Category: International

  • Budget 2025 for universities and students

    Budget 2025 for universities and students

    There’s not generally a lot for higher education in the chancellor of the exchequer’s annual budget statement – but this year marks an exception.

    We were expecting further details of two policies first announced earlier this year – a levy on international student fee income, and the promised return of maintenance grants for students from deprived backgrounds studying priority subjects.

    Though the return of grants (even in a very limited form) was welcomed by students and the sector, the levy has been the focus of sustained lobbying from providers struggling to balance their books with the one area of income that has sustainably grown over recent years.

    The budget also provides a few other unwelcome surprises – thresholds and interest rates have been frozen for plan 2 loan repayments (those made by the majority of recent graduates) until 2029-30, meaning that graduates will pay more. A tweak to pension salary sacrifices may make it even more expensive for some providers to employ staff. And the looming threat of a mammoth schools SEND debt being covered by departmental expenditure means that every area of education spending is likely to face pressure from 2027-28.

    But it is the fee uplift for the next two years that is likely to get most attention.

    Fee uplift

    The higher rate for tuition fee loan caps will rise, as announced, in both of the next two academic years – to £9,790 a year in 2026-27 and up to £10,050 for 2027-28, with other statutory caps (including for classroom-based foundation years) rising in lockstep. These are expected to be the final two rises that apply to all providers – primary legislation will be laid that means future fee cap rises will be linked to the Office for Students’ revised teaching excellence framework.

    It should also be noted that these are per year amounts, not the per credit amounts that the (as-yet unenacted) Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Act allows the government to set – this is interesting as the entire funding system is due to move to a per credit basis (to allow for the Lifelong Learning Entitlement’s modular approach to study) from 2026.

    While this decision has been widely trailed by the minister as evidence of her department addressing the financial problems faced by universities, it should be noted that both increases are (as usual) by OBR projections of interest rates which may differ from the actual interest rates. The rise of what is widely seen as the default tuition fee to north of £10,000 in 2027-28 is likely to trigger widespread commentary – if you believe the stories from the coalition years the original £9,000 figure was chosen precisely to avoid being above what was seen as a psychologically important £10,000 sticker price.

    Here’s how that breaks down for all of the common fee caps:

    Fee caps 2025-26 2026-27 2027-28
    With TEF and APP (FT) £9,535 £9,790 £10,050
    With TEF and APP (PT) £7,145 £7,335 £7,530
    With TEF and APP (Accel) £11,440 £11,750 £12,060
    With APP only (FT) £9,275 £9,525 £9,780
    With TEF only (FT £6,355 £6,525 £6,695
    With neither TEF nor APP (FT) £6,185 £6,350 £6,520

    International student levy

    We were expecting details of the international fee levy first announced in the immigration white paper – and these arrived via a consultation with a closing date of 18 February 2026.

    The proposal is that from August 2028, the levy on international student fee income has been set at a flat rate of £925 per student (rising by inflation in following years), with the first 220 students entirely exempt. It is estimated that this will generate around £445m in 2028-29, equivalent to around 4.5 per cent of total international fee income across the sector. However DfE estimates that the sector would lose £270m for that year (equivalent to around 3 per cent of international fee income), suggesting that more than half of the cost of the levy would be passed on to students, given that the same estimates suggest 14,000 less students would come to the UK to study in that year.

    Importantly, “international students” are defined as those who are registered for study during the year in question (excepting those who leave during the contractually protected first two weeks of study). Transnational provision, and provision at further education colleges below level 3, will not be in scope. And the system will be run by the Office for Students – there’s even an option to pay the levy quarterly by direct debit.

    The impact analysis notes that the levy will – unsurprisingly – reduce the ability of the sector to cross subsidise domestic teaching or research from international fee, but we are reminded that this is before accounting for any reinvestment of the levy in the sector, and before accounting for the rise in domestic tuition fees (though as fee rises are linked, nominally at least, to inflation that last one is a little disingenuous.

    The effect of a flat fee, as opposed to the blanket 6 per cent of international fee income levy first proposed in the annex to the immigration white paper, is to decrease the impact on providers who are able to charge higher fees per student. The “free” 220 students will keep many smaller specialist providers out of the levy entirely, meaning that proportionally more costs will fall on providers who attract large numbers of international students with lower fees.

     

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    While the University of Suffolk will lose nearly 14 per cent of international fee income to the levy(on 750 students) and the University of Huddersfield will lose 9.3 per cent, the University of Cambridge will lose just 2.69 per cent (on 7,315 students). The practical impact of the proposal will be that providers that are more likely to be drawing substantial parts of their operating income from international fees (and those more likely to be enrolling students with disadvantaged backgrounds) will be hit hardest. The charts in this article will help you compare this outcome with proportional models like the initial 6 per cent proposal.

    We are not given a rationale for this change of approach, but it is fair to assume an active policy decision – to minimise the impact on those that make the most from international fees – based on soft power and international standing. It is a form of specialisation, perhaps.

    Maintenance grants

    Pretty much confirming that the policy on maintenance loans was back-of-a-fag-packet for Conference stuff, the documents collectively hide how much of the levy will be spent on the new maintenance grants. What we do know is that they’re coming in 2028-29, will be available to both new students and those already studying, and will be paid on top of maintenance loans.

    The amounts will be means-tested – students from households earning at or below £25,000 will get the maximum (£1,000 in years one and two, £750 from year three onwards), tapering to £500/£375 for those with household incomes up to £30,000. The higher amounts in early years are designed to help with “access and initial progression”, but in reality it’s a cliff edge that hits students from care-experienced backgrounds particularly hard.

    That doesn’t give us a total – grants will only be available for certain subjects aligned with the government’s economic priorities and Industrial Strategy. How many students there are left on a residual household income of 25k or less by 2018 is also not outlined. The eligible subject list hasn’t been confirmed – it’ll be informed by Skills England’s work on skills needs and may align with LLE priority funding categories. And students will need to be studying at least 120 credits per year (or full-time under current arrangements) to be eligible.

    Maintenance loans

    As (maximum) UG fees rise by projected inflation, so does maximum maintenance (and the PG loan schemes) by the OBR projection for Q1 2027 of 2.7 per cent. Of course the OBR has been wrong before, and may be wrong again – this year’s 3.1 per cent increase (based on Q1 2026) now shows up as 4.1 per cent in revised OBR forecasts, an error that nobody goes on to fix and so compounds in its impact over time.

    In addition, there’s no sign of that parental (residual household) income threshold for parents chipping in changing either – and now that the minimum wage is firmly over £25,000, will almost certainly mean a collapse off a cliff in the number of students able to access the maximum. This year DfE’s own estimates reckon that a maximum loan increase of 3.1 per cent will only result in an average loan increase of 2.6 per cent – expect (much) more of that by the end of the Parliament.

    While we’re on parental contributions, buried in the documents is another nasty sting. Right now, if you have two kids at university at the same time, the system recognises that your money has to stretch, and works out a “parental contribution” based on your household income, then splits that between the two students. So if the calculation says “this family can afford to put in £2,000”, and you have two undergrads, the system assumes roughly £1,000 per child – and each student’s maintenance loan is a bit higher to reflect that you are not magically doubling your contribution.

    It turns out that the LLE change will mean the SLC stops doing that split for people on the new LLE-style maintenance – each young person’s maintenance will be worked out on the household income as if they were the only one studying. So using the same example, the system would effectively assume you can contribute £2,000 to Child A and £2,000 to Child B. It’s “simpler” because in a modular, on-off, part-time LLE world the SLC will no longer have to track who else in the family is studying and constantly recalculate the split.

    But for a “traditional” family with two young full-time undergrads at the same time, it quietly removes a small protection you currently get when more than one child is in higher education.

    Plan 2 threshold freeze

    You might remember, back in the Summer of 2023, when Bridget Phillipson was touring the studios to declare that graduates will pay less under a Labour government:

    Reworking the present system gives scope for a month-on-month tax cut for graduates, putting money back in people’s pockets when they most need it. For young graduates this will give them breathing space at the start of their working lives and as they bring up families. This is a choice that the Tories could be making now to deliver a better, fairer system for our graduates and for our universities…. Labour will not be increasing government spending on this.

    There was never a detailed explanation of how that magic trick would be pulled off – although it was likely to have been based on London Economics’ stepped repayment modelling, which depended in part on the reintroduction of real interest rates post-graduation (between 0 per cent and 2 per cent) for graduates with earnings between £27,571 and £57,570.

    Either way – at least for Plan 2 borrowers – the budget very much breaks that pledge. For anyone who started a degree between 2012 and 2022, the repayment threshold will be frozen at £29,385 in cash terms for three years from April 2027. Instead of that threshold rising with prices or earnings, it just sits there while wages (hopefully) go up – which means more graduates crossing the line into repayment sooner, and those already repaying handing over a bigger slice of their real income than they would have done otherwise.

    It’s very much a stealth extra tax on graduates layered on top of already frozen income tax and National Insurance thresholds, and it shifts (even) more of the cost of the system away from the state and onto a cohort who have already endured one round of threshold suppression under Michelle Donelan’s “fairer sharing of the burden” reforms, have watched the “deal” they signed up to being repeatedly tweaked after the fact, and had been led to expect a “month-on-month tax cut” rather than another quiet squeeze.

    The Treasury’s justification consciously echoes Donelan’s line about graduate earnings premiums and fairness to non-graduates, but in practice this looks less like a principled reset of student finance and more like a return to the same playbook – using Plan 2 borrowers as a handy, captive tax base until the reality shows up on their payslips. For Reeves, it generates £285m in 2025-26, a big £5,915m “gain” in 2026-27 (that’s mainly the accounting revaluation of the loan book, not cash), then £255m in 2027-28, £290m in 2028-29, £355m in 2029-30 and £380m in 2030-31.

    Wider measures for students

    Rising National Living Wage and youth rates mean a substantial chunk of full-time students working in hospitality, retail and care will see higher hourly pay, although given the volume of jobs lost in these sectors in recent years (with similar warnings from those industries overnight), they’ll need to find a job first.

    The creation of a “Fair Work Agency” with explicit focus on enforcement in “high-risk” sectors is also, if successful, is likely to impact on international student incomes in a way that few like to talk about, but pretty much everybody knows (working more than 20 hours a week, cash in hand, with no rights).

    Extending the £3 bus fare cap will help, holding prescription charges steady all keep day-to-day pressure in shared student houses and commuter budgets a little lower than it would otherwise be, and taking around £150 off the average energy bill by shifting decarbonisation costs off bills and onto general spending won’t matter much given “all-inclusive” bills in halls and HMOs.

    Free emergency contraception in pharmacies closes an obvious gap in sexual health provision for a very student-heavy age group, while the cap on ticket resale prices cuts straight across the live events market some students use.

    Add all the measures up, and you might expect student poverty to show up in the annual release of the distributional impact on households analysis that gets produced to accompany budget day – but alas it remains the case that tuition fee loans show up as household income in the DWP’s Households below average income (HBAI) statistics, which means that the increase in maximum fees will see an HMO with 5 students in it looking 50k better off than they really are.

    Other bits

    The chancellor capped national insurance contribution exemptions for salary sacrifice into pensions at £2,000 – employees who pay more than this amount each year into pensions will need to account for employer national insurance contributions on additional amounts. A note from sector employers association UCEA before the budget reminded the Treasury that this approach is widely used by universities, and calculated that a cap could cost individual USS institutions an additional £1-3m each year with a total cost to the sector north of £50m – and there are going to be impacts relating to other pension schemes too.

    One of the biggest current issues with the wider education budget, and one that has pushed many local councils towards bankruptcy, is the rapidly rising cost of school provision and other support for pupils with special educational needs (SEND). Currently the costs of this provision are nominally covered by local councils, but are subject to a statutory override which means that the sums involved are not included within council deficit calculations. The budget confirms the June announcement that this arrangement will end from 2027-28, with costs (due to hit around £5bn) covered from that point within departmental expenditure limits.

    This has a clear impact on other areas of government spending, and if the Department for Education is to be made responsible it is likely that at least some of this funding will have to be found via cuts to other budgets, including for tertiary education.

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  • Making higher education work for international student carers

    Making higher education work for international student carers

    Student carers – those juggling unpaid caring for family or friends, as well as student parents – can often feel invisible to their higher education provider. Their needs cut across multiple areas, including attendance, assessment, finances and mental health, with many (quietly) facing the complicated arithmetic of balancing time, money and labour.

    It is not only UK-domiciled students that face these challenges. Little addressed in the academic literature, international student carers face challenges both similar to and distinct from those experienced by UK home students.

    Similar and distinct

    Student carers of all nationalities describe disrupted attendance when emergencies arise, lost concentration, as well as difficult trade-offs between paid work and academic engagement.

    Uncertainty amplifies these pressures: some students simply choose not to disclose information about their caregiving because of fear of stigma; others do not trust staff to handle with care what is a personal and sensitive dimension of their lives; still others do not know where to seek support.

    Identifying carers, therefore, is a necessary first step to providing support. However, it is not always straightforward – institutions commonly lack routine, reliable data on caring status, making targeted support ad hoc rather than systemic.

    Yet international student carers face additional, distinctive barriers that make the same problems harder to resolve. Visa rules are an illustrative example. These restrict when dependants can accompany students and cap the number of hours most international students can work during term-time.

    For instance, students on degree-level courses can generally work up to 20 hours per week, while those on foundation and pre-sessional English routes are limited to ten hours. Self-employment is not permitted, and internships or placements must be approved by the sponsor.

    For those caring for family overseas, emotional load and logistical complexity are high: families divide care across borders, rely on remittances, and use digital tools to coordinate support at distance. For those caring for dependants present in the UK, the absence of recourse to public funds combined with the limitations set on working hours further intensify financial challenges. These are not abstract constraints – students I have spoken to flagged the restriction on working hours as a core stressor that diverted their attention from study.

    Making it work

    The UK policy context matters as it shapes what universities can and cannot do. While recent changes have tightened dependant rules for international students, universities still retain a significant degree of agency. These include proactive identification of student carers, flexible design of learning and assessment, targeted financial and career advice, as well as culturally sensitive outreach.

    What does this look like in practice? First, it is time that institutions recognise that disclosure is not a single moment, but a process requiring trust. Rather than a “pray-and-hope” approach where students are asked to declare their caring status on a single form, universities should try to normalise conversations across the student lifecycle: in admissions, enrolment, welcome activities, academic tutorials and welfare checks. Staff training plays an important role here. Academic and professional services teams need concise guidance on how to spot signs of caring, how to ask sensitively, and how to go about making reasonable adjustments, be that through a Carer Passport or other means. This helps reduce the pressure on student carers to self-advocate.

    Next, administrative burden needs to be reduced as much as possible – student carers are often acutely time poor. Tools like the just mentioned Carer Passport can help here by making informal agreements more formal and removing the need (and burden) of repeated disclosure.

    Reasonable adjustments might include extended deadlines, alternative attendance arrangements, priority access to recorded lectures or seminar times. The design of such initiatives should not blindside carers, they should be involved in the development process. This co-production may also help tackle the trust deficit.

    Third, financial and careers support must be tailored to visa realities. Generic money advice may be helpful, but is likely insufficient for international student carers’ needs, given the restrictions on working hours and access to benefits. One support route, if budgets allow, could be targeted bursaries, hardship funding that consider caring costs, and career advice that specifically addresses visa limits and limits of working hours. Partnerships with external funds and local community organisations could also be beneficial.

    And finally, community can provide another support mechanism. Peer networks, carers’ groups and targeted social spaces allow student carers, particularly international ones who may be far from family networks, to share coping strategies and practical tips. These groups also provide powerful evidence to inform policy change within universities: student testimony should feed directly into institutional planning, not sit in a file.

    The effort required

    None of the above requires revolutionary or even radical institutional reinvention – though it does demand time and allocation of resources. That said, I would contend that the efforts are worth it for a couple of reasons.

    The first is that supporting international student carers is simply a matter of fairness. Secondly, but of equal importance, universities that make study feasible for (international) student carers will stand a better chance of attracting and retaining talent that might otherwise never apply or withdraw.

    The absence of international student carers means a loss of enriching perspectives in the classroom – and conversely their presence entails a stronger evidence base from which to build inclusive practice.

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  • The surprising pragmatism of Reform UK voters towards international education

    The surprising pragmatism of Reform UK voters towards international education

    In polls and focus groups across the country, Reform voters have been singing from the same hymn sheet. They share a deep sense of national and local decline. They view the country through a lens of crumbling high streets, strained public services, and an economy seemingly trapped in a doom loop.

    In this environment, they have developed a corrosive scepticism towards the modern university model, judging it a failed investment that saddles their children with debt for a degree that is only good for getting through graduate recruiters’ first sift of CVs. They demand contraction, utility, and accountability for a system they believe serves neither the student nor the economy.

    To delve into these views, Public First conducted focus groups with those who currently intend to vote Reform UK in university towns in England. This revealed a surprising chink of light in an otherwise very gloomy outlook on universities: focus group participants were broadly very positive about international students.

    Foreign subsidy as necessary evil

    This needs to come with a heavy caveat: when we polled Reform voters, we found that 63 per cent agree that the UK government should restrict international student numbers in order to cut net migration. Cutting net migration remains a top priority for these voters, and for many, it appears that this should be done by any means necessary.

    However, when confronted with the economics, Reform voters we have spoken to reveal a sophisticated and transactional view of international student recruitment. For them, students from overseas are not a problem to be solved, but a “great business.”

    As polling has consistently demonstrated, the typical Reform voter is highly sceptical of mass, unmanaged immigration. Yet, when asked about foreign students, the response of those who live in university towns was not hostility, but economic pragmatism.

    They see international recruitment as a clear, contained, and mutually beneficial transaction: the UK offers a world-class education (a product) and, in return, receives a higher rate of tuition fee (a profitable revenue stream). The students come to study, they contribute economically, and then – the crucial expectation – they either contribute to the UK economy or they leave.

    This isn’t merely tolerance; it’s a qualified acceptance rooted in financial necessity. In these voters’ minds, these lucrative international fees act as the foreign subsidy that keeps the entire system afloat. As one participant noted, “If universities can’t stay open because they haven’t got any foreign students, then that is a detriment to UK students.” The implication is clear: to maintain a domestic higher education offering, the international revenue stream must be protected.

    The conditions for goodwill

    This surprising goodwill, however, is fragile and rests on extremely strict conditions. Voters grant the sector a licence to recruit internationally only as long as two core boundaries are strictly maintained.

    No back doors: The arrangement must remain a transactional exchange, not a migration loophole. Support instantly evaporates when student visas are perceived as a “back door” into the country, particularly when students bring dependents or “disappear” into the country during the degree programme, or after graduation. The transaction is valid only if the purpose is learning, not permanent residency. “If you’re coming to learn, then you come to learn. You don’t bring your family, your dog, your cat and your goldfish,” argued one voter.

    No crowding out: Crucially, if voters feel that their children are being denied places in favour of higher-paying overseas customers, the economic argument collapses under the weight of perceived injustice.

    Despite the conditional acceptance of international fees, the core challenge for universities remains their perceived lack of utility to their students, and in their local communities. While Reform voters are pragmatic about international revenue streams, they are profoundly sceptical about the value of many domestic degrees that this income subsidises, and they see very little economic spillover in their towns: “…the areas outside of the city centre, I can’t see what benefit [universities] have.”

    The sector cannot win over these key voters – and thus cannot escape the threat of cuts from political parties who want their support – by simply defending the status quo. Making the case to this influential group of voters requires clearly showing how international students are paying for local resources and subsidising domestic places, while demonstrating robust checks that ensure the system is not abused.

    More widely, universities need to move beyond abstract civic rhetoric and show tangible value, taking concerted action to ensure and evidence that all degree courses benefit the student, the community and/or the country at large.

    The support for international students presents a unique opportunity. It is the one pillar of the current HE model that Reform voters’ economic logic allows them to broadly accept, even if this acceptance is currently secondary to the desire to cut net migration.

    The sector must leverage this pragmatic lifeline to pave the way to a secure future, while not telling but showing voters that their domestic offering is part of the solution to the UK’s economic doom loop.

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  • A university system reliant on international students has an obligation to understand them

    A university system reliant on international students has an obligation to understand them

    It is becoming difficult to ignore potential tension between the internationalisation of higher education and plans to cut net migration. Recent UK government policies, such as the reduction of the graduate visa from two years to 18 months, could have severe consequences for universities in Scotland.

    Scottish government funding per home student has not kept pace with inflation. To compensate for the subsequent gap in resources, universities have become more dependent on international enrolments.

    In addition, Scotland faces specific demographic challenges. By 2075, the number of working aged Scots is predicted to fall by 14.7 per cent and, without migration, the population would be in decline. Encouraging young people to remain after graduation could help to balance the ageing population. However, although the Scottish government favours a more generous post-study visa route, this is not supported by Westminster.

    Ability to adjust

    Rhetoric around internationalisation tends to emphasise positive factors such as increased diversity and cross-cultural exchange. Yet, as an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) practitioner, I have long been concerned that learners from diverse linguistic backgrounds are often viewed through a lens of deficiency. There is also a risk that their own needs will be overlooked in the midst of political and economic debate.

    To better understand how students’ sense of identity is affected by moving into new educational and social settings, I carried out interview-based research at a Scottish university. Like other “prestigious” institutions, it attracts a large number of applicants from abroad. In particular, some taught master’s degrees (such as those in the field of language education) are dominated by Chinese nationals. Indeed, when recruiting postgraduate interviewees, I was not surprised when only two (out of 11) came from other countries (Thailand and Japan).

    My analysis of data revealed typical reasons for choosing the university: ranking, reputation and the shorter duration of master’s courses. Participants described being met with unfamiliar expectations on arrival, especially as regards writing essays and contributing to discussion. For some, this challenged their previous identities as competent individuals with advanced English skills. These issues were exacerbated in “all-white” classes, where being in the minority heightened linguistic anxiety and the fear of being judged. They had varied experiences of group work: several reported – not necessarily intentional but nonetheless problematic – segregation of students by nationality, undermining the notion that a multi-national population results in close mixing on campus.

    In a survey administered to a wider cohort of respondents on a pre-sessional EAP programme, the majority agreed or strongly agreed when asked if they would befriend British people while at university.

    However, making such connections is far from straightforward. International students are sometimes criticised for socialising in monocultural groups and failing to fully “fit in”. However, the fatigue of living one’s life in another language and simultaneously coping with academic demands means that getting to know locals is not a priority. At the same time, research participants expressed regret at the lack of opportunity to interact with other nationalities, with one remarking, “if everyone around me is Chinese, why did I choose to study abroad?” Some encountered prejudice or marginalisation, reporting that they felt ignored by “fluent” speakers of English. Understandably, this had a detrimental effect on their ability to adjust.

    Different ways to belong

    To gain different perspectives, I also spoke with teachers who work with international students. EAP tutors believed that their classes offer a safe space for them to gain confidence and become used to a new way of working. However, they wondered whether there would be a similarly supportive atmosphere in mainstream university settings. Subject lecturers did not invoke phrases such as “dumbing down”, but several had altered their teaching methods to better suit learners from non-Anglophone backgrounds.

    In addition, they questioned whether internationalisation always equated to diversity. One commented on the advantages of having a “multicultural quality”, but added that it “has to be a mix” – something which is not possible if, like on her course, there are no Scottish students. Another mentioned that the propensity to “stick with your own people” is not a uniquely Chinese phenomenon, but common behaviour regardless of background.

    A few academics had noticed that most Chinese students take an attitude of, “I’m doing my (one-year) master’s and maybe then I have to move back to China.” Chinese students are less likely than some other nationalities to apply for a graduate visa, suggesting that their investment in a degree abroad is of a transactional nature.

    The majority of survey respondents indicated that they would adapt to a new way of life while living abroad. However, during my last conversation with focal interviewees, I uncovered different levels of belonging, ranging from, “I feel like I’m from Scotland”, to “my heart was always in China”, to “I don’t have any home.” Participants generally viewed their stay as temporary: in fact, all but the Japanese student (who accepted a job in the US) returned to their home country after graduation. Although they described their time in Scotland in mostly positive terms, some were disappointed that it had not provided a truly intercultural experience.

    Meltdown

    It is clear that universities in Scotland have become overly reliant on international tuition for their financial sustainability. At the same time, there is conflict between the devolved administration’s depiction of Scotland as outward looking and welcoming, and the reality of stricter migration policies over which it has no control.

    Discourses which position international students as outsiders who add to high immigration numbers could deter some from coming. If they are seen only as economic assets, their own cultural capital and agency might be neglected. It is also important to problematise the notion of “integration”: even my small study suggests that there are different ways of belonging. No group of learners is homogeneous: even if they come from the same country, individual experiences will differ.

    To navigate the current financial crisis, Scottish universities need to do everything possible to maintain their appeal. With elections being held next year, higher education policy will continue to be a key area of discussion. At present, there are no plans to introduce fees for home students, making revenue from international tuition all the more essential.

    However, at a time of global uncertainty, taking overseas students for granted feels enormously unwise. Instead, it is crucial to ask how they can be made to feel like valued members of the academic community. The answer to this question might be different for everyone, but engaging with students themselves, rather than relying on unhelpful assumptions, would be a start.

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  • The risk of opening a legislative backdoor into the sector’s pocket

    The risk of opening a legislative backdoor into the sector’s pocket

    It’s 2029. The international student fee levy is finally in place, after a complicated legislative passage, further consultation, and squabbles over implementation.

    Still riding high in the polls, though with an eye to accusations of unfunded spending commitments, Reform’s manifesto promises to jack up the levy to 40 per cent, explicitly labelling it a lever to cut net migration and unsurprisingly deaf to its effects on university balance sheets (as well as to arguments that this could in fact reduce the overall take – they have modelling which says it won’t).

    After all, the primary legislation to operationalise the government top-slice of universities’ student income leaves the exact amount of the levy to the discretion of the Secretary of State. It will be a relatively simple laying of regulations to have the new percentage in place by autumn.

    Scratch that – it’s 2032. The Conservatives are back in power (somehow). The industrial strategy has been binned, and with it the underpinnings of the “priority subject areas” that have determined which students and which courses are eligible for maintenance grants. With the pretext that those who benefit from higher education should in later life foot the bill – and the entirely accurate observation that whether maintenance is in the form of of grant or loan doesn’t actually affect whether students are “working every hour God sends” to support themselves while studying – the Conservative government decides to end the confusing patchwork of targeted grants it has inherited and (once again) shift student support over to maintenance loans. (Oh and the levy income will instead be used to plug the growing apprenticeship overspend.)

    Now when the act passed there was nothing that made a cast-iron link between grants and the fee levy – indeed, there’s not a single mention of how the funds should be spent on the face of the bill, because that’s not the kind of thing you can practically legislate for. Backbenchers flagged this, ministers said it was a commitment and they would stick to it, and Labour’s majority held up.

    This hypothetical Tory Treasury is still antsy about expanding the loan book – gilts are still high, the era of rock-bottom interest rates seems a distant memory – and the price of raising borrowing for maintenance is the announcement of a multi-year freeze on tuition fees. Here we go again.

    How about this one: it’s halfway through Labour’s second term in office, and it’s becoming clear that the modular LLE hasn’t really taken off. The demand for several thousand pounds of plan 5 loan debt in return for a short course has, shockingly, not materialised. As happened with the pilot exercise, DfE tries to tempt learners in with student support grants, rather than chunked up maintenance loans. When this doesn’t bear much fruit, as with the modular acceleration programme the next play is to entirely waive tuition fees for technical courses, just deducting them from LLE entitlement instead.

    Despite low demand, the need to keep finding little pots of cash to spend for the incentivising of modular provision has stretched DfE’s willingness to let too much of the levy income go towards maintenance grants for full degrees (especially as, to the surprise of few, the department was never intending to allocate the whole haul to maintenance grants).

    Maybe there’s a damning National Audit Office report. Maybe there are anecdotal reports of spotty financial controls and agents encouraging students onto certain newly launched courses to get access to lump sums of maintenance, rather than for genuine study. With an eye on the next election and the 10-year NHS workforce plan’s final year looming, the thought pops up – wouldn’t it be politically expedient to just bring back grants for nursing students rather than fiddling around with all these industrial strategy bits and pieces?

    Final one. It’s 2038 or something, and the Office for National Statistics is finally approaching the end of its review of the classification of higher education in the national accounts which it began in 2017. To be fair to the beleaguered stats body, each UK nation has either made large changes to its higher education system in the interim, or announced wholesale reviews which have then not led to much change, leading to one pause after another. Finally though, the ONS is in a position to weigh up all the dimensions of the government’s oversight and control of the English higher education sector, which now includes the ability to skim off a set percentage of all international student income – and decides on classification within the public sector.

    All the sector submissions and parliamentary interventions which tried to advocate against the levy on these very grounds – the scare stories of controls on borrowing, limits on senior staff pay, and changes to how accounts are managed – are vindicated. (However, as Julian Gravatt has pointed out in the definitive article on the topic, the government of the day then carefully takes steps to address just enough of the specifics of the ONS’ decision and thus move universities back out of the public sector. It doesn’t want to lose out on the income the levy brings, so instead it makes changes elsewhere, to regulation perhaps, or pensions. It’s all a bit of a mess.)

    Through the trapdoor

    However the government decides to legislate for the fee levy – it might be a standalone bill, or wrapped up in a larger HE Act – it’s going to be a complicated process. Labour backbenchers have been expressing concerns since it was first mooted, but the grafting on of maintenance grants means that it will be harder for MPs to vote against.

    The sector has largely marshalled two arguments against it: that it will enormously destabilise finances, and that it’s unfair and risky to further cross-subsidise home students with international income. On the first, it’s clear that the government is not convinced that there isn’t a bit more to be squeezed, especially as it has seen much of the sector impose year after year of inflation-busting increases to overseas fee sticker prices – it’s probably no surprise that the white paper modelling saw the cost of the levy passed on, even though some universities will be unable to achieve this in practice. It’s still a sensible argument to make, though until we see to what extent the government is slow-rolling a wider package of tuition fee increases it’s hard to know whether it can gain traction.

    Equally, the argument about cross-subsidy is proving and will continue to prove ineffective, given that DfE has hinted its intention to claim that this helps higher education make the case for international student recruitment to the wider public on exactly those grounds.

    But there’s a larger, longer-term case to be made to ministers and parliamentarians, that considers the enormous unintended consequences and political risks that prising open HE balance sheets in this way will enable. Once the backdoor has been installed, it’s there for hostile actors to take advantage of, and for user error to compound the problems. It is verging on a certainty that the legislation will neither restrict the level the levy is set at nor ringfence how its takings are used.

    Now the announcement has been made it’s almost certainly too late, but the need for the government to legislate to make this a reality points to missed opportunities around cooperation on access – a sector-owned and co-funded pot of money for student support and, yes, redistribution would have been far more effective at staying out of the political fray. This levy will be square in the middle of it, for many years to come.

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  • Making grants and the levy work

    Making grants and the levy work

    Opinions vary about the desirability of the levy on international student fees, and the value of the promised return of targeted maintenance grants.

    Rightly so. The announcement and the descriptions of policies within, were political in nature. They were made at a party conference rather than a ministerial statement or consultation document – they were designed to please some, challenge others, and above all to start a debate.

    And as such, all these opinions are valuable. The government will listen to representations, seek commentary and challenge, and eventually start to spell out some more of the detail and implementation.

    Implementation couldn’t care less about opinions or political expediency. Implementation is a matter of whether something can actually be done, and how.

    My number one priority

    Let’s take the simplistic approach, and call the income the government gets from the levy something around £620m (more on that later).

    In the grand scheme of things that’s not a huge amount of money – we paid out more than £8bn on maintenance loans in 2023-24. However, the much-maligned magic money twig (the OfS’ funding for student access and success) is currently just £273m, and it is ostensibly doing part of the same job as the proposed grants – helping non-traditional students access and succeed in higher education. Of course, it mostly goes on hardship grants these days, which is neither what it is designed for nor any meaningful remedy for a student maintenance system that is not fit for purpose. But that makes the parallel even clearer.

    Any extra money going to students, in this economy and with this level of unwillingness to do anything truly radical about student hardship, is welcome. But the kicker is that it is not enough to be from a deprived background to get the new money – you also need to be studying the right subjects. As we’ve already noted, these are the same “priority subjects” as have been set within the Lifelong Learning Entitlement: vaguely STEMish, but with no medicine but added architecture and economics.

    You survived all you been through

    At the end of every cycle UCAS published data on acceptances using a fine-grained (CAH level 3) subject lens, separated by level of deprivation – which in England means the IMD quintile. From this we learn that in the most recent data (2024 cycle) just under 42 per cent of all England domiciled accepted applicants from IMD quintile 1 (the most deprived group) were accepted onto a “priority subject”.

    [Full screen]

    This is a substantially higher proportion than in any other IMD quintile – it is also a substantially higher number: 39,870. We don’t get quite the same level of subject fidelity for offers and applications, but it appears that quintile 1 applicants are also much more likely to apply to priority subjects than any other group, and slightly more likely to receive an offer.

    In other words, as far as we can tell with the available data, there is not really a problem recruiting disadvantaged young people onto courses in subjects that the government is currently keen on.

    It is possible ministers may be thinking that adding the grants into the mix would drive these already encouraging numbers up even higher (and away from mere dilettante whims like, er, studying medicine, law, or biology). This would appear to ignore a rather expensive and lengthy experiment that has demonstrated that financial concerns (in the form, back then, of the sticker price) do not actually affect applicant behavior all that much, and when applicant behaviour is already trending in the way you might hope there’s maybe not a lot needs to be done.

    But if you assume that the entire annual levy covers a single year of grants for everyone in IMD quintile 1 in a priority subject – and let’s use the exact numbers here – we get 39,870 students sharing £620.52m: £15,560 each.

    That is baking in a bunch of assumptions around the way the levy is implemented, the way grant allocations are determined (is IMD, an area based measure, really the best way to allocate individual grants?), and even whether the entire levy is to be spent directly on grants and nothing else. But if these rather optimistic assumptions are right, we’re slightly above the current maximum loan (£13,762), and beginning to approach the government’s National Living Wage for those aged 18 to 20 (currently just under £18k). It’s not quite enough to live as a student for a year without working at all, but it would mean someone without any other means of support might not have to “work every hour god sends.”

    I’ll let you be my levy

    Let’s say you are an international student looking to study an integrated (4-5 year) Masters’ course in biomedical engineering at the University of Leicester. You’d be charged £25,100 a year (plus £6,275 if you do a year overseas, or £3,765 if you do a year in industry). As you are resident outside of the UK, you’d pay a deposit of £3,000 up front to secure your place. These figures will vary vastly depending on your choice of course and provider, but that gives you an idea of a ballpark figure.

    If you secured your place via an agent, you may have paid a fee up front to them. Your chosen university would also pay a fee to the agent for each successful application – these vary hugely, but let’s say it is 20 per cent of your first year of fees. In some cases, your university would also pay a direct fee to the agent, over and above their percentage of fee income. Combined, these can get pretty intense – far into the millions for providers that use agents, with some pushing £30m

    If you don’t quite meet some of the academic or English language requirements for your course, you may be accepted onto an international foundation year – often offered by another provider, either on behalf of your university or as a stand alone course. There will be fees for this too.

    Of course, before you are accepted onto your course, you’ll need a Tier 4 Student Visa. For all but a handful of countries, you’ll need evidence (the example given by the Foreign Office is a bank statement) that you currently have enough money to cover your fees for your first year plus nine months of living costs. Your visa will cost £524, plus you need to pay a healthcare surcharge (each year) of £776 each year.

    Let’s imagine for a moment that you never made a name for yourself

    If you are looking to design a levy, the first decision that you make will be what constitutes international fee income. Should it be the sticker price – as promoted to students? Should it, for example, include the fees an institution pays to an international agent? Should it include fees that the student pays to another institution for a co-branded international foundation year? Should you factor in that students are already paying a levy of sorts to cover the cost of issuing a visa or of providing access to the NHS? Should it include accommodation fees (or additional course fees) when these are paid directly to the provider?

    Or should a provider pay a proportion of everything it declares as (and auditors agree that is) international student fee income? At what point – when the fee is paid, when the course starts, when it is declared? And is there not a case to look at a levy on agents fees – there is big money to be made by agents, and unlike with providers no counter arguments about the student experience?

    The modelling I’ve done so far is deliberately simplistic – 6 per cent (or whatever is decided on) of declared fee income in the most recent HESA Finance Data. That’s a valid answer, but it is limited – it is not the same effect as you would get if a university had to pay 6 per cent of every international student’s fee at one of the points above. The Home Office modelling noted that in some cases fees themselves may rise to cover the levy, which may have a knock on effect on recruitment – and that in other cases providers themselves would swallow the cost.

    If you think about it like that – and also bear in mind the Public First angle on the types of students more likely to be dissuaded by higher fees – it is difficult not to see the regressive nature of the levy: well-off providers, who recruit well-heeled middle class students from countries where salaries are high, will pay more but will be able to pass the costs on to students. Providers newer to international recruitment, at the price sensitive end of the market, will lose out either way, and will have to work out whether the recruitment drop of a 6 per cent fee hike is worth more than 6 per cent of their current income.

    Such a funny thing for me to try to explain

    What if we don’t take the accountant’s way out? What if we calculate a levy based on what individual students actually pay?

    As noted above we don’t know – either generally or individually – what international students pay as fees. We also don’t really know how many students are currently paying them – HESA student data turns up after a quite considerable lag, and not all undergraduates (and no postgraduates!) show up in UCAS data.

    The closest we get to international student numbers, at all levels, in-year has historically been OfS’ HESES collection (which it uses to allocate OfS grant funding). I say historically because, from 2025-26 the information on domicile (previously used “for planning purposes”) will no longer be collected.

    If you want a levy based on what students actually pay, you need a new data collection covering the students involved and how much they have paid that year (perhaps separated out into qualifying and non-qualifying payments – with all of the early iteration problems that such things bring. Data Futures may eventually get there, but not for a good few years yet.

    Designing a new data collection is not for the faint of heart – we scrapped an entire section of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act (the bit dealing with income from overseas) primarily because it is a million times easier to torturously audit other data than to collect something new. It would be expensive, both centrally and for individual providers – and it would be commercially sensitive (not all international students pay the same fee for the same course at the same university).

    Know we’re jumping the gun

    At every point in this article, I’ve tried to get across just how broad brush the current details of this policy are. As my colleague Michael notes elsewhere, there is not even clarity that these two halves of an announcement are a part of the same policy, or that it is possible to irrevocably link an income stream with an outgoing like this in the public accounts.

    It is a political announcement, and as such leaping straight to implementation slightly misses the point – like with the “scrapping” of the “fifty per cent participation target” it might well be that how it lands is more important than how it works.

    But as I’ve also tried to show, implementation has no time for political expediency. Real decisions need to be taken, and the current configuration of the sector, of the application cycle, and of the various data collections need to be taken into account. And there’s a need to consider whether the behavioural changes you are trying to make would undermine the funding flows that you are intending will do so – the more parts to a policy the more unintended consequences there could be.

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  • Visa oversubscription at UCL may be more than just a PR problem

    Visa oversubscription at UCL may be more than just a PR problem

    Richard Adams’ reporting for the Guardian sets out the immediate fallout.

    Hundreds of international students, including around 200 from China, are stranded after UCL admitted it had run out of Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies (CAS) allocations.

    The Guardian reports that many have already spent thousands on flights and accommodation – others are already in the UK and now face deportation.

    Comments like this one on Reddit illustrate the issue:

    On September 22nd, I suddenly received a notice from UCL, telling me that the issuance of CAS had been suspended… the only option they’ve given is to defer my enrolment to 2026. I’ve already rented a flat and the money is non-refundable.

    The reputational damage may spread from UCL. A YouTube video entitled “UK university cancels CAS letters” lists causes like overbooking and compliance checks without actually mentioning UCL. And a look at Chinese-language spaces suggests that story has gone semi viral – re-told and amplified with screenshots said to be from affected cohorts.

    UCL told us that it’s urgently working with the Home Office to secure additional CAS numbers and is doing everything it can to resolve this as quickly as possible:

    In the meantime, we are contacting affected students directly to explain the situation, offer our sincere apologies, and provide support including the option to defer their place to next year.

    The short-term picture is reputational damage and urgent negotiations with the Home Office. But potentially, the longer-term problem is consumer law – and the conflicting risks and incentives that our immigration regime and the consumer protection regime creates.

    Push me pull you

    Universities, of course, have to apply to the Home Office for CAS (Confirmation of Acceptance for Study) numbers. The number allocated is based on how many international students each university expects to admit.

    They have to aim to be as accurate as possible – they’re not permitted to significantly over-estimate these figures as a precaution.  The problem this year for UCL is as follows:

    We’ve experienced significantly more applications and acceptances of offers than anticipated, and as a result, we have exceeded the number of Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies (CAS) numbers allocated to us by the Home Office. Our planning is based on historical data and expected trends which take account of attrition rates and other factors.

    For all universities, the numbers are always estimates. This is because, in any one year, more offer holders than expected may accept their place, or more students may meet the academic requirements than in previous years – both of which increase demand for CAS allocations.

    The question then is how to manage the risks – not least because as well as worries about over-recruiting, as per the Legal Migration white paper, UKVI will soon be demanding a visa refusal rate of less than 10 per cent and a course enrolment rate of at least 90 per cent of CASs issued.

    UUKi’s advice on that looks like this:

    Universities may wish to consider reviewing their deposit requirements alongside their diversification plans to help ensure applicants are genuine students and intent on studying. This could include introducing or increasing deposits or introducing earlier deposit deadlines.

    It’s not hard to see how immigration policy pushes universities towards locking students in once they apply, and then having to take steps to limit the impact if a surprising number then accept and/or meet any offer made.

    The problem is that those steps may not be compatible with protections students are supposed to have. In other words, it may not be quite as simple as it looks to transfer the risks being loaded onto universities onto students.

    CMA’s earlier warnings

    You may remember that after the pandemic admissions crunch caused by those mutant algorithms, the CMA issued specific advice reminding universities that:

    Universities and colleges should not make binding offers which they know they may not be able to honour, and should avoid terms which allow them wide discretion to withdraw offers once accepted.

    Then in updated CMA guidance to universities in 2023, the same themes recur:

    Institutions must provide prospective students with clear, accurate, comprehensive, unambiguous and timely information about courses, teaching, teaching locations and any limiting conditions.

    And echoing its Statement on Admissions, the guidance stresses that terms allowing a university excessive discretion to withdraw or change the service must be fair:

    HE providers should not use terms which allow wide discretion to vary or cancel aspects of the educational service after an offer has been accepted, or to limit or exclude liability for failure to provide what was promised.

    Non-refundable deposits

    Like most universities, UCL’s Tuition Fee Deposits Policy 2025 says deposits are:

    …typically non-refundable if the offer-holder simply chooses not to enrol or is unable to enrol for reasons within their control.

    Refund routes are narrow – visa refusal, academic failure, programme cancellation, scholarship funding – and discretionary. Refunds may also be reduced by bank charges or currency fluctuations.

    The CMA’s unfair terms guidance (CMA37) says that deposits must reflect a trader’s pre-estimate of the loss, not operate as punitive lock-ins.

    Paragraph 5.14 warns that forcing consumers to forfeit prepayments:

    …is open to serious objection where it bears no relation to the business’s actual costs.

    Where universities use deposits to insure against under-recruitment, the price is often borne by students – in ways consumer law regards as unfair.

    UCL told us that:

    Tuition Fee Deposits are not intended to deter withdrawals and represent a genuine estimate of the loss suffered where an individual doesn’t enrol. UCL specifically sets out that Tuition Fee Deposits aren’t non-refundable in all circumstances.

    Acts of god

    Meanwhile, UCL’s terms and conditions allow it to cancel programmes and treat “under or over demand for courses or modules” as an “event outside our control.”

    In the undergraduate version, Section 15 lists over or under-subscription alongside things like government restrictions and industrial action as circumstances for which UCL “will not be responsible or liable for failure to perform.”

    And under Section 5, UCL may withdraw or cancel a programme and will then “use commercially reasonable endeavours” to offer a suitable alternative or permit withdrawal.

    The CMA’s HE consumer law advice is explicit that providers must not draft broad discretionary rights to withdraw courses after offers have been accepted. Terms must be narrow, transparent, and balanced – and force majeure cannot be used to cover risks the provider should reasonably plan for.

    In what appears to be the CMA’s view, oversubscription is not an act of God – it’s a business choice.

    UCL’s terms also cap its liability for breach of contract at twice the tuition fee, and exclude responsibility for consequential losses – including travel, accommodation, and visa fees.

    But under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, suppliers can’t exclude liability for foreseeable losses arising from their own breach – and the CMA warns against blanket exclusions of precisely these losses.

    If students have rented expensive private halls or bought non-refundable flights on the strength of UCL’s assurances, those look potentially like foreseeable losses. Trying to exclude them may not survive scrutiny under the fairness test.

    The university told us that:

    UCL does not seek to limit or exclude liability that it cannot lawfully limit or exclude and accepts a fair and reasonable allocation of liability in the terms.

    The exacerbating issue is that evidence on student forums appears to show that UCL knew weeks before the term that there could be a capacity issue.

    UCL states that first-year undergraduates who meet the published criteria – such as applying by the deadline and firmly accepting their offer – are “guaranteed” a place in UCL accommodation.

    But posts on student forums suggest that by early September some applicants were being told the guarantee had effectively become a “priority” allocation because of high demand, leaving students scrambling for private halls after cheaper options had gone.

    It means that many are now locked into costly private housing contracts, without a contractual route to compensation because the contract expressly excludes accommodation losses.

    The university’s UG terms say:

    UCL does not accept any liability for loss that does not flow naturally from a breach of its obligations under these Terms. This is often referred to as indirect or consequential loss. In addition, particular types of loss that UCL does not accept liability for, whether direct or indirect and whether considered a possibility at the time the contractual relationship came into effect, are loss of earnings (including delay in receipt of potential earnings), loss of opportunity, loss of profit and loss of your data.

    That could also be a classic example of an unfair exclusion clause under the Consumer Rights Act.

    All of this lands at a time when UCL is, as a first target in a likely series of claims, already preparing to defend itself in the High Court against claims from students over pandemic and strike disruption. That trial, due to begin in early 2026, may test amongst other things whether the “force majeure” clauses that universities have relied on to exclude liability are enforceable at all.

    The CMA has long said that force majeure clauses covering a university’s own staff strikes are likely unlawful, and OfS has echoed concerns in its guidance. In UCL’s case, the test claims may explore whether something truly uncontrollable in March 2020 became predictable – and therefore compensable – over time.

    That context matters because UCL’s oversubscription response leans on similar legal logic – that over-demand is “outside its control” and liability for students’ losses is capped. Regulators, adjudicators and courts could now be asked whether these contract clauses are actually fair.

    A risky model

    Recruiting large numbers of international students is inherently volatile. Visa policies change, attrition rates fluctuate, and global demand can surge unexpectedly. But while the business model may be risky, in theory the law prevents the transfer of that risk onto students via hefty deposits, discretionary refunds, cancellation rights or liability caps.

    In other words, an airline can take the risk of overbooking a flight – but if it does, you have the right to compensation – as well as a choice between a refund or an alternative flight.

    In many ways, UKVI and Home Office policy pushes universities towards the sorts of risk management practices that consumer law was designed to rule out.

    But the problem may not only be universities sometimes over-recruit. It may be that they do so on terms that attempt to ensure they are protected, while students are not.

    It’s not yet clear whether UCL is committing to compensation – or seeking to rely on the terms that would, on the face of it, allow it to avoid compensating.

    But if the pandemic/strikes litigation establishes that universities cannot contract away responsibility with sweeping force majeure clauses, oversubscription could become the next flashpoint in regulation and the courts – with real implications across the sector.

    ======

    A UCL spokesperson said:

    This year, UCL has seen an extraordinary surge in demand from international students, a reflection of our global reputation and the value students place on a UCL education.

    We’ve experienced significantly more applications and acceptances of offers than anticipated, and as a result, we have exceeded the number of Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies (CAS) numbers allocated to us by the Home Office. Our planning is based on historical data and expected trends which take account of attrition rates and other factors.

    We are urgently working with the Home Office to secure additional CAS numbers and are doing everything we can to resolve this as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we are contacting affected students directly to explain the situation, offer our sincere apologies, and provide support including the option to defer their place to next year.

    We also recognise that some of our recent communications have caused confusion and uncertainty, and we are sincerely sorry for that. We are committed to supporting every student impacted by this and are grateful for their patience and understanding as we work to find a solution.

    An Office for Students spokesperson said:

    All registered universities and colleges must show that they’ve given due regard to CMA guidance about how to comply with consumer protection law in developing and implementing their policies, procedures, and terms and conditions. Students invest a significant amount of time and money in their studies and it’s important that their consumer rights are protected when making this investment.

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  • Grants return, the levy stays

    Grants return, the levy stays

    Speaking at the Labour Party conference, Secretary of State for Education Bridget Phillipson announced the (limited) return of student maintenance grants by the end of this Parliament:

    I am announcing that this Labour government will introduce new targeted maintenance grants for students who need them most. Their time at college or university should be spent learning or training, not working every hour god sends.

    As further details emerged, it became clear that these would be specifically targeted to students from low-income households who were studying courses within the same list of “government priority” subject areas mentioned in plans for the lifelong learning entitlement. As a reminder these are:

    • computing
    • engineering
    • architecture, building & planning (excluding landscape gardening)
    • physics & astronomy
    • mathematical sciences
    • nursing & midwifery
    • allied health
    • chemistry
    • economics
    • health & social care

    These additional grants will be funded with income from the proposed levy on international student fees, of which little is known outside of the fact that the immigration white paper’s annex contained modelling of its effects were it to be set at six per cent of international student fee income. The international student levy will apply to England only.

    There will be further details on the way the new grants will work, and on the detail of the levy, in the Autumn Statement on 26 November. This is what we know so far – everything else is based on speculation.

    Eligibility

    A whole range of questions surround the announcement.

    How disadvantaged will a student have to be – and will it be based on family income in the same way that the current system is? Imagine if entitlement was set at below the current threshold for the maximum loan – disadvantaged enough to get the full loan, not enough for a grant.

    If it’s set anywhere near the current threshold – £25,000 residual family income since 2007 – there’s a lot of “disadvantage” going on above that figure. If it’s set above that figure, that will beg the question – why assume a parental contribution in the main loan part of the scheme?

    Will it be on top of, or simply displace some of the existing loan? If it’s the latter, that won’t help with day to day costs, and as the Augar review noted – those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds are least likely to pay back in full anyway, which would make the “grant” more of a debt-relief scam.

    The distribution in the apparent hypothecation will be fascinating. It does mean that international students studying at English universities will be funding grants for English domiciled students wherever they are studying. Will devolved nations now follow suit?

    If international student recruitment falls, will that mean that the amount of money available for disadvantaged student grants falls too or is the Treasury willing to agree a fixed amount for the grants that doesn’t change?

    Restricting grants to those on the lowest incomes does mean that the government intends to relieve student poverty for some but not others, based on course choice. Will that shift behaviour – on the part of students and universities – in problematic ways?

    With the LLE on the way, will grants be chunked up and down by credit? See Jim’s piece from the weekend on the problematic incentives that this would create.

    The hypothecation also raises real moral questions about international student hardship being exacerbated to fund home student hardship relief – if, as many will do, universities put fees up to cover the cost of the levy. The possibility of real resentment from international students, who already know they’re propping up the costs of lower and subsidised fees, is significant.

    For LLE modular tuition fee funding, under OfS quality proposals Bronze/Requires improvement universities will have to apply for their students to access it – they will need to demonstrate that there is a rationale for them doing IS-8 courses. Will that apply for these grants too?

    Phillipson’s speech also referenced work– students’ time at college or university should be “spent learning or training, not working every hour god sends”. By coincidence, Jim worked up some numbers on how much “work” the current loan scheme funds earlier. Whether we’ll get numbers from Phillipson on what she thinks “every hour god sends” means in practice, and how many hours she thinks students should be learning or training for, remains to be seen.

    We might also assume that the grant won’t be increased for those in London, and reduced for studying at home in the way that the maintenance loan is now. And if this is all we’re going to get in the way of student finance reform, all of the other myriad problems with the system may not get touched either.

    The levy

    There’s a certain redistributive logic in using tuition fee income from very prestigious universities to support learners at FE colleges or local providers, though it is unlikely that university senior managers will see it in quite those terms.

    A six per cent levy on international fee income in England for the 2023–24 financial year would have yielded around £620m, with half of that coming from the 20 English providers in the Russell Group. Of course, this doesn’t mean that half of all international students are at the Russell Group – it means that they are able to charge higher tuition fees to the international students they do recruit.

    [Full screen]

    Of course, the levy applies to all providers – and, as we saw back when the idea was first floated there are some outside of the Russell Group that see significant parts of their income come from international fees, and would see their overall financial sustainability adversely affected by the levy. In the main these tend to be smaller specialist providers, but there are some larger modern universities too. Some universities don’t even have undergraduate students, but will still see their fees top-sliced to fund undergraduate-level grants elsewhere.

    [Full screen]

    There has been a concerted lobbying effort by various university groups aimed at getting the government to abandon the levy plan – as it appears that this effort has failed you would expect the conversations to turn to ensuring the levy is not introduced at six per cent as the Home Office previously modelled, or mitigating its impact for some or all providers. Certainly, as Phillipson chose the same speech to remind us she had taken “the decisive steps we needed on university finances” it would feel like it is not her intention to add to the woes of higher education providers that are genuinely struggling.

    DfE has said that the new grants will be “fully funded” by an international student levy. It’s worth noting that this is not the same as saying that all the levy money will go towards the grants.The tie between the grants and the levy is politically rather astute – it will be very difficult for Labour backbenchers to argue against grants for students on low income, even if they are committed to making arguments in the interests of their local university. But legislatively, establishing a ring fence that ensures the levy only pays for these grants will be very difficult – other parts of government will have their eye on this new income, and the Treasury is famously very resistant to ringfencing money that comes in.

    It also opens up the idea of the government specifically taxing higher education with targeted levies. It is notable that there has been no indication that the levy will be charged on private school fees, or fees paid to English language colleges, where these are paid by non-resident students. DfE itself suggests that £980m of international fees go to schools, and a further £850m goes to English language training – why leave a certain percentage of that on the table when it can be used to support disadvantaged young people in skills training?

    What would it achieve?

    In the end, even grants at the maximum level of £3,000 a year that were recommended by the Augar review wouldn’t have made much difference to student poverty, and there’s been a lot of inflation since.

    And a part of the idea of the levy was to reduce (albeit slightly) the number of study visas granted – if you recall, the Home Office report emerged in a month that everyone became concerned about students claiming asylum. If that part of the plan works (if that was ever really the plan, rather than a fortunate coincidence) then surely there would be less money to play with for maintenance – and any future government that attempts to reduce international higher education recruitment would be accused of taking the grants away from working class students on priority courses?

    The real value in the reintroduction of the grant is that it is politically totemic for Labour. But if it encourages more disadvantaged students to go into HE because of a perception of better affordability when they will still struggle, there will be both a financial and political cost in the long term.

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  • High quality recruitment practices is everyone’s responsibility

    High quality recruitment practices is everyone’s responsibility

    The UK’s international higher education sector is at yet another crossroads.

    The positioning of international students as not only economic contributors to universities, but also cultural and intellectual assets to our campuses and communities is a well-told tale. But with ever-increasing government scrutiny of international recruitment practice, it is essential that the sector can unequivocally demonstrate that it operates with integrity and transparency.

    It is not just the government institutions must convince of the UK’s commitment to high quality opportunities, but students themselves to ensure the UK remains a destination of choice.

    Last month, IDP published its global commitment to quality and, as part of this, announced we are fully compliant with the British Council’s Agent Quality Framework (AQF). I imagine some might read that and ask “so what? Were you not already working in a compliant way already?”

    To be clear, we were (and always have been) committed to being ethical and responsible in our approach to recruitment, and it is what our partners know and trust us for. But our public commitment to the AQF in January 2024 and more latterly basic compliance assessment (BCA) requirements changes inspired us to have a wholesale review of our processes to ensure all our processes and practices drive quality. Transparency matters more now than ever – the more reassurance we can give our partners that we take our role in their student recruitment seriously sends the right signal to the government that we are committed to sustainable growth focused on right metrics.

    We are in this for the right reasons, that is, the right students, with the right standards and intentions, going to the right universities to complete their studies while living and thriving in our towns and cities. But it’s our hope that by being public about our official compliance, we can encourage others to do the same.

    The fact it has taken us, a well-established world-leading recruitment partner, months to feel confident the checks and balances are in place and that we have full adherence to the framework, demonstrates the complexity behind compliance. As we go along, we’ll no doubt learn more about how we can improve and strengthen those assurances to our partners (and therefore to the government) that international education is not full of ‘bad actors’.

    This is about more than compliance with external standards. It is a need for the international education community to be loud and proud about our work at a time when quality assurance in recruitment is under a brighter spotlight than ever.

    Regulation, regulation, regulation

    The UK government has made clear that international student recruitment cannot be divorced from broader debates around immigration, compliance and the sustainability of the sector. Parliamentary inquiries. Home Office interventions. The MAC review. The Immigration White Paper. The Home Office English Language Test. Freedom of Information requests. Intensified media focus. All this has raised questions about whether recruitment practice is always consistent with the standards expected of a world-leading education system. And this isn’t just about immigration rhetoric – this is about how those practices impact students and the enormous financial and emotional investment they make in choosing the UK for higher education, and make them feel their investment is worth it.

    In this environment, questions may be asked as to whether self-regulation is sufficient. The AQF, developed by the British Council in partnership with BUILA, UKCISA and Universities UK International, provides the only recognised, sector-wide framework for professionalism, ethical practice, and student-centred advice. To ignore or sidestep it is to invite greater external regulation and risk undermining already-precarious confidence in the sector.

    International students deserve more than transactional recruitment processes; they deserve ethical, transparent, and student-first guidance that empowers them to make the right choices for their future. Likewise, the UK needs to demonstrate to policymakers that the sector is capable of regulating itself to the highest standard.

    Quality is a shared responsibility

    The AQF sets out clear principles in five areas; organisational behaviour, ethical business practice, objective advice and guidance, student-centred practice and organisational competence

    Compliance across all these standards is not the endpoint. Instead, it is a baseline for our work. Compliance establishes credibility, but the leadership requires continuous improvement and a proactive commitment to go beyond minimum requirements.

    The onus is now on all organisations involved in international student recruitment – universities, agents, sub-agents, aggregators and service providers – to align with the AQF and evidence their compliance. AQF compliance is a collective responsibility. The question is no longer whether institutions and agents should adopt the AQF, but instead how quickly they can demonstrate alignment and ensure that these standards are consistently embedded in practice. Anything less risks weakening trust in the UK’s international education offer.

    The message to the sector is clear – quality must take precedence over volume until we are confident we’re in a position to grow sustainably and deliver on student expectations. Only by embedding AQF standards across all recruitment channels can the UK demonstrate to government, students and the wider international community that it is serious about maintaining excellence.

    The UK has an opportunity to lead globally on quality standards. Let’s do it together.

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  • A largely invisible role of international students: Fueling the innovation economy

    A largely invisible role of international students: Fueling the innovation economy

    PITTSBURGH — Saisri Akondi had already started a company in her native India when she came to Carnegie Mellon University to get a master’s degree in biomedical engineering, business and design.

    Before she graduated, she had co-founded another: D.Sole, for which Akondi, who is 28, used the skills she’d learned to create a high-tech insole that can help detect foot complications from diabetes, which results in 6.8 million amputations a year.

    D.Sole is among technology companies in Pittsburgh that collectively employ a quarter of the local workforce at wages much higher than those in the city’s traditional steel and other metals industries. That’s according to the business development nonprofit the Pittsburgh Technology Council, which says these companies pay out an annual $27.5 billion in salaries alone.

    A “significant portion” of Pittsburgh’s transformation into a tech hub has been driven by international students like Akondi, said Sean Luther, head of InnovatePGH, a coalition of civic groups and government agencies promoting innovation businesses.

    The Pittsburgh Innovation District along Forbes Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Oakland section, near the campuses of the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report

    “Next Happens Here,” reads the sign above the entrance to the co-working space where Luther works and technology companies are incubated, in an area near Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh dubbed the Pittsburgh Innovation District. The neighborhood is filled with people of various ethnicities speaking a variety of languages over lunch and coffee.

    What might happen next to the international students and graduates who have helped fuel this tech economy has become an anxiety-inducing subject of those conversations, as the second presidential administration of Donald Trump brings visa crackdowns, funding cuts and other attacks on higher education — including here, in a state that voted for Trump.

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

    Inside the bubble of the universities and the tech sector, “there’s so much support you get,” Akondi observed, in a gleaming conference room at Carnegie Mellon. “But there still is a part of the population that asks, ‘What are you doing here?’ ”

    Much of the ongoing conversation about international students has focused on undergraduates and their importance to university revenues and enrollment. Many of these students — especially in graduate schools — fill a less visible role in the economy, however. They conduct research that can lead to commercial applications, have skills employers need and start a surprising number of their own companies in the United States.

    Sean Luther, head of InnovatePGH, at one of the organization’s co-working spaces. One reason tech companies have come to Pittsburgh “is because of those non-native-born workers,” Luther says. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report

    “The high-tech engineering and computer science activities that are central to regional economic development today are hugely dependent on these students,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies technology and innovation. “If you go into a lab, it will be full of non-American people doing the crucial research work that leads to intellectual property, technology partnerships and startups.”

    Some 143 U.S. companies valued at $1 billion or more were started by people who came to the country as international students, according to the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonprofit that conducts research on immigration and trade. These companies have an average of 860 employees each and include SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania.

    Whether or not they invent new products or found businesses of their own, international graduates are “a vital source” of workers for U.S.-based tech companies, the National Science Foundation reported last year in an annual survey on the state of American science and engineering. 

    Dave Mawhinney, founding executive director of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University, with Saisri Akondi, an international graduate and co-founder of the startup D.Sole. “There still is a part of the population that asks, ‘What are you doing here?’ ” says Akondi. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report

    It’s supply and demand, said Dave Mawhinney, a professor of entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon and founding executive director of its Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, which helps many of that school’s students do research that can lead to products and startups. “And the demand for people with those skills exceeds the supply.”

    States with the most international students

    California: 140,858

    New York: 135,813

    Texas: 89,546

    Massachusetts: 82,306

    Illinois: 62,299

    Pennsylvania: 50,514

    Florida: 44,767

    Source: NAFSA: Association of International Educators. Figures are from the 2023-24 academic year, the most recent available.

    Related: So much for saving the planet. Climate careers, and many others, evaporate for class of 2025

    That’s in part because comparatively few Americans are going into fields including science, technology, engineering and math. Even before the pandemic disrupted their educations, only 20 percent of college-bound American high school students were prepared for college-level courses in these subjects. U.S. students scored lower in math than their counterparts in 21 of the 37 participating nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on an international assessment test in 2022, the most recent year for which the outcomes are available.

    One result is that international students make up more than a third of master’s and doctoral degree recipients in science and engineering at American universities. Two-thirds of U.S. university graduate students and more than half of workers in AI and AI-related fields are foreign born, according to Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. 

    “A real point of strength, and a reason our robotics companies especially have been able to grow their head counts, is because of those non-native-born workers,” said Luther, in Pittsburgh. “Those companies are here specifically because of that talent.”

    International students are more than just contributors to this city’s success in tech. “They have been drivers” of it, Mawhinney said, in his workspace overlooking the studio where the iconic children’s television program “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” was taped. 

    Jake Mohin, director of solution engineering at a company that uses AI to predict how chemicals will synthesize, uses a co-working space at InnovatePGH in Pittsburgh’s Innovation District. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report

    “Every year, 3,000 of the smartest people in the world come here, and a large proportion of those are international,” he said of Carnegie Mellon’s graduate students. “Some of them go into the research laboratories and work on new ideas, and some come having ideas already. You have fantastic students who are here to help you build your company or to be entrepreneurs themselves.”

    Boosters of the city’s tech-driven turnaround say what’s been happening in Pittsburgh is largely unappreciated elsewhere. It followed the effective collapse of the steel industry in the 1980s, when unemployment hit 18 percent.

    In 2006, Google opened a small office at Carnegie Mellon to take advantage of the faculty and student expertise in computer science and other fields there and at neighboring higher education institutions; the company later moved to a nearby former Nabisco factory and expanded its Pittsburgh workforce to 800 employees. Apple, software and AI giant SAP and other tech firms followed.

    “It was the talent that brought them here, and so much of that talent is international,” said Audrey Russo, CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. 

    Sixty-one percent of the master’s and doctoral students at Carnegie Mellon come from abroad, according to the university. So do 23 percent of those at Pitt, an analysis of federal data shows.

    Related: International students are rethinking coming to the US. That’s a problem for colleges

    The city has become a world center for self-driving car technology. Uber opened an advanced research center here. The autonomous vehicle company Motional — a joint venture between Hyundai and the auto parts supplier Aptiv — moved in. So did the Ford- and Volkswagen-backed Argo AI, which eventually dissolved, but whose founders went on to create the Pittsburgh-based self-driving truck developer Stack AV. The Ford subsidiary Latitude AI and the autonomous flight company Near Earth Autonomy also are headquartered in Pittsburgh.

    Among other tech firms with homes here: Duolingo, which has 830 employees and is worth an estimated $22 billion. It was co-founded by a professor at Carnegie Mellon and a graduate of the university who both came to the United States as international students, from Guatemala and Switzerland, respectively.

    InnovatePGH tracks 654 startups that are smaller than those big conglomerates but together employ an estimated 25,000 workers. Unemployment in Pittsburgh (3.5 percent in April) is below the national average (3.9 percent). Now Pitt and others are developing Hazelwood Green, which includes a former steel mill that closed in 1999, into a new district housing life sciences, robotics and other technology companies. 

    In a series of webinars about starting businesses, offered jointly to students at Pitt and Carnegie Mellon, the most popular installment is about how to found a startup on a student visa, said Rhonda Schuldt, director of Pitt’s Big Idea Center, in a storefront on Forbes Avenue in the Innovation District.

    One of the co-working spaces operated by InnovatePHG in the Pittsburgh Innovation District. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report

    Some international undergraduates continue into graduate school or take jobs with companies that sponsor them so they can keep working on their ideas, Schuldt said.

    “They want to stay in Pittsburgh and build businesses here,” she said.

    There are clear worries that this momentum could come to a halt if the supply of international students continues a slowdown that began even before the new Trump term, thanks to visa processing delays and competition from other countries. 

    The number of international graduate students dropped in the fall by 2 percent, before the presidential election, according to the Institute of International Education. Further declines are expected following the government’s pause on student visa interviews, publicity surrounding visa revocations and arrests and cuts to federal research funding.

    Rhonda Schuldt, director of the Big Idea Center at the University of Pittsburgh. International students “want to stay in Pittsburgh and build businesses here,” Schuldt says. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report

    It’s too early to know what will happen this fall. But D. Sole co-founder Saisri Akondi has heard from friends who planned to come to the United States that they can’t get visas. “Most of these students wanted to start companies,” she said. 

    “I would be lying if I said nothing has changed,” said Akondi, who has been accepted into a master’s degree program in business administration at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business under her existing student visa, though she said her company will stay in Pittsburgh. “The fear has increased.”

    Related: Colleges partnered with an EV battery factory to train students and ignite the economy. Trump’s clean energy war complicates their plans

    This could affect whether tech companies continue to come to Pittsburgh, said Russo, at least unless and until more Americans are better prepared for and recruited into tech-related graduate programs. That’s something universities have not yet begun to do, since the unanticipated threat to their international students erupted only in March, and that would likely take years.

    Audrey Russo, CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. If the number of international students declines, “Who’s going to do the research? Who’s going to be in these teams?” she asks. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report

    “Who’s going to do the research? Who’s going to be in these teams?” asked Russo. “We’re hurting ourselves deeply.”

    The impact could transcend the research and development ecosystem. “I think we’ll see almost immediate ramifications in Pittsburgh in terms of higher-skilled, higher-wage companies hiring here,” said Sean Luther, at InnovatePGH. “And that affects the grocery shops, the barbershops, the real estate.”

    There are other, more nuanced impacts. 

    Mike Madden, left, vice president of InnovatePGH and director of the Pittsburgh Innovation District, talks with University of Pittsburgh graduate student Jayden Serenari in one of InnovatePGH’s co-working spaces. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report

    “Whether we like it or not, it’s a global world. It’s a global economy. The problems that these students want to solve are global problems,” Schuldt said. “And one of the things that is really important in solving the world’s problems is to have a robust mix of countries, of cultures — that opportunity to learn how others see the world. That is one of the most valuable things students tell us they get here.”

    Pittsburgh is a prime example of a place whose economy is vulnerable to a decline in the number of international students, said Brookings’ Muro. But it’s not unique.

    “These scholars become entrepreneurs. They’re adding to the U.S. economy new ideas and new companies,” he said. Without them, “the economy would be smaller. Research wouldn’t get done. Journal articles wouldn’t be written. Patents wouldn’t be filed. Fewer startups would occur.”

    The United States, said Muro, “has cleaned up by being the absolute central place for this. The system has been incredibly beneficial to the United States. The hottest technologies are inordinately reliant on these excellent minds from around the world. And their being here is critical to American leadership.”

    Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, [email protected] or jpm.82 on Signal.

    This story about international students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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