UK should not be using international students as pawns in its culture war
Without the Graduate Route Visa, there is no realistic pathway to encourage people to stay here and use the skills they have learnt
TODAY, the Home Office’s Migration Advisory Committee will publish the findings of its rapid review into the Graduate Route Visa scheme following a request from UK Government ministers.
There have been fears from the international student community, as well as the wider higher education sector, that following this review the UK Government may seek to impose further restrictions on international students, potentially including scrapping the graduate route visa – a move which the head of the Russell Group has said would risk “severe” damage to UK universities.
The Graduate Route Visa was introduced less than three years ago in July 2021, and allows international students studying in the UK to stay in the country for two years after they graduate.
This gives international students an essential buffer period where they can look for work or settle down after completing their degree, rather than being immediately forced to leave the country upon graduation due to the strict expiration dates of their student visas.
This visa has proven to be hugely valuable to so many international students – not least since the hostile UK Government has, as part of its ongoing culture war targeting those from overseas who have made the UK their home, hugely increased the salary threshold for the only realistic alternative to the graduate visa route, the Skilled Worker Visa.
This deplorable move sees the minimum salary required for those on a Skilled Worker Visa massively increase from £26,200 to £38,700 – this increase means that migrant workers in a huge range of sectors who hugely rely on and benefit from the international workforce will no longer be able to stay in the UK unless they are in a job which pays £38,700 or more – a salary unimaginable for so many highly skilled workers.
This salary is even more unimaginable for a first graduate job, yet under these changes and without the Graduate Route Visa, there would be no realistic pathway for most international students to remain in the UK and use the skills they’ve learnt in their degree.
Not only is this deeply cruel and unfair – it’s also a phenomenal act of self-destruction.
Research published last week by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi), Kaplan International Pathways and the National Union of Students found that Graduate Route Visa holders in the first full year of the scheme had a net benefit to the UK economy of approximately £70 million.
With the number of users of the scheme having increased since its first year of introduction, the estimated benefit for this coming academic year could be more than five times this figure, showing that scrapping the Graduate Visa Route would have a significant and destructive direct impact on the public purse.
That said, the indirect economic impacts of scrapping the scheme are even more severe. If international students are unable to stay and work in the UK once they’ve earned their degree, they’re far less likely to want to come and study here.
This, combined with the Home Office’s hostile environment policies which deliberately make living in the UK as a migrant increasingly unpleasant, and new rules on international students bringing dependents with them while they study (a move which disproportionately affects women), fewer and fewer international students will choose the UK as a place to study.
Previous research from Hepi from 2023 found that the total economic benefit of international students in the UK was £41.9 billion in the 2021-22 academic year, with Glasgow one of the cities in the UK benefiting the most.
Some of this is as a result of exploitative tuition fees, but much of it is the result of world-class research by international students, spending in local businesses, and the wider benefits of the skills and contributions made by international students to society.
ADDITIONALLY, it is an unacceptable yet nonetheless true fact that international student fees cross-subsidise the tuition of home students, particularly here in Scotland.
Universities have become increasingly reliant on international student fees to make up for underfunding from the Scottish Government and their own mismanagement of funds.
As critical as it is that this unsustainable underfunding is rectified as soon as possible, this will not happen overnight and it is simply a fact that any measure which would significantly reduce the number of international students studying here would present a critical
financial threat to a number of our universities.
All of this said, as much as restricting or removing the Graduate Route Visa would be economically reckless, even more importantly it would also ruin people’s lives.
International students have faced the brunt of cruel Home Office policy for quite some time now, and face significant challenges such as increased rates of homelessness and no recourse to public funds once they do arrive in the UK.
International educational experiences benefit the diversity, knowledge exchange and culture of not just our universities, not just our country, but our planet too.
My university experience in Paisley was undoubtedly improved by the brilliant friends I made
This isn’t only deeply cruel and unfair but a phenomenal act of self-destruction
from all over the world, but the uncertainty and hostility facing international students puts all of this at risk – not to mention the deeply felt human impact on international students themselves, who after all are at the very centre of this.
The Scottish Government’s recent white paper on migration in an independent Scotland proposed a “Scottish Connections” visa which, among other things, would be a significant expansion of the Graduate Visa Route – allowing international graduates from Scottish universities to stay in Scotland for five years while also leading towards settlement and citizenship if desired.
This is precisely the thinking needed from the UK Government – the graduate route should be expanded, not curtailed.
We should be embracing international students with open arms, not penalising them and using them as pawns in a pointless and nasty culture war.
If the UK Government does indeed continue to roll back the rights of international students, it would not only be cruel and unnecessary, but deeply self-destructive.