What government policy still fails to understand about international education

This blog includes personal reflections shared at the 2025 Independent Higher Education Conference by  James Pitman, Outgoing Chair of IHE and Managing Director U.K. and Ireland, Study Group.

International education is important to many IHE members but for some of our biggest members, including my own organisation Study Group, it is our entire business. 

Government policies on international education over the last 15 have been less than supportive, and some in the last 2 years have been materially value destructive for the UK.

The Dependents Visa – policy and discrimination

The removal of the Dependants visa in 2024 and questions over the Graduate Route cost the UK 54,000 international students in 2024 vs 2023.  That is worth £6 billion at today’s values, and over £2 billion in receipts to the exchequer each year.  Certainly the dependants visa had a major flaw, but it was one that could have been corrected rather than withdrawing the whole visa scheme entirely for taught degrees.

As predicted by the sector, that withdrawal was gender discriminatory, leading to the loss of 19,000 female students vs the prior year, in the January 2024 intake alone.  Every one of those was a human story, of ambitions denied, families fractured, careers restricted and yet again women being discriminated against – in this case by UK government policy. It is particularly ironic, considering the importance the UN Sustainable Development Goals place on women’s education as arguably the most effective way of lifting a whole society.

Such discrimination is also a risk with the tightening of the BCA metrics to barrier levels that no other export sector has to endure, such that universities are already withdrawing completely from certain countries. This is collateral damage that will stop those good students that do exist in every country from coming to study in the UK.  Compliance absolutely yes, but constriction beyond what is rational – that is a step too far.

This government makes much of taking decisions that are in the interests of the UK and not overtly political; and they tell us that they are driving growth and jobs.  And yet the loss of international students almost always leads to the loss of jobs in every region of our country, most especially those that need inward investment the most and will find it hardest to fund an alternative.

Those lost 54,000 international students lost us well over £1 billion in inward investment, and the UCU says nearly 15,000 jobs have been lost in Higher Education, many probably at graduate level.

Research from Oxford Economics and others implies that you can double that with job losses in local economies and supply chains. So, some 30,000 jobs lost or at risk with no substitution possible, as those students have already taken their £1 billion elsewhere. When Tata Steel’s Port Talbot plant announced 2,800 job losses, with more in the supply chain, this was front-page news. Where are the headlines that ask for immediate intervention to prevent ten times that impact?

The International Student Levy – the new export tax

Which brings me on to the International Student Levy, or more correctly, an export tariff or jobs tax.  The Institute for Fiscal Studies calls it a ‘tax on a major UK export’. 

Whether the tariff goes on international student fees – which research indicates will lose us 16,000 students straight away – or is absorbed by universities (which they are in no position to cope with) jobs will be lost.  The loss of 16,000 students implies 4,000 jobs at risk in higher education and 4,000 more jobs in local economies. Martin Wolf in the Financial Times earlier this week wrote, ‘the proposed…tax on international student fees is a dagger aimed at one of the UK’s most successful export industries’.  Who can disagree!

The Government is arguing that there is no alternative to fund domestic student maintenance (which to be clear is a worthy cause for support).  I can’t be the only one who can think of an obvious alternative. Current US policy is hammering the competitiveness of the market leader, so that offers the UK a golden opportunity, if government would only work with the sector to grow our international education exports rather than endlessly restricting them. 

Back of the envelope calculation indicates that recovering only half of the students we lost in 2024 because of government policy would generate the required income to the exchequer to fund those maintenance grants sustainably and create jobs, not destroy them.

The Graduate Route subsidy

Finally the Graduate Route, which is an incredibly sensible tool to encourage students to study here and contribute after graduation, but which also subsidises UK tax payers and the NHS specifically, every year that it is available to international students. Why? If you pay the same Income Tax and National Insurance as a domestic equivalent but can, by law, only access less than half the services that are paid for from those taxes, then that is a subsidy in my book.

We should all hope the Graduate Route visa is here to stay, but it has already been shortened by six months and the consequences could yet be dire. According to the ICEF, an Indian graduate on an average salary may take 25 years to repay the cost of undergraduate study in a Russell Group university –  36 without two years of post study work. As families calculate return on investment in a challenging market for graduate employment, nibbling away at policies that allow an opportunity to recoup investment may risk it altogether.

Education not immigration

A year ago, I recommended to the IHE conference that the Government needed to decouple international students from the toxicity of immigration politics, which research shows much of the public also supports.  They have not done so and show no inclination to do so.

Education and immigration must be decoupled if we are to ever escape relentlessly self-harming  policies. Until they do so, I am afraid that their maxim of doing what is right for our country and not just what is supposedly popular is destined to continue to ring very hollow for international education, one of our greatest exports and probably greatest source of influence for good.