Foreign student curbs ‘watered down’ because of money they bring in
SUELLA BRAVERMAN’S plans to cut the number of foreign students in the UK were watered down amid fears they would increase tuition fees for British students, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
The Department for Education (DfE) blocked the Home Secretary’s desire for radical cuts by arguing that international students “subsidise” home fees.
It comes as the latest published figures show that foreign student fees made up 21 per cent of UK universities’ overall income in 2021-22.
Last month, the Home Office announced new restrictions on the ability of foreign students to bring family members to the UK in an effort to reduce annual net migration.
From next year, only students on postgraduate research courses will be able to bring dependants. However, Mrs Braverman had argued for more stringent restrictions on foreign students.
At last October’s Conservative Party conference, she said there were “too many students coming into this country who are propping up, frankly, substandard courses in inadequate institutions.”
According to a note from a Whitehall meeting the same month, the Home Secretary was said to have argued that because the Government had hit a target early to get 600,000 foreign students coming to the UK annually, it was now “time to review and constrain numbers”. Mrs Braverman is understood to have pushed for a reduction in the amount of time students can remain in the country after their courses, while the Government had also previously considered restricting international recruitment to all but elite universities.
However, the DfE headed off the proposals by warning that a collapse in foreign student numbers would require more taxpayers’ money going to universities or higher tuition fees for British students. Since 2017, tuition fees for students studying in England have been frozen at £9,250, meaning their value has been eroded by inflation. A DfE source said: “Where do you think the money comes to subsidise these tuition fees? It’s from the international students.”
They added that the department had “reached a good compromise” with the Home Office and did not expect further restrictions. Jamie Arrowsmith, director of Universities UK International, which represents British higher education institutions on the world stage, last month said that foreign students were plugging funding gaps.
In a foreword to a report from the Higher Education Policy Institute think tank, he said they were “enabling universities to offer a much wider range of courses ... and, increasingly, cross-subsidising the teaching of home undergraduate students, which – thanks to recent high inflation levels – now makes a loss even in England”.