Onward wants to cut international recruitment

Onward is the latest in a line of right-leaning think tanks to take a punt at coming up with a set of Conservative policies that both address the nation’s myriad problems and can get the party re-elected.

A Conservative Economy draws deep on expertise of one of the wizards behind the Theresa May era – Telegraph contributor Nick Timothy – and a former Centre for Social Justice wonk – Telegraph contributor Gavin Rice. None less than Michael Gove has knocked up a foreword.

There are an astonishing 138 pages, sprinkled lightly with footnotes and charts, suggesting (and I emphasise suggesting rather than actually implying) a genuine intellectual effort rather than something knocked up to get a load of cheap headlines on a Monday. Said cheap headlines, within my filter bubble at least, have focused on a plan to restrict Student visas to only the highest performing institutions, and the proposed abolition of the graduate visa (with graduates instead allowed to apply for a Skilled Worker visa).

Tariff data?

By highest performing institutions we mean, somewhat obliquely, those with the highest UCAS tariff. It is worth breaking that down a little: an institutional UCAS tariff is the average level 3 performance (A levels or equivalent level) demanded by a provider for main scheme entry in a given year. This does not relate to the grades that people entering said university actually hold.

The idea of an institutional “tariff” turns up a lot in data. For me, as an indicator of quality, it is largely useless. Applicants apply to courses, and there will be a huge variation in entry requirements between courses at a single provider. The canonical example would be a provider with a large nursing provision – nursing students tend to be mature, and thus the tariff ask is quite low, so the best thing the provider could do to rise up this particular ranking is close the nursing school.

Tariffs apply to undergraduate provision only – so a provider specialising in postgraduate provision (for example Cranfield or the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) would not have a UCAS tariff (and would thus be ineligible to recruit international postgraduates). I suppose it’s heartening that they didn’t use (or haven’t heard of?) TEF, LEO salary data, or (gods forbid) mission groups

Student journeys

Though the available data isn’t great (and is necessarily time-lagged), roughly six in ten of those from outside the EU on Study visas are reckoned to leave the UK within 12 months of graduation – and of those who stayed 59 per cent of those who got a degree stayed in the UK for postgraduate study. Given changes in international recruitment (in volume and source) in the last 6 years we can’t be certain that these assumptions still hold – we know for instance that behaviour is different based on where a student comes from, and we know that the number of dependants (now restricted to postgraduate research students only) is also linked to domicile.

People who worry about immigration will always worry about immigration – honestly, better data would be good but it is unlikely to shift the national mood. Given that the Graduate visa has only been available since 2021 (what little good quality official information there is available suggests that Graduate visa holders are predominantly working or intending to work, and working in graduate level jobs on around £20-30k a year salaries) it feels a little premature to decide that the scheme isn’t working. We will get some potentially useful Home Office data linked to salary on 14 May alongside the Migration Advisory Report on the Student visa.

The salary range is important, because minimum salaries for Skilled Worker visas are generally higher than that (outside of the Shortage Occupations List, which the Onward report wants to abolish despite the fact the government has already abolished it along with the 20 per cent “going rate discount” and replaced it with the Immigration Salary List) – higher, indeed, than most home graduate starting salaries.

Easy enough?

Of course, these policies would have a knock-on effect for the sector. The report recommends that:

Post-18 education should be reformed so universities and colleges are not dependent upon overseas students for income, and the country is no longer left with the skills shortages it suffers today.

It’s been almost seven years since Nick Timothy last tried to reform post-18 education, so I guess he is due another go. But there are scant clues as to how this is to be achieved. A separate section of the report suggests that:

Universities with a high UCAS tariff should continue to receive public subsidy for all courses through the student loan system but lower quality universities should be reformed into technical and vocational institutes offering only courses with added value. These should be funded either through the student loans process or a lifelong learning guarantee

So UCAS tariff, applied at the provider level, as a measure of quality again. The “best universities” would get subsidies for all courses via the student loan system, other providers should be reformed into technical and vocational institutes (as opposed to universities that offer technical and vocational qualifications, as they are currently). The others will only be allowed to offer courses with “added value” – this isn’t really properly defined but the implication is a link to salary (bad news for nursing schools again) – and funded via the student loans process (or a lifelong learning guarantee – which is the same thing).

On a related tip, Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs) should be reformed into a way for employers and local tertiary providers to identify and meet skills needs within joined up regional industrial strategies. This is basically what LSIPs were designed to do back in 2022 – the twist is only STEM and technical/vocational courses would be permitted, which is bad news for employers with other skills needs.