Text first published in University World News (08 June 2024)
The roller coaster ride of political fortune and its impact on international student recruitment continues to create a feeling of instability in higher education sectors across the globe. With talk of banning ‘Mickey Mouse degrees’ a feature of United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s opening week of pre-election policy statements, the amusement park comparisons seem increasingly apt.
Particularly so when universities around the world seem addicted to pursuing gravity-defying, adrenaline-fuelled recruitment targets where the risks may increasingly outweigh the benefits.
More troubling is the possibility that the failure of universities to engage sufficiently to gain widespread public support has left them open to increasing levels of political game-playing and interference.
In several countries the fundamental value of universities and degree-level education is being questioned as never before and the intersection with immigration policy has become a toxic mix.
Where these problems are compounded by economic difficulties and a disinterested or increasingly hostile public, there is a real need for institutions to avoid being seen as theme parks run by the aloof, rich and privileged.
A Very British problem?
Universities around the UK have been finding it difficult to know whether to groan about the ending of dependant visas for postgraduate students or cheer as the Migration Advisory Committee and government confirmed that the Graduate Route to post-study work remained
open.
Politicians are sending conflicting messages, with Lord Cameron, the foreign secretary, saying: “There’s no limit on the number that can come” and aligning with Lord Bilimoria who called for ‘one million [international] students’.
Meanwhile, Lord Jo Johnson, an ex-education secretary and chair of FutureLearn whose seat on the Apply Board advisory board gives him a wider range of perspectives, cautioned: “The economic benefits are not enough to offset wider political concerns.”
In a recent blog, I drew several comparisons between the current dynamics in the UK and the themes of the 1987 British cult classic film Withnail and I. Critically, one character says: “Politics, man. If you’re hanging onto a rising balloon, you’re presented with a difficult decision. Let go before it’s too late or hang on and keep getting higher, posing the question: how long can you keep a grip on the rope?”
Some institutions are a long way from the ground, with the University of Hull, as just one example, registering a year-on-year increase of 1,207% (from 70 to 915) in students from Nigeria in 2021-22.
The folly of relying on continued growth at such pace is clear. Even before the restrictions on dependant visas, it was evident that some Russell Group institutions could not compete for recruitment from key markets with their better-placed peers in the group. They will be forced to hunt further afield for students and their presence will bring harsh competition for universities further down the feeding chain.
This comes at a time when recent agent surveys by INTO have indicated that the UK’s relative attractiveness, compared to the United States and Australia, has declined substantially since 2021.
The 65% year-on-year decline in the Nigerian naira against the UK pound has put a far more serious dent in recruitment than the loss of dependant visas.
A growing propensity for students from China to consider alternative countries and the affordability advantages of nations outside the big four recruiting countries are a growing drain on valuable sources of student interest.
Successive generations of international officers have found that economic swings are par for the course. The decline of the Tiger Economies in the late 1990s was a significant factor and there have always been ebbs and flows in national currencies, government sponsorship and other factors.
It seems possible, however, that we are now seeing more fundamental and long-lasting change and that the era of, what some consider, academic imperialism is in an accelerating doom loop.
Sticking plasters for structural failures
A subplot, as reported in University World News in March, has been the announcement by over 50 British universities of cutbacks and redundancies, which created an unlikely alliance between unions and university bosses seeking additional government funding.
However, the BBC noted this week that “universities in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire have spent over £100 million [US$128 million] making more than 6,000 staff redundant since 2015”. That raises the reasonable question as to whether some institutions with long-term declines in attracting domestic students because of courses, locations and-or poor management, have used international fees as a sticking plaster to cover wounds requiring surgery.
It’s a complex situation where the fundamental structure of UK higher education and its funding are coming under closer scrutiny. With political and public support far from guaranteed, this has led some voices in the sector to suggest that a more constructive approach would be to recognise and respond to broader concerns and constraints.
Professor Wendy Alexander, vice-principal (international) at the University of Dundee, suggested a need to be more “self-reflective”; David Pilsbury of Oxford International Education Group has said that “we still talk to ourselves too much”; and Chris Husbands, former vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University has cautioned that “we can’t expect to be given more simply to carry on doing the things we are doing”.
Before the announcement of an election and the removal of a threat to the Graduate Route, the sector seemed willing to consider these points. Subsequently, it has gone very quiet on issues such as data transparency, grade inflation and preferential treatment for international students with lower A-level grades or equivalents.
This seems a retrograde step at a point when the Conservative Party is campaigning on a platform that could close down one in eight university courses and the Labour leader has clarified a political choice to fund the NHS rather than reduce or eliminate tuition fees.
It Could Be Worse
Despite all of the above, it seems possible that the relief provided by an intact Graduate Route combined with visa issues and poor publicity in Australia and Canada could come to the rescue of the UK.
Research has shown that students are applying to more countries and it is likely that they are willing to hold out on decision-making until the last possible minute.
The US stepping up its game in terms of visa meetings in India may be another fly in the ointment for competitor countries, although there are late-breaking rumours of a deterioration in recruitment from India that will be bad news for everyone.
If the UK sector has been on a roller coaster ride, both Australian and Canadian institutions could probably make a case that they have whiplash from hastily introduced and poorly considered policies. It all seemed so promising for Australia when the Universities Accord report was produced in February 2024 and seemed to produce exactly the sort of long-term framework universities would prefer to guide decision-making.
However, Mark Scott, vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney, immediately noted that, despite underfunding being acknowledged, “it is perplexing that the only revenue-raising measure proposed is a tax on universities themselves”.
Since then, the destabilising Draft International Education and Skills Strategic Framework, with a cap on international enrolments from January 2025, has drawn strong criticism and both major parties have been competing in their anti-immigration rhetoric, with international student recruitment caught in the crossfire.
Actions on “non-genuine students”, spikes in visa rejections, changes to students’ proof of savings, threats of “significant” rises in visa fees and arguments over the impact of international students on housing availability are just some of the issues. It’s a potent cocktail that can be nothing but damaging for recruitment.
In Canada, the January 2024 federal government announcement of a two-year intake cap on international student recruitment was balanced by the exclusion of postgraduate students and the availability of an extended three-year post-graduation work permit.
There seemed little doubt that the changes mitigated against private colleges and the doubling of the cost of living requirement for students was an overdue but unwelcome addition. Had it ended there it seems possible that the storm may have blown over.
But the underlying tensions about routes to permanent residency flared again in May, with Prince Edward Island’s changes to the process leading to protests and even hunger strikes.
As with Australia, there have been, at federal and provincial level, assertions about rapid international student growth bringing “… pressure on housing, health care and other services”.
Little wonder that IDP’s Emerging Futures research from March 2024 suggested that Canada had suffered most in terms of student popularity at that time.
IDP’s research also pointed to the US becoming the top-choice destination for the first time and being the top choice for prospective students considering changing their choice of study destination.
After issuing more student visas in India in 2023 than ever before, the US embassy in India started two weeks earlier this year and increased capacity to meet demand. The US for Success Coalition is mounting a letter writing campaign urging Congress to “improve student visa processing delays and high denial rate in the Global South”.
Castles in the air or feet on the ground?
The three recruiting countries reaching levels of international student intake that are a material percentage of overall recruitment and tuition fee income seem to have reached a tipping point where government attention is increasingly focused on economic, social and political consequences.
Anti-immigration rhetoric, perhaps driven by genuine public concern, is one aspect of this, but there is a broader sense that the role of higher education in a country’s broader economic and workforce planning cannot be left to an untidy aggregation of autonomous, self-governing organisations.
Institutions must take care not to allow themselves to be positioned as educational amusement parks where ivory towers have replaced magic castles and attracting more, higher-paying customers has become more important than their domestic stakeholders.
Alan Preece is an expert in global education, business transformation and operational management and runs the blogging site View from a Bridge.
Image by Pasi Mämmelä from Pixabay