UK slips as top spot for world leaders
A new survey has revealed that the UK is no longer the most popular place of education for the world’s political leaders.
According to the Higher Education Police Institute (also known as HEPI) survey, 57 foreign leaders, including presidents, prime ministers and monarchs, received a higher education in the UK.
The US tops the list with 58 — a turnaround from previous surveys in which the UK topped the chart.
Nick Hillman, HEPI’s director, said UK immigration policies restricted the numbers of overseas students going to British universities.
“In the past, we have been more successful than any other country in attracting the world’s future leaders. But these new figures suggest our pole position is under threat,” Hillman said.
“We need to adopt a bold educational exports strategy, remove students from the government’s main migration target and roll out the red carpet when people come to study here.
“One practical way to make all that happen would be to end the Home Office having complete control over student migration and to share it across government departments instead, as they do in other countries.”
Students are currently counted toward the UK’s net immigration figure. Chancellor Philip Hammond and former foreign secretary Boris Johnson have both reportedly argued that students be withdrawn from the immigration target.
In January a spokesman for the prime minister said: “The position of the prime minister on this is clear. The definition of an immigrant is someone who arrives for a period of more than 12 months.”
In 2016-17, there were 440,000 foreign students studying at UK universities. About a third of non-EU students in the UK are from China.
Third placed France educated 40 world leaders, with the rest way behind, including Russia with 10 and Australia on nine. China educated two political leaders from outside its shores.
Leaders educated in the UK include Imran Khan, the incoming Pakistan prime minister, who studied at Oxford University, while other newcomers include Julius Maada Bio and David J Francis, the president and the chief minister of Sierra Leone, who studied at Bradford and Southampton universities respectively.
Armen Sarkissian, the president of Armenia, studied physics as a postgraduate at Cambridge, and Giuseppe Conte, Italy’s new prime minister, claims to have studied at Girton College, Cambridge, though this is disputed.
The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst is one of the UK’s most popular educators of leaders from the world’s smallest states, ranging from Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, to Prince Alois, the regent of Liechtenstein, and Hassanal Bolkiah, the sultan of Brunei.