Tag: cent

  • Weekend Reading: How will universities respond to the 6 per cent international student levy?  

    Weekend Reading: How will universities respond to the 6 per cent international student levy?  

    Author:
    Vincenzo Raimo

    Published:

    This guest blog was kindly authored by Vincenzo Raimo, an independent international higher education consultant 

    The UK government’s proposed 6 per cent levy on international tuition fees has added yet another layer of complexity to the already fragile international student recruitment landscape. The levy is intended to fund the introduction of targeted maintenance grants for home students, but for universities it represents an additional cost that could reshape recruitment strategies and, in some cases, make international activity unviable. 

    Higher education providers will not all respond in the same way. Their choices will be shaped by their position in the market, their pricing power, and their cost of acquisition (CoA) – the real cost of recruiting through to enrolment of each international student. 

    In a previous blog I set out five institutional archetypes in international student recruitment: Prestige Players, Volume Hunters, Strategists, Opportunists, and Outsourcers. These archetypes can help us think through the likely responses to the levy, and where the risks and opportunities lie. 

    Levy Responses: From Resilience to Retreat 

    • Pass-throughs (High Brand, Low CoA): These are the strong Prestige Player institutions with the brand power to raise fees by 6 per cent (or more) without losing applicants. For them, the levy will likely be passed straight on to students. In fact, some may look back and wonder why they had not already increased fees earlier. The impact on recruitment will be minimal. 
    • Squeezed Prestige (High Brand, High CoA): Some universities occupy a less comfortable position. They may have strong brands, but their recruitment costs are high often due to heavy scholarship spending and dependence on expensive marketing and recruitment strategies. They can pass on some of the levy, but margins will erode. Expect this group to look carefully at their agent portfolios, renegotiate commission deals, and cut back on scholarships. Opportunists often sit here, swinging between good years and bad. 
    • Absorbers (Low Brand, Low CoA): A number of institutions will choose to absorb the levy, keeping international fees flat to remain competitive. Margins will tighten, but recruitment volumes are likely to remain stable. These are often Strategists or Outsourcers, who have already kept their CoA under control through efficiency or partnerships. They will see absorbing the levy as a necessary cost of staying in the game. 
    • Exits (Low Brand, High CoA): For some, the levy may be the final straw. Institutions already dependent on discounting and agent commissions who charge low international fees to chase volume, may no longer see international recruitment as viable. Volume Hunters are the most exposed here. Their models are built on fragile margins, and the levy risks pushing them into unsustainable territory. For some, exit will not mean giving up on international students altogether. But it may mean dramatically scaling back, consolidating markets, and retreating from high-risk geographies. 

    Alternative Paths 

    Alongside these responses, two further groups are worth highlighting. 

    • Innovators: Some universities will take the levy as a trigger to rethink their model entirely. Expect more to explore transnational education, offshore hubs, or pathway partnerships as a way of diversifying income and reducing exposure to UK-based fee inflation. Innovation may prove the most sustainable long-term response, if vice-chancellors and governing bodies have the stomach for it. 
    • Niche/Selective Recruiters: For specialist institutions – arts, theology, agriculture, or mission-driven providers – international student recruitment has never been about volume. For them, the levy is simply the cost of doing business. They will continue to recruit selectively, valuing diversity and global presence more than surplus. 

    What Does This Mean for the Sector? 

    The archetype framework helps us see that there is no single sector response. Institutions will react in line with their pricing power, cost base, and strategic orientation. Prestige Players may pass through the levy with little concern. Absorbers will hold their nerve and tighten margins. Volume Hunters, by contrast, risk being forced out of the game altogether. 

    For these institutions, scaling back international recruitment will not just be a strategic shift but a financial shock. The loss of international fee income raises an uncomfortable question of how they will fill the gap – whether by yet more cost cutting, chasing riskier sources of income, or considering more fundamental changes to their operating models.   

    The levy therefore brings the deeper issue into sharp focus: the sustainability of international student recruitment. Chasing volume is no longer enough. Institutions must use this moment to confront the costs of recruiting and support these students, rethink pricing, and reconsider the value they offer. Those that do so will be far better placed to build resilient, sustainable futures in international education.  

    Source link

  • The fifty per cent participation target is no more. Again.

    The fifty per cent participation target is no more. Again.

    Dare we say he felt the hand of history on his shoulder?

    In his Labour Party Conference speech Prime Minister Keir Starmer set a new participation target for participation in education at level 4 and above (including higher education, further education, and some apprenticeships) for young people. He said:

    Two thirds of our children should either go to university or take on a gold standard apprenticeship

    As subsequently briefed, the target (which replaces, somehow, the old 50 per cent target from the Blair years) relates to higher skills, either through university, further education or taking on a gold standard apprenticeship. It will include at least ten percent of young people pursuing higher technical education or apprenticeships that the economy needs by 2040, a near doubling of today’s figure.

    Alongside a restatement of recent further education policies (£800m extra into funding for 16-19 year olds in FE next year, and measures to make FE “world class”) Starmer couched the target in the language of “respect”, drawing on the now familiar tale of his father, the toolmaker.

    Because if you are a kid or a parent of a kid who chooses an apprenticeship, what does it say to you? Do we genuinely, as a country – afford them the same respect?

    The numbers now?

    We don’t really have the data at hand to judge progress against the target to date – we would imagine a new measure would be developed. The press release points to the most recent data we have relating to participation in any level four education before the age of 25 (CHEP-25 “all level four”): around half of the cohort that turned 15 in 2012-13 (and thus might have entered university in 2015-16) participated in the kind of provision the prime minister talked about. As this cohort turned 25 in 2022-23, we do not yet have data for future cohorts.

    In the last two recruitment cycles (2024, and 2025) 37 per cent of 18 year olds in England entered university directly from school via UCAS. This equates to 240,510 young people in 2024 and 249,780 in 2025 – out of an England domiciled 18 year old population of 650,710 in 2024 and 675,710 in 2025.

    In contrast just 15,085 adults (19+) participated in-year in provision at level four or above in the further education and skills sector during 2023-24. And there were 100,490 higher (level 4) apprenticeship starts in the same year.

    The uncancellable target

    It was originally proposed by Tony Blair during his 1999 leader’s address to conference that the government should have:

    a target of 50 per cent of young adults going into higher education in the next century.

    And this plan was reiterated in the 2001 manifesto, and the promise maintained in both 2005 and 2010 :

    It is time for an historic commitment to open higher education to half of all young people before they are 30, combined with increased investment to maintain academic standards.

    The original target date was 2010, but by 2008 then universities minister John Denham had already conceded that this target would not be met. And it was not met under a Labour government.

    It was never universally popular – in 2009 the CBI made a high profile call to drop the 50 per cent aspiration. Under Coalition Prime Minister David Cameron, then Business Secretary Vince Cable was the first of many to formally cancel the target. On 12 October 2010 he told the House of Commons that:

    We must not perpetuate the idea, encouraged by the pursuit of a misguided 50% participation target, that the only valued option for an 18-year-old is a three-year academic course at university. Vocational training, including apprenticeships, can be just as valuable as a degree, if not more so

    Which you’d imagine would be the end of it, a non-binding (it never featured in legislation) aspiration set by the previous administration rejected by a new minister.

    Cancel culture

    As the magic figure approached (the goal was achieved in 2019) the general disapproval of the long-scrapped target shifted into outright hostility. By 2017 Nick Boles (remember him?) was not outside the political mainstream in saying:

    The policy of unbridled expansion has now reached its logical conclusion.

    All to no avail. By 2020 the ever-thoughtful Gavin Williamson seemed he was making it into a personal vendetta:

    When Tony Blair uttered that 50 per cent target for university attendance, he cast aside the other 50 per cent. It was a target for the sake of a target, not with a purpose… As Education Secretary, I will stand for the forgotten 50 per cent.

    While former universities minister Chris Skidmore was characteristically a little more measured in his critique. Just about the only politician willing to stick up for the idea was Tony Blair himself, who in 2022 backed calls for 70 per cent of young people to enter higher education.

    By this point, Rishi Sunak had become Prime Minister, and was telling the 2023 Conservative conference that:

    As he renewed another familiar attack on “rip off degrees”. This brought about a robust response from Keir Starmer as leader of the opposition:

    I never thought I would hear a modern Conservative Prime Minister say that 50 per cent of our children going to university was a “false dream”. My Dad felt the disrespect of vocational skills all his life. But the solution is not and never will be levelling-down the working class aspiration to go to university.

    If anything, Starmer missed the opportunity at that stage to point out the volume of vocational going on in universities – but that probably speaks to the polling and public perception of “universities” that reinforces the challenge the sector has in surfacing it all.

    Delivery, delivery, delivery

    Targets and aspirations are all very well, but you would expect a government as focused on “delivery” as our current one to have a clear plan to drive up participation. And though welcome, the previously announced funding for further education is not it.

    Driving up participation to such a level is far beyond what can be achieved by tweaks around apprenticeship incentives or even the roll-out of the (surprisingly unpopular) Lifelong Learning Entitlement. We are promised more details about how it’s going to work in the forthcoming post-16 education white paper.

    History tells us that the majority of any increase in participation at level 4 will come from the efforts of our universities, through new courses and innovative delivery modes. And this will take participation in higher education far above the 50 per cent target.

    Source link

  • UKRI increases PhD stipend by 8 per cent

    UKRI increases PhD stipend by 8 per cent

    Let’s get the headlines out of the way first.

    UKRI is increasing its PhD stipend by eight per cent to £20,780 from 1 October 2025. Wonkhe understands that this will not be funded by a reduction in the overall number of grants but instead forms part of UKRI’s funding settlement for 2025–26.

    Pay

    This means that UKRI will provide a take home income that is equivalent to the take home National Living Wage. This is not the same as the Real Living Wage but it is nonetheless a significant and welcome increase.

    This is the single largest real terms increase of the stipend for funded students since 2003. Given that UKRI supports 20 per cent of doctoral students, and many universities choose to mirror the terms of UKRI, this will undoubtedly have a significant impact on improving the conditions of PGR students.

    There is a sort of unwritten expectation that providers will generally peg their own grants to the levels of UKRI’s. Albeit, as we learn from the accompanying financial analysis that goes with the main report about around one in five students receive an amount above the minimum stipend. However, while half of respondents to a survey on the UKRI stipend indicated that at least 90 per cent of their non-UKRI funded doctoral students received a stipend equivalent to that of UKRI’s minimum level, around one in ten indicated that all of their non-UKRI funded doctoral students receive a stipend lower than UKRI’s minimum.

    The potential implications of this are that some providers will further stretch their already stretched resources in maintaining UKRI’s funding levels, or that some providers will fall behind the UKRI minimum rate for students they fund directly. Prior to today’s announcement providers were generally positive about mooted increases. However, while 72 per cent of respondents say they would increase their own stipends to match the National Living Wage this is lower than the 89 per cent who said they would be very or somewhat likely to increase their own stipends by inflation (and a little higher than the 66 per cent said who said they would be very or somewhat likely to increase their stipend if it was anchored to the Real Living Wage).

    Providers, for their part, stated in interviews that

    Institutions would endorse in principle an increase in line with price inflation (at a minimum) or National Living Wage (which institutions feel, morally, would be preferable) and thought they would be able to match this for university funded stipends. However, for UKRI training grants, were such a raise not accompanied by additional grant funding from UKRI, ROs might need to reduce student numbers in the future to ensure they can continue paying the minimum stipend.

    Providers may see some good news in the increase in the minimum fee for a UKRI student increasing by 4.6 per cent to £5,006.This should mean that providers can recoup a slightly greater amount of funding for their students and like with grants many providers will align their home PGR fees to the UKRI minimum. This is an entirely different question as to whether providers are anywhere close to recouping the actual cost of teaching PGR students.

    Terms

    The funding increase will grab the headlines but the revisions to UKRI’s Standard Terms and Conditions of Training Grant (TGCs) are likely to be as impactful.

    In February 2023 UKRI commissioned Advance HE to carry out a review of its TGCs from an EDI perspective which has been considered alongside UKRI’s own new deal for postgraduate research. There is also a new companion document to the update to the TGCs by the UKRI commissioned Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Caucus (EDICa). In their report EDICa highlighted the impacts of child support on the continuation of studies, the wide variability in disabled students getting the support they need, the inflexibility in moving between full and part-time study, and the considerable time it takes in getting medical evidence for securing adjustments. As the authors state

    However, for many current doctoral training students, the system of support in its current form is entrenching wider inequalities, particularly relating to caring responsibilities, disability and the benefits that may be achieved through change of mode of study.

    This seems to be a message that UKRI has taken seriously.

    The first thing to point out is that UKRI is not a regulator and it is at pains to point this out

    UKRI is not a regulator and while we for the first time are explicit that we expect compliance with consumer law, employment law, Office for Students and Medr regulation (all where applicable), providers remain responsible for their own compliance and regulators for enforcement.

    It feels self evident but the revised terms make it explicit that the role of UKRI is to steer the organisations it funds, and by extension the sector, toward better conditions for PGR students. UKRI will impose conditions on its own grants but it has a wider set of expectations for the sector on improving the conditions for PGRs.

    The reason it is steering not shoving the sector are numerous. Primarily, it has limited powers within HERA but it also acknowledges that it is providers that are best placed to make decisions on their own students. The revision to the terms is the moment where some of the ambitions of the Tickell review have come to life in loosening the conditions and reducing the bureaucracy on student grant funding.

    This new flexibility comes in a number of forms. UKRI has extended the time a student can draw their stipend while on sick leave from 13 to 28 weeks. UKRI is also removing the requirement for students to provide medical evidence when taking medical leave, instead this process will be more closely managed by a students’ provider. This is because obtaining a diagnosis was a barrier to students taking the leave they needed.

    It is in their approach to supporting disabled students where the dynamic of UKRi improving its own conditions while encouraging universities to do likewise comes to light. They note

    We will require that disabled students are offered reasonable adjustments at the earliest opportunity and that the research organisation or provider has a policy to support this. For our part, we will update UKRI’s Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA) Framework in April 2025.

    Again, the expectation is that providers will not just act reasonably but they will only ask students for evidence of a disability where it is necessary to do so. This is a reflection of EHRC guidance, recommendations of the OfS Disabled Students’ Commission and the Bristol v Abrahart judgement.

    Finally, UKRI is removing restrictions on students moving between full or part-time modes of study. Their view is that providers are better placed to advise on student modes of study, and they may offer additional funding if they wish.

    There are other important measures within here which deserve consideration. Grant funding will include an individual risk assessment when a student is pregnant, breastfeeding or has given birth in the last six months. There is not strong evidence that PGR students are disadvantaged when joining a trade union. And there are still a whole range of challenges in getting support for international students due to the interplay between visa regulations and PGR study.

    In total this feels like the kind of policy change that the sector has been calling for. It is not the kind of public argument, back and forth debate, that has been seen on other culture measures like updating the REF. Instead, it is a considered series of changes to the actual conditions of PGR students that will put more money in their pockets while allowing greater flexibility around: leave, illness, support for disabled students, and mode of study. It is not perfect and the wider pressures PGR students will feel are still acute, but it is a big step forward.

    UKRI has taken an approach which the sector may recognise as reasonable. They have updated their own conditions based on the evidence presented to them, explained where they have chosen not to, and given greater flexibility to providers to do the things they believe are important.

    Source link