Visa 'reforms' will hit universities, UK think-tank warns

A report from an influential, left-leaning British think-tank has accused the government of getting its migration policy wrong by focusing on controls on international students, and warns that it risks damaging the long-term interests of UK higher education.

In the report published at the end of November, the Institute for Public Policy Research, or IPPR, says that the government should abandon the net migration target, which includes students from outside the European Union.

IPPR says the target creates a “perverse incentive” for cutting international student numbers, and is incompatible with the growth of one of the UK’s crucial export industries.

The report, Britain Wants You!, exposes tensions between government departments.

On the one side is the Home Office, which wants to demonstrate a rapid reduction in net migration into the UK while insisting that there is no cap on international student numbers. On the other is the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, or BIS, which is responsible for universities and is aware of the importance of international students as a revenue stream.

In its July 2013 international export strategy, BIS announced that it aimed to secure an extra £3 billion (US$5 billion) in contracts for the UK’s education providers overseas, partly achieved by attracting almost 90,000 extra overseas university students by 2018 – an increase of around 20%.

Warnings

The report repeats warnings from Universities UK, the university lobby group, and others that the visa reforms are creating the impression that the UK is less welcoming to international students and that its universities are simply not open for business.

IPPR points out that in recent years UK education has been a growth sector, delivering annual increases in exports.

“However, data now indicates that international student entrants to higher education for the 2012-13 academic year were broadly flat. This represents a significant slow-down from previous trends – from 2007-08 to 2011-12 the average annual growth rate was 6.3%.”

But the number of visas issued to foreign students to attend courses in the further education sector fell by 46% in the year to December 2012, and the income that further education colleges received from Tier Four (mostly university) student tuition fees is estimated to have decreased by £11 million between 2010-11 and 2011-12, from £52.7 million to £41.6 million.

The report says that most of the decline in the number of student visas issued to non-EU nationals – excluding shorter-term student visitors – can be explained by falls of 62%, 38% and 30% in the numbers of students arriving from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh respectively between 2011 and 2012. The number of Chinese students coming to the UK increased slightly, by 3%, between 2010 and 2012.

With 40% of all international students in higher education entering university through pathway programmes with other providers, a decline in the numbers of international students attending English language schools and further education colleges is “likely to have a severe knock-on effect on the higher education sector further down the line”, the IPPR says.

“It is vitally important to increase the number of international students in pathway programmes (in further education or receiving English language tuition, and in both public and private education settings), rather than focusing purely on increasing the number of students in higher education.”

A lighter touch – or lose out

Among new restrictions introduced by the government to control abuse of the student visa process are credibility interviews for the majority of Tier Four applicants.

While the IPPR says that preventing abuse of the visa regime is important, and warrants a continued firm approach, “interviewing the majority of applicants is not a good use of scarce public resources; the government should be more selective in its approach”.

It also wants a lighter touch regime for universities that have 'highly trusted' status to recruit Tier Four students, with audits only every two to three years rather than annually if no evidence of failure to adhere to the regime is discovered.

Particular concern has been expressed at the impact of the visa reforms on recruitment of students from India.

An Ipsos MORI survey for IPPR of 500 young people – aged between 16 and 30 – in seven large cities in India who were interested in studying abroad found that the UK, despite retaining its position as a study destination, was at risk of losing out to its major competitors.

While 70% of those surveyed were considering the UK as a destination, the results suggested that the UK could not continue to rely heavily on its positive reputation alone if it wanted to attract the brightest and best students to UK institutions.

A majority – 54% – regarded the opportunity to stay in the country to work after completing their course as an extremely important factor in deciding where to study. However, when told that the UK had restricted the right of students to work in the UK after completing their studies, 91% of respondents thought that this would put off either ‘most’ or ‘some’ students.

IPPR says that the respondents’ experience of applying for a visa to study in the UK contrasts with their experience of applying to one of the UK’s closest competitor countries. Almost a third of students who had applied for a visa to study in the UK found the application process difficult, compared to just one in eight who had applied to Australia.