapidly design and adopt new programmes. These systems can also help universities maximise their resources. By pooling their technology investments, universities can take advantage of economies of scale, leading to cost savings that can be reinvested. This is particularly important at a time of tightening budgets and has happened already in other parts of the world such as in the conglomerate universities in North America and Sweden.
However, the transition to new ways of working is not without its challenges. For many universities, particularly those with long-established IT systems, the process of moving to a shared infrastructure can feel like a monumental undertaking. But the challenges, whether at a technical, policy or behavioural level, can be overcome by a sensible change programme.
There are several steps that universities can take to ensure a successful transition. The first is to build strong relationships with the educational technology providers (especially providers with expertise in this area) to understand what is possible. The second is to build a strong case for change. Institutions must recognise that, to stay competitive and relevant in the face of new educational initiatives, they must embrace collaboration and innovation. Collaborative IT services offer the opportunity to enhance the student experience, streamline processes, save institutional money, and improve educational delivery. There is a strong rationale here to think about a future roadmap which brings all institutions up to speed over time.
The adoption of collaborative IT services in UK universities is a critical step towards realising the full potential of new educational initiatives. In the long run, collaborative IT services will not only improve the delivery of education but also contribute to the development of a more agile, adaptable, and future-ready higher education sector in the UK.’
While the US and UK higher education systems differ as outlined in HEPI’s report on the subject, they can still learn from one another when it comes to collaborative systematisation. Ultimately, they share the need to be efficient, agile, student and researcher-focused and ultimately the best that they can be.
Lucy Haire, Director of Partnerships at HEPI, also contributed to this piece.
Last week, I arrived back in London on a high. I’d spent five weeks in India with British colleagues promoting the benefits of U.K. higher education in seven cities. My audience was some of the most talented and entrepreneurial young people in the world, and they have plenty of choices about where to follow their dreams. But I know from my decade as Chair of the U.K. National Indian Students and Alumni Union (NISAU) that British education is an extraordinary opportunity for Indian students and their host country. It’s a win-win if ever there was one in talent, skills, investment and friendship. And all this was topped off with the announcement of the long-awaited India-UK trade deal. We were filled with possibility.
Yet as soon as I stepped off the plane, I was faced with a barrage of news stories about the UK Immigration White Paper. Would all our hard work be put at risk? Surely we would not jeopardise the Graduate Route Visa so vital to Indian graduates and hard-won by many, including Indian students and alumni.
So now the White Paper is published, what is our take on it?
The Graduate Route
First, let’s be clear. Our worst fears were averted. NISAU genuinely welcomes the Government’s decision to retain the Graduate Route and acknowledges the significant engagement that has taken place with stakeholders across the sector. NISAU has worked extensively over the past decade — and particularly intensively in the last year — with policymakers across all major political parties, including many now in government, to advocate for the continuation of this essential route.
Of course, there are still worries. Any change is worrying when witnessed from thousands of miles away. So while we are relieved that the Graduate Route has been preserved — albeit with a modestly reduced duration — we urge that its implementation, and that of the wider reforms, be approached with care, clarity, and collaboration. Getting this right will shape the UK’s standing as a top destination for global talent in the years ahead.
Why should we worry about a white paper on immigration?
But here’s the rub. Many of us feel the UK’s worries about immigration are being applied inappropriately. International students are a distinct, high-contribution, temporary category of migration. They fund their own education, power innovation in universities, sustain local economies and build enduring bilateral ties between the UK and countries around the world.
They (we) should be celebrated, not treated through the same policy lens as other forms of migration. Doing so risks undermining one of the UK’s most globally admired assets: its higher education sector.
Universities, too, are one of Britain’s most powerful strategic assets. They drive regional growth, advance global research, and help produce the high-skilled workforce the country urgently needs. Supporting them — and the students who choose them — must remain a national priority.
It’s an old argument, but worth repeating because it’s true. International students bring enormous benefits to the UK — to our high streets, workplaces, and campuses. They contribute billions to the UK economy each year, and the fees they pay help sustain vital subjects like Engineering and Medicine — courses which are essential to Britain’s long-term prosperity and global competitiveness.
International students also create employment and support domestic skills through their impact on the wider economy and the cross-subsidy they provide for UK teaching and research.
The White Paper talks about impact. But any local impact assessment or review of the domestic skills landscape should begin here — with a recognition that the presence of international students uplifts opportunities for UK nationals, not competes with them. And so we reiterate, no matter how often this request is dismissed, international students must be taken out of the net migration targets for purposes of robust policymaking and to ensure future efforts to reduce regular forms of migration don’t endanger this huge benefit.
Home thoughts from abroad
The White Paper was aimed, naturally, at a domestic political audience, but the world was listening. International communication must be extensively managed and properly executed — proactively and urgently — especially during this peak recruitment period. Panic must not be allowed to set in among current and prospective students. Immediate clarity is needed on who is affected and how.
It’s easy to forget what this takes, and GREAT campaign funding, which promotes campaigns like Study London, has already been cut by 41%. How will the great stories we should be telling about global education reach the right students in an appropriate way?
Think of the impact of our recent debates on Indian students, the largest users of the Graduate Route. For 70% of Indian students, a strong post-study work offer is the single most important factor in deciding where to study abroad. The ability to gain significant international work experience is critical. As we told the Migration Advisory Committee, work is not the same as work experience.
What we need now are proactive, student-focused communications, delivered by those who understand how to engage students effectively. NISAU has already started evidence-based communications. We stand ready to scale our role in partnership with UK stakeholders, but we must be quick. Rumours and bad actors must not be allowed to shape the UK’s story and, as Mark Twain said, a lie will fly around the whole world while the truth is getting its boots on. So we encourage a joined-up national communications effort, led by government and supported by trusted sector voices like NISAU, to ensure international students receive accurate, timely and reassuring guidance.
Skills and Immigration Alignment
Here we see real opportunity. We strongly support the Government’s move to align immigration policy with domestic skills development. This is not new to us. NISAU has long championed this principle. Our advocacy has enabled productive sectoral dialogue, including at our 2024 and 2025 national conferences, where we specifically advanced the case for better integration of immigration, training pipelines and national workforce planning. Now we look forward to working with stakeholders to ensure these reforms drive opportunity, not exclusion. International students and graduates should be part of this thinking, not passive recipients.
Tighter Regulation of Agents
We should be afraid, though, of naming and fixing problems. NISAU has spent nearly a decade calling for tighter regulation of education agents, so we are pleased to see this now reflected in government policy. We, of all people, see the cost of this being done badly.
However, implementation is everything. We urge clarity and accountability in the system, and ask for specific answers to:
What is the penalisation mechanism for misconduct by agents?
How can universities transparently share information on agent breaches?
What channels will be created for students to report agent wrongdoing safely and easily?
So we recommend the following actions to ensure transparency and integrity:
A sector-wide cap on agent commission to ensure that student interests are prioritised over volume incentives.
Mandatory publication by universities of agent appointment processes and the fees paid to each agent, after every intake.
Immediate monitoring of potential oligopolistic aggregators in the agent market, whose dominance may compromise student choice, competition, and accountability.
Agent reform must centre student welfare, market integrity, and institutional accountability.
Talent Route Enhancements
And finally, we welcome the strengthening of the Global Talent, Innovator Founder, and High Potential Individual routes. These are important to the UK’s economic ambitions, especially in strategic sectors such as AI, deep tech, and life sciences. But talent does not always arrive ready-made. It is nurtured — often from within our international student community.
International graduates are a strategic talent pool that can help meet the UK’s workforce gaps, drive innovation in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and build globally competitive businesses. Retaining them through structured graduate-to-founder pathways is not just in students’ interests — it is in Britain’s. We therefore urge:
A seamless pipeline between student, graduate, and entrepreneurship routes.
The right for students to start businesses while studying.
A bespoke international graduate start-up pathway, enabling the UK to tap into a future generation of founders, many of whom could otherwise take their innovation elsewhere.
Supporting graduate outcomes must also become a central focus across the UK higher education sector. A recent survey revealed that only 3% of international graduates found employment through their university careers service, highlighting a clear opportunity for improvement in how students are supported beyond the classroom.
This is not only a challenge for international students; domestic students, too, require more tailored and effective career support to meet the evolving demands of today’s job market.
NISAU has long championed the need for improved careers provision, including through regular engagement with universities and stakeholders, and as a central theme at both our 2024 and 2025 national conferences. At a plenary session during our 2025 conference in February, we demonstrated how the absence of structured university-led careers support has given rise to an unregulated ecosystem of social media ‘careers coaches’ — many of whom charge students significant fees, often without delivering meaningful outcomes. We recognise that many universities are already taking meaningful steps to enhance the student experience and graduate outcomes. From employability hubs to expanded industry partnerships, we welcome and encourage these efforts — and believe they can be further amplified through shared best practice, consistent investment, and greater collaboration with student-led organisations such as NISAU.
The White Paper on Immigration is challenging on skills. We call for a sector-wide paradigm shift — one that places measurable, inclusive, and industry-informed employability support at the heart of the student experience and ensures that students are not left to navigate their futures unsupported or exploited.
There is much more to say. We are concerned about a lack of clarity on graduate-level jobs and the financial impacts of all these changes on the universities that attract global students in the first place. Nor do we want to be seen only as investors. The ‘best and the brightest’ are not necessarily the ‘rich and the richest’.
We urge that any levies or associated costs placed on universities be ring-fenced for reinvestment into student support, careers, and compliance infrastructure, rather than passed on to students. Global education is changing. International students are discerning, strategic, and have options. If the UK offer weakens, the best talent will go elsewhere. The UK at the moment has a competitive advantage — that advantage must be protected through consistency, clarity, and commitment to the student experience. Let’s secure a UK that remains open, ambitious and globally competitive in higher education and in so many other ways.
Student retention remains one of the biggest challenges in higher education, with dropout rates continuing to concern institutions worldwide. For colleges and universities today, student retention in higher education has evolved into something far more holistic than it once was.
Recent data underscore the scope of the problem: roughly one in four undergraduates will leave college without completing a degree. For example, data from the Australian Department of Education shows that nearly 25% of higher education students who began in 2017 had not completed their programs by 2022. The United States reports a comparable figure, with NCES data showing first-year retention rates for full-time undergraduates averaging around 75% to 78%, indicating an attrition rate of approximately 22–25%.
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Behind these statistics are myriad reasons. Financial pressures, mental health struggles, and a lingering sense of disconnection (exacerbated by post-pandemic-era remote learning) are among the top factors driving students to leave.
This early departure is not just a personal setback for students (many of whom incur debt without obtaining a credential) but also a serious concern for universities. Every student lost represents a missed opportunity to fulfill someone’s potential and a significant cost to the institution in lost tuition and wasted recruitment efforts. It’s no surprise, then, that in 2024/25 the conversation around student success has zeroed in on retention, keeping those first-year students engaged to graduation.
Amid these challenges, colleges and universities are exploring new ways to support students beyond the classroom. Interestingly, one of the most powerful tools is quite ordinary: email. While often associated with marketing departments or alumni fundraising, email communication has proven to be an unsung hero in student retention strategies. Done right, regular digital touchpoints – from welcome emails and deadline reminders to check-ins and newsletters – can nurture a sense of belonging and keep students from “falling through the cracks.” This blog post explains how.
What Is the Meaning of Student Retention?
Student retention refers to an institution’s ability to keep students enrolled continuously, usually from one academic term to the next, until they complete their program. Retention in higher education means the same as student retention, but in the context of colleges and universities. It typically refers to the percentage of students who return each year and progress toward graduation. It’s often measured as the inverse of dropout or attrition rates and serves as a key indicator of institutional effectiveness and student satisfaction.
But while the metric is important, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Retention intersects with numerous aspects of the student experience, including:
Academic preparedness and performance
Emotional and mental well-being
Financial stability and support
Social integration and sense of belonging
Clarity around future goals and career pathways
In short, high retention signals that a school is providing the tools and environment students need to thrive. Low retention often suggests systemic gaps that need attention, whether in support services, communication, or curricular alignment.
When schools understand the deeper “why” behind retention patterns, they can begin building strategies to support students in more intentional and effective ways.
Why Do Some Students Stay and Others Leave?
Understanding college student retention means examining both barriers and motivators that influence whether a student chooses to continue or withdraw. Here are some of the most common reasons students make that decision:
1. Academic Challenges
A student who feels unprepared for their coursework or overwhelmed by expectations may quickly disengage. This can be especially true for first-generation students or those entering a competitive academic environment without sufficient support.
What helps: Proactive emails that demystify academic expectations, offer success tips, and highlight tutoring resources early in the term can make a real difference.
Example:At the vocational education level, Oconee Fall Line Technical College (OFTC) in Georgia provides a good example of communication-driven retention support. OFTC employs dedicated Retention Specialists who monitor student progress and intervene when issues arise.
Using an internal early-alert system, the college flags at-risk students (such as those with irregular attendance or missing assignments) and initiates proactive outreach. Retention staff then reach out to students, often via college email or phone, to check in and connect them with help. This includes emailing a student about available tutoring when they struggle academically, or discussing solutions if a student is considering withdrawal.
2. Lack of Community or Belonging
The feeling of being “invisible” on campus can be just as impactful as academic performance. Students who don’t feel they belong are significantly more likely to leave, particularly during their first year.
What helps: Targeted emails that invite students to join clubs, attend welcome events, or connect with peers can foster a stronger sense of connection.
Example:AAPS circulates an official newsletter to share recent happenings in the pharmaceutical field and celebrate student achievements. Students consent to having their names and photos featured in these newsletters. This practice personalizes communications and recognizes student accomplishments. This targeted content helps build a sense of community and keeps current students motivated to persist in their programs.
Source: AAPS
3. Financial Stress
Tuition fees, housing costs, and daily expenses can make the college experience financially unsustainable for many students. Some may not even know what aid or resources are available.
What helps: Email reminders about scholarships, payment plans, emergency aid, or financial counseling empower students to seek help before small issues become major obstacles.
Example: In London, City, University of London runs City Cares, a dedicated support programme for vulnerable student groups – including those estranged from family, or young adult caregivers. A key element of City Cares is consistent personal communication: staff send regular check-in emails and updates to these students to see how they are doing and offer help.
Students in the program have a designated staff contact whom they can reach by email or phone for one-to-one support. City Cares also provides practical resources like bursaries, housing assistance, and priority access to opportunities, all communicated through targeted outreach.
4. Unclear Career Direction
Students who lose sight of how their studies connect to real-world opportunities often lose motivation. Without a sense of purpose, continuing can feel pointless.
What helps: Emails that highlight internship opportunities, alumni career paths, and academic-to-career connections help students stay focused and inspired.
5. Personal and Mental Health Struggles
From stress and anxiety to family emergencies or health issues, life challenges can derail even the most motivated students.
What helps: Compassionate, well-timed emails from student services that highlight wellness resources, counseling services, and peer support groups remind students they are not alone.
Example: DCC uses digital content to address student well-being, which is crucial for retention. A blog post on the college’s site, shared via email and social media, discussed how emotional well-being impacts learning, noting that a student’s mental health influences “focus, engagement, social interactions, and overall academic success.” By openly guiding mental health, DCC shows students and parents that the college cares about more than academics.
In each of these cases, the common thread is communication. When institutions deliver the right messages at the right moments, they can provide reassurance, guidance, and pathways forward, all of which contribute to stronger retention outcomes.
How Email Marketing Supports the Entire Student Journey
Email marketing is not just about promotion. In the context of higher education, it is a structured communication framework that allows institutions to be consistently present for their students, especially when automated and segmented based on academic year, behavior, or demographic indicators.
The first year is foundational. It’s where impressions are formed, habits are developed, and questions abound.
Effective first-year campaigns include:
A welcome series that introduces campus leaders, outlines what to expect, and provides a friendly tone of engagement
Resource emails such as “How to Book Time With an Academic Advisor” or “Top Study Spots on Campus”
Surveys and wellness check-ins asking students how they’re doing and connecting them to specific supports based on their responses
Invitations to student orientation events, campus fairs, and mentorship programs
This early outreach reduces anxiety and builds a relationship of trust. When students know they can expect relevant, useful information in their inbox, they are more likely to engage with their institution in meaningful ways.
Example: John Cabot University (JCU) has made student retention a priority through robust student services and outreach. The university’s communications team uses segmented email lists to target different student groups – first-year degree seekers, study-abroad students, etc.
Upon arrival, all first-year students receive a series of orientation emails with tips on navigating campus life in Rome, introductions to support offices (counseling, academic advising), and invitations to community-building events. This email nurturing continues throughout the year. JCU’s focus on student engagement reflects its ongoing commitment to retention, with email outreach playing a key role in fostering community and support.
Sophomore and Junior Years: Momentum and Direction
The second and third years of college can be challenging. Students may experience mid-degree fatigue, uncertainty about their major, or a lack of motivation.
Email campaigns that support these years often focus on:
Important academic milestones, such as major declarations, registration deadlines, or capstone requirements
Career development, including internship announcements, networking events, or resume-building resources
Personal development opportunities, like study abroad, research assistantships, or leadership training
Wellness and retention-focused campaigns that flag disengaged students and prompt follow-up from advisors.
By continuing to communicate thoughtfully during this middle phase, institutions can ensure students maintain their momentum and receive targeted interventions before problems escalate.
Example:Southern Methodist University’s (SMU) Office of Student Success & Retention created the “Don’t Ghost SMU” initiative to re-engage students who stop attending without formally taking a leave. Each term, the university identifies “ghosters” – undergraduates who are neither enrolled for the coming term nor on an official leave of absence. The retention team then reaches out to these students three times via email and text message to ask about their plans and encourage them to re-enroll. Students who respond and decide to return are provided with one-on-one support to facilitate their re-entry.
Students approaching graduation often face a new set of stressors—final projects, job applications, and the pressure of “what comes next.” At this point, communication becomes about both support and celebration.
Senior-focused email strategies may include:
Step-by-step graduation guides that include deadlines for forms, fees, and ceremonies
Invitations to career prep workshops, mock interviews, or job search bootcamps
Highlight reels of student accomplishments or alumni stories to boost morale and confidence
Communications from deans or student leaders congratulating seniors and offering final words of encouragement
Example: NeuAge’s digital content provides career advice and skill-building tips as part of the institution’s ongoing commitment to graduates’ success. NeuAge also promotes free online workshops and webinars (often via LinkedIn and email) led by industry experts, giving current students and recent grads extra opportunities to network and upskill.
Best Practices for Retention-Focused Email Campaigns
If your institution wants to maximize the impact of email on student retention, consider the following best practices:
1. Segment Thoughtfully
A one-size-fits-all email won’t resonate across a diverse student body. Tailor content based on class year, academic discipline, or unique identifiers like international status or first-generation background. The more relevant the message, the more likely it will be read and acted on.
2. Use Automation With Intention
Automated emails shouldn’t feel robotic. Use your CRM to trigger messages based on behavior (like missed assignments or low engagement), but personalize them with the student’s name and relevant links or contacts. Automation should make the student feel seen, not surveilled.
3. Focus on Value
Each email should offer something of clear value: a helpful tip, a timely reminder, a story that inspires. Avoid sending messages just to fill space in a calendar. If the email doesn’t help the student succeed, it probably shouldn’t be sent.
Example: ENSR (a Swiss international school) maintains high transparency with parents through regular digital bulletins. The school posts and emails information on upcoming events. For instance, parents receive notices about scheduled parent-teacher meetings, ski trips, and even windsurfing camp well in advance. ENSR’s online parent info page archives these communications, noting what was sent when.
Track engagement data: open rates, click-throughs, and unsubscribes, and use this to inform future messaging. If a subject line isn’t working or a campaign doesn’t drive traffic, revise your approach. Feedback and responsiveness are key to any long-term strategy.
5. Collaborate Across Departments
Retention is not the sole responsibility of academic advising or marketing. Develop integrated campaigns that align messaging across departments, including career services, financial aid, and student wellness, so students receive cohesive, coordinated communication.
Why Email Marketing Belongs in Your Retention Strategy
Email marketing offers something uniquely powerful: it meets students where they already are, with messages that can be scheduled, targeted, and personalized at scale. When done well, it brings a human touch to institutional processes, building relationships that motivate students to stay engaged.
More than a tool for reminders or promotions, email can:
Prevent students from slipping through the cracks
Foster emotional connection and institutional pride
Reinforce the idea that success is not only expected, but supported
Ultimately, when students feel informed, included, and inspired, they are more likely to persist through challenges and complete their degrees. And that’s the heart of any successful retention strategy. Would you like to work on effective strategies for greater Higher Ed Student Retention?
Our targeted email marketing services can help you attract and enroll more students.
Discover how we can enhance your recruitment strategy today!
Frequently Asked Questions
Question: What is the meaning of student retention?
Answer: Student retention refers to an institution’s ability to keep students enrolled continuously, usually from one academic term to the next, until they complete their program. Retention in higher education means the same as student retention, but in the context of colleges and universities.
Question: What is retention in higher education?
Answer: Retention in higher education means the same as student retention, but in the context of colleges and universities. It typically refers to the percentage of students who return each year and progress toward graduation. High retention in higher ed indicates that students are staying enrolled and on track to finish their degrees.
Question: What are the reasons for student retention?
Answer: Students are more likely to be retained (stay in school) when key needs are met. Common reasons for strong student retention include effective academic support (so students don’t fall behind), a sense of belonging on campus (feeling connected to peers and the school), financial stability or aid (relieving tuition stress), and clear personal motivation or goals (seeing the value of their degree). Essentially, when students feel supported academically, socially, and financially – and they believe their education will benefit them – they are far more likely to stay through graduation.
This is the text of a speech delivered by Nick Hillman, HEPI’s Director, to the 16th Annual Student Housing Investment Conference.
Good morning. It is wonderful to be here, even if the outlook for our sector does not feel quite as rosy as when I have appeared here in the past – and, given the new migration white paper from the Home Office, not as rosy as it felt just a few hours ago.
The currency of policymaking is ‘killer facts’: those one-off striking statistics that act as ammunition for policymakers.
One example of a recent killer fact is the Office for Students’ announcement in November 2024 that ‘nearly three quarters (72 per cent) of higher education providers could be in deficit by 2025-26’ (1), which has certainly concentrated minds.
A second killer fact currently obsessing policymakers is 782,000 (2), which is the number for net inward migration to the UK in 2023 and which is driving the new crackdowns.
In what is left of my 15 minutes, I want to focus on a few more killer facts.
First, just in case you have not come across the organisation I lead before, the Higher Education Policy Institute or HEPI is the UK’s only specialist think tank for higher education and a registered charity. Our goal is to prompt evidence-based conversations about higher education policy through engagement, publications and events. We are funded by most universities throughout the UK and a limited number of corporations, including some of the bigger Purpose-Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) providers, such as Unite Students, UPP and iQ, and we are very grateful for that support.
The killer number I wish to provide about our own work is 10: that is how many new bits of research we have produced since 1 January 2025 (3). The reports we have covered include:
We have also published 112 blogs since 1 January, covering the full range of higher education issues. The three most well-read pieces so far this year are:
Conferences like this one are organised far in advance and the title I was given is ‘New Government Policy – what does it mean for the Sector?’ All I can say is: I wish I knew. I suspect the organisers thought we might have found out the answer to this question by now when they first scoped out the agenda late last year.
But the fact is, aside from a letter from the Secretary of State for Education, the Rt Hon. Bridget Phillipson, to vice-chancellors from November last year, which chastised universities for not doing more on economic growth, access, teaching quality, efficiency and civic engagement, we are still waiting for a hint on what this Government’s legacy on higher education will be. So far, we have had more higher education policy from the Home Office and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government than we have from the Department for Education.
I keep reading the administration is in its early days and needs time to find its feet, but it is now 10 months in. It took Tony Blair just two months after the 1997 election to announce the (re)introduction of tuition fees and it took the Coalition just six months after the 2010 election to announce the tripling of fees to £9,000.
We have long ago missed the boat for making significant changes to fees and funding for 2025/26 and we will soon miss the boat for making changes for 2026/27, by which point we will be halfway through this Parliament.
One of the reasons for the lack of clarity over government policy is that the shadow ministers who were responsible for the Labour Party’s approach to higher education and research in Opposition prior to the election did not end up in charge of those areas in government, so there was a new broom. This sort of sweeping out is now entirely normal. Which takes me to my next killer fact: in my 11 years leading HEPI, there have been 11 Ministers for Universities and 11 Secretaries of State for Education (4).
The biggest challenge facing institutions currently is obviously the financial one. Since the brave decision to raise the full-time undergraduate fee cap to £9,000 from 2012, inflation has been eating away at the sum so it is now less than two-thirds of what it was, in real terms: according to Mark Corver of DataHE, the current fee cap of £9,250 is actually worth just £5,714 in 2012/13 terms (5). That is the same level as when John Major felt it necessary to set up the Dearing review, with the agreement of Tony Blair in Opposition.
Mark Corver also points out in his recent fascinating LinkedIn post that an international student at a higher-tariff provider is now worth £69,000 (6) more to their university over the lifetime of a three-year course than a home student, as a result of the much higher international student fees. One possible response to that is to beat up on universities, as the Minister for Universities did earlier this week in a piece on the Telegraph website, for feathering their own nests. Another is to recognise that universities have not let their charitable status hold them back in becoming a vitally important UK export sector from which we all benefit – and also that it is our leading universities’ entrepreneurial spirit which has created the cross-subsidies that keep UK universities at the top of the international league tables, which ministers generally like to celebrate.
And despite all the accusations and denials, we should be honest that university staff would have to be super human not to take those stark numbers into account when deciding how many of their places will be reserved for people from other countries and how many for home students.
When I have spoken at this and similar events in the past, I have usually been optimistic on future student numbers. There are still some grounds for optimism in relation to both home and international students. For example, we have had decades of growth in UK higher education and the number of UK school leavers grows in each year of this decade.
We used to predict that English universities alone would need another 350,000 places for home students by 2035 (7) – and many more still if the opportunity to reach higher education were spread more equally throughout society. However, we are more pessimistic now because, while demand for higher education went up during COVID, it has slipped back in recent times.
In relation to international students, last week’s report from the Office for Students notes:
‘The reported non-UK student recruitment in 2023-24 was 15.5 per cent lower than last year’s forecast, largely because of a reduction in recruitment from January 2024 onwards [when the rules on dependants were tightened up]. This reduction is forecast to continue in 2024-25 with a small overall decrease in student numbers, meaning that entrant numbers are now projected to be 21 per cent lower than previous forecasts.’
Yesterday’s migration white paper was accompanied by a Technical Annex, which estimated the policy changes the Government has proposed will reduce incoming international students by getting on for 40,000.
In relation to home students, the Office for Students’ report notes:
‘In 2023-24, UK entrants were reported at broadly the same level as the previous year, but 10.8 per cent lower than forecast.’
When it comes to the future, the OfS chastise regulated providers for being over-ambitious and model some alternative options, which suggest ‘providers would face significant financial challenges in all scenarios.’
No one knows with complete certainty why demand is now so flat, but – when focusing in on home students – it seems to me the most likely causes are:
First, the cost-of-living affecting students, whose maintenance packages have not kept up with anything like the true cost of being a student – my killer facts on this are that 57% of full-time undergraduates now do paid work during term time (8) (according to the 2024 HEPI / Advance HE Student Academic Experience Survey) and also that, according to our calculations, students need £18k per year to live with dignity (9), which is significantly above the maximum maintenance loan – this number was calculated for second and third-years in houses of multiple occupation, but I can announced today that we are now working on a second iteration of the Student Minimum Income Standard with Technology1 and the University of Loughborough looking at first-year students in PBSA.
The second factor that I think is dampening demand is the negative rhetoric about higher education emanating from all sorts of places. In the last few days, we even have had two Labour MPs for northern seats say they are relaxed about the prospect of universities disappearing – one of them, Dan Carden, wrote in the Daily Mail that he ‘would close half our universities and turn them into vocational colleges.’ With friends like that, who needs enemies?
Before I sit down, I want to make just one more point. I was asked in the rubric for today to mention degree apprenticeships. So let me say that there is a whole lot of nonsense talked about them, especially to young people. They are amazing when they work out, such as when the apprentice knows exactly what profession they want to enter and to work in for the foreseeable future. I am proud to have a relative doing one. But despite all the promises, especially from the previous Government, degree apprenticeships barely exist for young people just out of school. Only 5% of Level 6 entrants are on degree apprenticeships (10) and the majority of them are 25 or over – just 13% were aged 18 in 2022/23. Moreover, many of those who do start a Level 6 apprenticeship do not complete the course. So for a conference like this one in 2025, degree apprenticeships remain something of a red herring.
This blog has been kindly written for HEPI by Andrew Norton, Professor of Higher Education Policy at Monash Business School, Monash University.
The thoughts of Nick Hillman, HEPI’s Director, on the levy can be read on the Research Professional News website here.
For an Australian reader the UK immigration white paper’s proposal for a levy on international student fee revenue sounds familiar. In mid-2023 just such a levy was suggested for Australia by the interim report of a major higher education policy review. Like its UK version, the idea was to reinvest levy revenue in education. While the interim report lacked white paper status, education minister Jason Clare liked the idea enough to mention it in his report launch speech.
But now the levy has vanished from the Australian policy agenda. When the Universities Accord final report was released in February 2024 the levy idea was there but postponed, shunted off until after other major funding reforms that will start in 2027 at the earliest. So far as I can find, the Minister – newly reappointed this week after Labor’s election victory on 3 May – has not mentioned the idea in public for 18 months.
So what happened? Predictably, the universities that stood to lose the most from the levy opposed it. But the bigger reason was that between mid-2023 and late 2023 the politics of international education in Australia were turned upside down. In a few months international education went from a valuable export industry to a cause of Australia’s housing shortages. International student numbers had to be cut.
As originally proposed in Australia the international student levy was not linked to migration policy. Some reduction in student demand was predicted, as levy costs were passed on through higher fees. But this was a policy side-effect, not its goal. If too many international students were deterred the levy would not raise enough money to achieve its domestic objectives. The Government needed more effective ways of bringing international student numbers back down.
Between October 2023 and July 2024 the Australian Government introduced, on my count, nine measures to block or discourage would-be international students.
Among the Government’s nine measures was one that delivered it international student revenue much more quickly than the proposed levy. The Government more than doubled student visa application fees from A$710 (~£330) to A$1,600 (~£745), claiming that the money would be spent on policies benefiting domestic students. During the 2025 election campaign Labor said it would increase visa fees again, to A$2,000 (~£930). The UK’s £524 fee looks cheap by comparison.
Higher visa fees and other migration measures had two big advantages over the once-proposed levy from the perspective of the Australian Government – legal ease and speed in delivering on migration goals. In Australia, many migration changes can be made by ministerial determination without parliamentary review. The levy required legislation. Australia’s system of sending controversial legislation to often-bruising Senate inquiries increases political costs, even when the bill ultimately passes.
What visa fees lack is the Robin Hood element of the Australian levy as proposed. In 2023 the University of Sydney alone earned 14% of all university international student fee revenue. The top six universities received more than half of the total. Levy advocates argue that these gains are built on past taxpayer subsidies and prime real estate. Profits built on these foundations can legitimately be taxed for the wider benefit of Australian higher education.
In Australia generally, and under Labor governments especially, an egalitarian political culture gives these levy arguments some resonance. But for the foreseeable future migration is a bigger issue than university funding, and visa policies a more straightforward way of bringing down international student numbers than levies. Perhaps the levy idea will return, but the government’s long silence on the subject suggests that this will not happen anytime soon.
By Charlie Tennant, Vice Principal at the London School of Science & Technology.
Higher education franchising is once more in the limelight for the wrong reasons, as many in the sector again question its benefits, the risks it poses to public funds and the use of it by niche, emerging and/or for-profit higher education providers. However, the stories and discourse miss the key factors that have allowed for abuse of the franchise model. It is gaps in higher education regulation that have led to franchising being scapegoated for what is, at its core, abuse by rogue providers that do not represent the vast majority of those engaged in franchising.
Franchising is a model through which UK universities have delivered higher education for over two decades. Internationally, this forms part of many forms of Transnational Education (TNE), that as seen in Universities UK International (UUKi)’s Scale of UK Higher Education Transnational Education reports, continues to grow in scale. Locally, providers have adopted the franchise model since the mid-2000s, although since then, the market for many of those providers has changed from international students to local students. This change meant the number of students at these providers who were eligible for Student Loans Company (SLC) funding has grown. The model allows institutions that have found new approaches, differentiated courses, or cold spots of higher education to develop and expand their provision, with a significant portion of them hoping to one day gain their own Degree Awarding Powers (DAPs).
However, the regulation of domestic franchise provision has not been as robust as it could be. The onus has rightly been put on the universities that are franchising their courses to ensure academic quality and standards of the franchise delivery, although there is currently no direct regulation of higher education franchise providers. Therefore, while some blame can be apportioned to universities engaged in franchising, it can be argued that the Department for Education (DfE) and policymakers’ approach to regulating higher education franchises has led to gaps open to abuse by rogue providers. Furthermore, routes for franchise providers to gain DAPs have been prolonged and made complex by the pause in processing of registration applications by the Office for Students (OfS). Now, the abuse of SLC funding by particular providers of the franchise model, reported by the Sunday Times in an article on 22nd March 2025 and in several articles since then, has brought the reputation of all franchise providers into disrepute, and connected the abuse to use of recruitment agents and the settled Romanian population in the UK.
In a January 2025 press release for their consultation on franchise provision regulations, the Government outlined the benefits of franchising when done right, and its intention to crack down on rogue higher education providers. Professor Nick Braisby’s HEPI blog published in response to the consultation, rightly welcomes the Government’s new proposals, but asks for the sector to remain critical. This blog therefore proposes three ways in which to ensure the Government and the OfS achieve what they hope to through the crackdown.
Firstly, the DfE, policymakers and the OfS need to enable quicker routes for franchise providers to join the regulator’s Register. This will allow greater scrutiny at an earlier stage in the lifecycle of an emerging higher education provider (which make up the majority of providers delivering franchised courses) and introduce a focus on their governance structures. Since the set-up of the OfS Register, providers have experienced long lead times for joining the Register, and on top of this, from December 2024, the regulator paused applications for the Register, DAPs and changes of registration category, thus exacerbating the issue of missing opportunities to directly regulate more franchise providers. This is counterintuitive given the OfS’s remarks around the risks associated with an over-reliance by both universities and franchise providers on partnership provision in their Insight Brief regarding subcontractual arrangements in higher education published just two months prior to the pause. The OfS’ Register of providers has the potential to be a great tool for transparency, but the current lead times and design of the approach lead to gaps in regulation that can be exploited by rogue providers.
Secondly, instead of considering an outright ban, the DfE should implement a robust quality framework for domestic student recruitment agents. As a blueprint, they should draw from the established Agent Quality Framework (AQF) developed by the British Council, Universities UK International (UUKi), and the UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA). As with international student recruitment, the unregulated use of agents for domestic recruitment presents significant risks. By adopting a structured quality framework, the DfE and OfS can mitigate these risks and foster greater transparency and accountability. Agents, when operating under clear ethical guidelines and quality standards, can play a crucial role in widening participation, particularly by reaching communities historically underserved by traditional university outreach, for example, the UK’s settled Romanian population. A tailored framework can help to ensure transparency, effective governance and the establishment of professional standards of agents.
Finally, the DfE, policymakers and the OfS need to engage more with franchise providers and their university partners jointly. So far, engagements have been disjointed, with either a university or one of their partner franchise providers engaged separately. This creates barriers to collaboration, which would otherwise aid in the pursuit of greater transparency, oversight and the maintenance of academic quality and standards. Bringing both universities and franchise providers together when engaging will enable the Government to find ways to both demonstrate the benefits of franchise provision, as well as develop regulatory approaches and guidance collaboratively with stakeholders. This joint engagement with universities and their partner franchise provider could pave the early steps towards a sector-wide code of practice, an idea discussed in HEPI and Buckinghamshire New University’s Debate Paper on franchising. This could then sit alongside collaboratively developed regulations that would ensure rogue providers cannot abuse regulatory gaps. It will also help to establish a more balanced burden of regulation between universities and their franchise provider partners, and safeguard the reputation of franchise provision.
Ultimately, effective regulation of the broader higher education student journey, streamlined registration, and collaborative engagement are crucial. By addressing these systemic gaps and promoting transparency, the policymakers, DfE, OfS, and the higher education sector can restore faith in franchising and ensure its legitimate benefits are realised.
The higher education sector had high hopes of a new government last July. Early messaging from ministers suggested that they were justified. The Guardian quoted Peter Kyle, the Science Secretary, declaring an ‘end to the war on universities’. Speaking to the Commons in September 2024, the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said that ‘the last Government ..use[d] our world-leading sector as a political football, talking down institutions and watching on as the situation became…desperate. I [want to]…return universities to being the engines of growth and opportunity‘. In November, she announced a rise – albeit for just one year in the first instance – in the undergraduate tuition fee, with the prospect of alleviating pressure on higher education budgets.
Ten months on, the hopes look tarnished as financial, political and policy challenges mount. The scale of the higher education funding challenge is deepening, it seems, by the week. The OfS has reported that four in ten universities will report a deficit this year. Restructuring programmes are underway in scores of universities, with some institutions on their second, third or even fourth round of savings. The post-study graduate visa, an important lifeline for international student recruitment, appears to be under threat.
Policy direction appears to be unclear. The English higher education sector is still largely shaped by the coalition government’s policy decisions between 2010 and 2015. Its key design principles include uncapped student demand since number controls were abolished in 2013, assumed cross-subsidies across and between activity streams allowing for institutional flexibility, access to private capital markets since HEFCE capital funding was removed in 2011, diverse missions but largely homogenous delivery models based around traditional terms and full-time, three-year undergraduate provision, and jealously protected institutional autonomy. Familiar though these principles are in higher education policy, some are in truth relatively recent, and are creating tensions between what the nation wants from its university system, what universities can offer and what the government and others are willing to pay for.
Moreover, the sector we have in 2025 is not the sector which the 2017 Higher Education and Reform Act (HERA) envisaged: HERA was expected to significantly re-shape the sector. The government’s impact assessment of HERA suggested that there would be in the order of 800 HE providers by the mid-2020s. This did not happen, though the impact of private capital, often channelled through established institutions and now rapidly growing for-profit providers, should not be underestimated as a longer-term transformative force in the sector.
We are expecting both a three-year comprehensive spending review and a post-16 White Paper in a couple of months’ time. In my 2024 HEPI paper, ’Four Futures’, I sketched out possible scenarios for a sector facing intense challenges. The near-frozen undergraduate fee was reducing the unit of resource for undergraduate teaching as costs rose. Undergraduate demand seemed to be softening amongst (especially) disadvantaged eighteen-year-olds. International student demand remains volatile and subject to political change in visa regulations. The structural deficit on research funding deepened. ‘Four Futures’ outlined four scenarios, summarised in Table 1.
Of course, we all want a mixture of cost control, thriving universities, regional growth and research excellence, but it is difficult to have all of them. Governments and universities set priorities based on limited resources, so there are choices to be made and trade-offs to be confronted for both policymakers and institutional leaders.
Government needs to make decisions about universities in the context of competing and changing policy imperatives. It needs to balance restoring government finances, allocating resources to other needy sectors, securing economic growth, and, more obviously important than a year ago, protecting sovereign intellectual property assets and growing defence-related R&D. The Secretary of State’s letter to Vice-Chancellors in the Autumn identified growth, engagement with place, teaching excellence, widening participation and securing efficiencies, but did not unpick the tensions between them. That depends on articulating a stronger vision for higher education given the Government’s priorities and resources and the economic challenges facing institutions, and it is a task for the forthcoming White Paper.
But there are urgent choices too for institutions, and those need to be made quickly in many universities. Institutional and sector efficiencies are vital, and a key theme of the UUK Carrington Review, but they need to be considered in the light of sustainable operating models for both academic delivery and professional services. Institutions need a clearly articulated value proposition, communicated strongly and effectively and capable of driving the operating model. In the past, too many universities have tried to do too many things – and with resources scarce, the choices cannot be ducked. That means there is a consideration which links the choices facing government and those facing individual institutions. If a core strength of the English system lies in its diversity and its distributed excellence, individual institutions need to think about their place in, and responsibilities to, the wider HE system. For a sector characterised by intense competition, that is a profound cultural shift, notwithstanding the economic and legal challenges of collaboration.
The higher education sector now is not the sector we have always had, and therefore it won’t be the sector we always have. How the sector collectively, and institutions individually, confront choices is a test for policymakers and institutional leaders.
By Stephanie Marshall, Vice Principal (Education), Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of the forthcoming Strategic Leadership of Change in Higher Education (3rd edition, Routledge).
Warner Bros., Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Disney, Deloitte, Amazon, and Google – these are just some of the companies that have scaled back their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives or changed their language around such programs since Trump’s inauguration. This list, as we know, continues to grow more than three months into his administration. Meanwhile, universities around the world have anxiously watched the US Department of Education threaten to withdraw funding from institutions that consider race in their decision-making, with institutions like Columbia University under the axe.
Universities in the UK are not immune to the ideological shifts across the Atlantic. The Daily Mail, for example, has already drawn attention to DEI spending in UK higher education, with attention-grabbing headlines such as: ‘Spending on university campus diversity staff skyrockets to massive £28 million a year – with one boss on an eye-watering six-figure sum’.
Advocates of DEI have argued against such sentiments, emphasising that ethnic minorities are not the only ones to benefit from equitable and fair workplace policies and practices. The advantages of inclusion spread to first-generation learners, individuals with disabilities and others from underrepresented backgrounds. Proponents also remind us that social justice has a compelling business case. Yet even where a business case for DEI exists, it appears that ideological pressures are beginning to outweigh even commercial logic, let alone basic fairness.
The bigger picture
This pushback against DEI does not occur in isolation. It is part of a broader challenge to the values of openness, inclusion and global cooperation that have long underpinned and defined higher education. And as we have seen in the last few years in the UK, international students have become part of this debate.
The pressing question for university leadership is whether these trends will gain further traction in the UK. If so, what implications will they hold for the future of UK higher education – a sector that has prided itself on the collective efforts and advances made towards a more representative, inclusive offer?
‘The UK is not the US. That is a critical starting point for any approach we have’, Professor Tim Soutphommasane, Chief Diversity Officer at the University of Oxford, recently pointed out at a seminar hosted by the Higher Education Policy Institute.
This distinction is important, yet ongoing political developments suggest that the UK remains susceptible to US influence while facing similar pressures against openness from within its own borders. So, what are some of the risks and opportunities?
On the one hand, growing anti-DEI and anti-immigration sentiment poses a shared risk to universities worldwide.
Leading study destinations such as the US, Canada, the UK and Australia often have an interdependent, shared approach to international student policy. To elaborate, in 2021 – four years ago – fears over declining international student numbers led the UK and Canada to implement measures that attracted more applicants, ultimately allowing them to surpass pre-pandemic enrolment figures. Meanwhile, Australia struggled and lagged behind until it lifted its cap on working hours, offered visa refunds and extended post-study work permits. (I discuss these trends and their implications in greater detail in my forthcoming book, Strategic Leadership of Change in Higher Education, 3rd edition, Taylor & Francis.)
Roll forward four years, and we can see that restrictive policies in one country create lucrative opportunities for others.
With Australia now tightening visa rules, Canada reducing student permits, and the US signalling an ‘immigration crackdown’, the UK government has a unique opportunity – perhaps even a responsibility – to assert its stance on cross-border education and research while strengthening its position as a preferred destination. The British Council’s Annual Five Trends to Watch 2025 report highlights how Trump’s first term (2017-21) saw consecutive declines in international student enrolment in US universities, and it would come as no surprise to anyone if enrolment were to drop again during his second term in office.
Way forward
As global uncertainties persist, it is more important than ever for the UK to demonstrate its commitment to diversity and inclusivity, both domestically and internationally. From an economic perspective, and contrary to popular rhetoric, it is worth remembering, as Dr. Gavan Conlon of London School of Economics stated:,
International students contribute nearly ten times more to the economy than they take out, boosting both local and national economic well-being.
Education is indeed one of the UK’s greatest exports.
But continuing to attract international students is not just a pragmatic move for financial sustainability – it is also a powerful statement of the values of collaboration, inclusivity, and global engagement that define UK higher education. Moreover, if there are financial gains brought by international students, they must be utilised to strengthen our ability to protect institutional autonomy and uphold our principles in these difficult times. As culture wars intensify, UK universities must stand firm as internationally highly respected centres of partnership and exchange.