Indian students fight to protect post-study Graduate Route

An umbrella organisation representing Indian students and alumni in the United Kingdom has urged the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to protect the post-study Graduate Route, which allows international students to stay in the UK for two years after graduation to find work.

MAC, the independent committee chaired by Professor Brian Bell, was asked by the UK’s Home Secretary James Cleverly on 11 March 2024 to carry out a speedy review of the Graduate Route and specifically to look for any abuse of the scheme.

The move was widely interpreted by higher education stakeholders as a further attempt to crack down on international student recruitment to British universities after the number of foreign students in the UK soared to nearly 680,000 after the COVID pandemic (from 469,000 in 2018).

The Conservative government is desperate to reduce immigration to the UK before the general election, which is expected later this year, after net migration numbers hit 745,000 in 2022 despite much talk of taking back control of immigration after Brexit. The net migration total was approximately 250,000 in the decade before 2019.

A quick and easy way to cut migration

Reducing overseas student numbers is seen by many in government as the quickest and easiest way to cut net migration – and foreign students coming to the UK for taught masters degrees have already been hit with a ban on bringing family members with them from 1 January 2024.

Visa costs have gone up as well as the surcharge that students must pay to use the National Health Service, which was increased on 6 February from £440 (US$550) to £776 a year, with the immigration health surcharge for those on the Graduate Route rising from £624 to £1,035.

Now, international students and higher education leaders fear the Graduate Route could be under threat again after it survived attempts last year by Suella Braverman, former home secretary (before she was sacked), to cut the length of the post-study work route from two years to six months.

With the MAC given just 10 weeks to complete its review and Bell telling the Home Secretary that this is much shorter than a normal commission, the committee is consulting as widely as possible before it has to make its report on 14 May 2024.

Among those it is keen to hear from are voices representing international students. To this end, Sanam Arora, founder and chairperson of the National Indian Students and Alumni Union UK (NISAU), an umbrella organisation for India and India-related student societies in the UK, has already met with the committee.

Seven-year campaign

Arora told University World News that her evidence focused on how NISAU had campaigned for seven years to bring back the post-work visa after it was scrapped by Theresa May as part of a previous attempt by the Conservative government to put off migration to the UK.

Arora said: “70% of Indian students have told us that it is critical for them to be able to gain work experience in the country they study in after completing studies and that this is a key factor in their decision to choose where to study.

“The emphasis here is on ‘choice’ and ‘work experience’. Students have a choice to study in multiple countries and we should respect that they are choosing to study in our country, typically funding their education through expensive loans that may often involve mortgaging the family homes.

“Their expectation of a potential return on this very significant investment – that can typically be upwards of £50,000-a-year when they study here – is most reasonable. All they want is the chance to be able to gain some meaningful work experience so that they become truly employable and can start to pay some of their loans off.”

Arora also warned the inquiry that without the Graduate Route, the UK will not get access to the “best and brightest” students that its international education strategy talks about attracting to British universities.

“Instead, I fear we will be reduced to a pool of ‘rich and richest’ – only those who can afford not to take loans will then consider coming to the UK. This will be contrary to the UK’s desire to have the world's best talent choosing to study here,” she told University World News.

‘Fair Visa, Fair Chance’

NISAU has launched a campaign, “Fair Visa, Fair Chance”, and hopes to enlist the support of India’s diaspora. It has called on the Indian government to take up protection of the UK’s Graduate Route with the British government, which is led by Rishi Sunak who himself has Indian heritage.

The campaign has attracted much attention in the Indian media, with Lord Karan Bilimoria, co-chair of the UK’s All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on International Students and patron of NISAU UK, telling India Today: “The ability to work for two years post-graduation helps international students to earn money to help pay for their degrees and enable some to get valuable work experience as well as to continue to build strong links with the UK.”

He warned that “Britain would be shooting itself in the foot” if it scrapped or reduced the length of the Graduate Route, which is comparable to other schemes offering post-study work opportunities in English-speaking countries competing with the UK to attract international students.

This view is also shared across the English Channel in France, which recruited 412,000 international students in 2022-23, up 14% of the previous year, and has much cheaper tuition fees for students from outside the European Union as well as a two-year post-study work visa for international postgraduate students.

An ‘own goal’ for UK

Laurent Dupasquier, a French higher education consultant and founder of the Global Employability University Ranking & Survey (GEURS), told University World News: “Viewed from France, the UK’s tightening of conditions for foreign students and the funding problems facing UK universities are seen very much as an own goal in the same way Brexit was seen.

“If you think in terms of soft power and economic benefits, the UK government is basically giving an advantage to its competition, to us in other European countries, as well as other countries competing for international students around the world.”

Anne Marie Graham, chief executive of the UK Council for International Student Affairs, has also made a submission to the MAC review.

She told University World News her message to the committee was that “stability is key for the success of the Graduate Route and the sustainability of the education sector”.

She said: “The Graduate Route is relatively new and needs more time to embed and build up an evidence base. Clear information for employers and students, and a commitment to collect data beyond take-up of visas in order to evaluate the route, is essential.

“Any change to it will be perceived by international students who are investing time and money in the UK as a further restriction on the opportunities available to them, and the UK’s wider offer as a study destination.”

She said: “Clear support for the retention of the Graduate Route visa in its current form would help support sustainable and stable recruitment in spite of other recent policy changes, such as the restrictive dependants’ policy, increases to visa fees and immigration health surcharge.”

This view was shared by Dr David Pilsbury, chief development officer at the Oxford International Education Group (responsible for leading the group’s higher education growth and development strategy), who gave evidence to the MAC on behalf of the UK International Higher Education Committee (IHEC).

He was impressed with the MAC review team and said they were well aware that the UK’s rivals were offering similar schemes to the Graduate Route.

He referred the committee to the IHEC’s recent report Evidence versus Emotion, which as University World News reported, pointed out that the government’s knee-jerk reaction to the increase in international student numbers was based on out-of-date data.

“If the government’s intent is now to cap numbers at 600,000 (the target set out in the UK’s 2019 international education strategy), then we may well have done that given the recent falls in student recruitment even before any potential further falls thanks to the government’s negative messaging,” he said.

Nic Mitchell is a UK-based freelance journalist and PR consultant specialising in European and international higher education. He blogs at www.delacourcommunications.com