Over exposed: where are the international students?

In the week following the EU referendum, we published a quick overview of the institutions with the highest numbers and proportions of EU students, on the assumption that this segment of the higher education market was now under threat.

However, the past few weeks has shown that it is not only EU students but the entire international student market that is now in jeopardy depending on the extent to which the new government follows through on its tough rhetoric.

The saga has played out rather oddly. First, Amber Rudd announced a new crackdown on international students taking ‘low quality’ courses, prompting near-panic in universities. It then emerged that Rudd herself had tried to persuade the Prime Minister to remove students from net migration statistics, which would have removed international students from being the very political football she had kicked during her party conference speech.

The extent of the cabinet split on the matter became even clearer when Philip Hammond said in not so many words that he was supportive of Rudd’s efforts to remove students from net migration, and clearly responded positively to UUK polling that appeared to back his position up. The Chancellor was promptly slapped down by a Downing Street spokesperson the following day, but not until after an afternoon of confusion when another spokesperson had suggested the matter was “under review”.

Review or no review, the whole debate has become caught up in the wider problems the government is now facing in taking unprecedentedly tough action on immigration but also trying to avoid harming a strong British export industry. It is quite the political mess, and despite having friends in high places such as Hammond, and perhaps even Boris Johnson, universities should remain nervous about their long-term prospects for international recruitment.

The saga has evidently damaged the UK higher education brand in overseas markets, particularly in India, where perceptions of the UK as an attractive place to study have been in decline for years. A significant drop in international student recruitment would be a strain across the sector, but the pain would be felt in some institutions more than others.

To that end, I have compiled data from HESA for the 2014-15 academic year to look at which institutions might be most vulnerable to Theresa May’s challenge to create a business model without international student recruitment. I have also compared the numbers of international students with the results of the EU referendum, to try and establish whether areas that voted to Leave have high numbers of student immigrants that may be causing anxiety in those communities.

Where in the UK are international students?

International students are spread across the UK. Northern Ireland has much lower numbers as a proportion than England, Scotland and Wales. International students are roughly evenly split between undergraduates and postgraduates, meaning that postgraduate courses are far more reliant on international students as a proportion of their total.

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Which universities are most reliant on international undergraduates?

The universities with the highest numbers of international undergraduates are:

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And the universities with the highest proportions of international undergraduates are:

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Which universities are most reliant on international postgraduates?

The universities with the highest numbers of international postgraduates are:

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And the universities with the highest proportions of international postgraduates are:

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International students and the Brexit vote

The Prime Minister’s fixation with cutting international student numbers as part of a wider cut-down on immigration has been primarily justified by the Brexit vote, which researchers have shown to be overwhelming to do with dissatisfaction with immigration. However, as you may have already observed from the tables above, large numbers of international students are primarily in areas that voted to Remain in the referendum: London, Scotland, Manchester, and Cardiff in particular.

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Areas with high numbers of international students that voted to Leave in June only did so very narrowly, such as Sheffield, Birmingham, Southampton, Canterbury, Colchester, Swansea, and Nottingham. Coventry and Warwick Universities, though based in Coventry, which voted to Leave, have many students living outside the city in Warwick District Council, which voted to Remain.

A very top-level analysis of the referendum result shows a small number of areas that voted strongly to Leave (55% plus) that have a high number of international students, though as can be seen, many of these institutions are well down the list compared to the wider sector. The vast majority of international students appear to reside in areas that voted to Remain in the EU, further underlining how futile a clampdown would likely be in addressing voters’ broader concerns about immigration.

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This analysis is only skin deep. Research has shown that a strong Leave vote did not correlate so much with the size of the immigrant population as with the proportionate change in the immigrant population over the last decade. It nonetheless seems unlikely that in many communities for whom immigration is a big concern that international students are a visible presence. Rather, international students tend to reside in more liberal, cosmopolitan, and relatively wealthy big cities that voted to Remain or only very narrowly to Leave.