For visa policy, the year ahead will be shaped by a Tory party that is a bit like end of season Tottenham Hotspur – out of Europe, on their third manager in a year and worried about what life looks like without their star striker. Sunak could face and lose three by-elections before the party conference so going route one with radical action on visas could become an attractive diversion. The party may even, just like Spurs, chose to appoint a fourth manager in an attempt to be in contention in 2025.
UK Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, having been thwarted by the Cabinet on more far-reaching student visa reform last time round, could start her speeches with the words, “I shall fight on. I fight to win.” Conviction politics and evoking the spirit of Margaret Thatcher have always gone down well with most parts of the Conservative party and if she has aspirations for the top job it’s not a bad ploy. With the clock ticking down to a General Election just 20 months she has every chance of being centre stage.
Some universities have made quite extraordinary increases in international student numbers in recent years and should carefully weigh the consequences of their choices this Autumn. One plausible scenario is that institutions will be suckered into maximizing recruitment from affected countries in September ahead of the clampdown on dependent visas. The resulting visa figures would be more than enough for the Home Office and worried Tories to bay about irresponsible recruitment and seek a further round of constraints.
Pitched against populist right wing politicians fighting for re-election and a public that is largely disengaged from higher education the sector becomes increasingly vulnerable. However cynical or wrong-headed, an MP can claim the authority of having been publicly elected to represent the views of constituents which is more than any vice-chancellor can say. They will be listening to people like Eric Kaufmann who spoke at the first National Conservatism conference and likes to remind Tories of the view there is no election victory in increasing immigration.
More Than This or Hold the Line?
Despite all the happy talk and positioning by the higher education sector, MP’s may believe that there is little evidence of public support, let alone a mandate, for significantly more international students.
Even the sector’s own research commissioned by UniversitiesUK from Public First suggests that the public does not support a rise in international students. The answer to question 15c, which has been largely misrepresented by the sector as indicating the public favours growth in numbers, shows that 46% would accept the same number and 21% want fewer. It seems reasonable to argue that this means that 67% of the public do not support a continuation of the rise in international students that we have seen in the past few years.
YouGov tell us that concern over migration has been climbing for a year – from 53% up to 57% say that immigration has been too high for the last ten years and 17% say it’s about right which indicates 74% want immigration the same or lower. A politician attuned to the data and public opinion will be questioning unfettered growth in international student numbers. This is particularly so when the surge in growth is driven by countries where the biggest influence on a study abroad decision is “Immigration policies of destination countries” above even job opportunities and quality of higher education.
Money For Nothing
The sector’s fightback is summarized by ApplyBoard UK Advisory Group member (and director of HEPI) Nicholas Hillman who is reported as saying, “If people want to oppose the presence of international students, fine, but they should only do that if they know the benefits they bring and do so with their eyes wide open.”
The glossy launches and expensive research making that economic case are presumably an attempt to open those eyes. But when respondents were told by Public First that the sector contributed nearly £28bn to the UK economy a majority (57%) still said they wanted the same number or fewer international students. One suspects that the obsession with making the economic case, at a point when some headlines reflect how much universities are raking in, is aligned with self-interest and possibly even morally shabby.
Lord Bilimoria, the co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Students, suggests there should be an aim of 1 million international students in the UK by 2030. ApplyBoard’s Jo Johnson considered, with unusual circumspection, 900,000 or more as appropriate. Neither seemed to engage with the polling evidence that the majority of the public do not support such growth.
Where Is The Love?
While the sector’s tendency to pitch a case based on the economic value of universities seems reasonable it doesn’t cut to the heart of people’s suspicions that are partly driven by the drip, drip of years of stories about fat cat vice chancellors, dissatisfied students, Mickey Mouse degrees and grade inflation. Unfortunately, the sector, when challenged, is Wildean in suggesting it has nothing to declare but its genius when a little more humility might go a long way. It is difficult for the public to trust a sector that doesn’t accept its fallibility.
There are other deep-seated problems for universities in the recent Public Attitudes to Higher Education 2022 research by UPP Foundation/HEPI. Among the figures, 58% don’t think university prepares people for the real world and 52% think society values a university degree too highly. 27% are sceptical or negative about universities and 30% are broadly uninterested which indicates that more than half those surveyed actively oppose universities or think them irrelevant*.
Another drumbeat is whether universities are turning out students with qualifications that fit them for the workplace let alone justify the level of debt. The current Prime Minister is on record as saying that he wants to “take a tougher approach to university degrees that saddle students with debt, without improving their earning potential.” A former Prime Minister’s son says degrees are “irrelevant” and Reed Recruitment says, “It looks like traditional graduate jobs are going out of fashion.”
Sha la-la-la-lee
That’s the sound of the higher education sector sticking its fingers in its ears while complaining to an uncaring universe.
What the public hears from universities is that home students should be charged more, that the loss of EU applicants has been a tragedy and that the sector is a major contributor to Britain’s soft power around the world. This plays into a population facing the largest hit to living standards since records began in 1956, taxpayers underwriting student loans to a record tune of £205bn, and no obvious evidence that soft power is helping secure trade deals. Sceptics might even suggest that if UK higher education is so highly regarded then EU students would, whatever the price, always choose Ipswich over Paris and Canterbury over Rome.
The sector’s efforts to promulgate its message often looks like a self-interest, or perhaps self-help, group. Chris Skidmore’s, International Higher Education Commission, is the latest example and doesn’t appear to have anybody without a vested and sometimes commercial interest in recruiting more international students. Among the grandly titled “founding commissioners” the ubiquitous Jo Johnson from ApplyBoard makes an appearance, along with seven VCs and three CEOs of sector pressure groups, with Oxford International Education Group claiming they support the Commission under the banner of corporate social responsibility(!).
This is, of course, the Chris Skidmore who co-wrote a book, with those paragons of political, economic and personal credibility Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab and Liz Truss, which claimed, “”Once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world.” He was Minister with responsibility for universities for five months which was, for the record, longer than Jo Johnson who managed six weeks. Would it be a great surprise that the public took their protestations with a pinch of salt?
Where there may be some hope is Johnson’s recent acceptance that “…there is a weakening consensus in British politics on the benefits of international study in our system…We need to acknowledge that and understand why it’s become weaker and what the sector needs to do to reinforce support for international study and its contribution to the UK.” It’s unfortunate that he then chose to talk about “false narratives” because although these do exist it would have been more refreshing to see the sector accept that it is not without fault. Disparaging public opinion as being driven by fake news is a tired and demeaning stance that should be replaced by open engagement and dialogue.
NOTES
- The headline is derived from U2’s first single on Island Records “Eleven O’Clock Tick Tock”. They played it to start and end their gig supporting The Photos at the Marquee in July 1980 which is when I first saw them😊.
- “More Than This” is a 1982 song from Roxy Music. “Hold the Line” is a 1978 tune from American rock behemoths Toto whose name apparently comes from the Latin phrase for “all encompassing” and not the dog in The Wizard of Oz.
- “Money for Nothing” is a 1985 song from Dire Straits that is distinguished with a great riff but also Sting singing backing vocal, “I want my MTV” to the same melody as The Police song “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” (which is why Virgin insisted on getting a percentage).
- 1972’s “Where is the Love” by Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack is sublime and not to be confused with the Black Eyed Peas song of the same name which is just quite good.
- “Sha La La La La Lee” is a 1966 number from the Small Faces and a great reminder of what a force the late Steve Marriott was. He recorded the song when he was 19.
* I am conscious that the UPP/HEPI research had some good news such as “77% agree universities are important to research and innovation; and 57% agree they are important to the UK economy as a whole”. However, it was startling that the “Broadly Uninterested” segment was so large that the authors had to acknowledge its presence but “focus the majority of our exploration of the segments on the other groups”.
Image by Davie Bicker from Pixabay