DK has made some charts.
In some circumstances, home undergraduate fees already apply in the UK for EU applicants, and thousands benefit from this policy each year.
To be eligible, prospective students need to hold a qualifying citizenship, and be resident in a qualifying EU country for three years before the start of their course. Under this arrangement UK fees apply, and these are repaid via the SLC loan system. However, students need to apply for maintenance support from their home country, unless they meet UK residency rules.
Overwhelmingly, applicants via this system apply to one of two providers.
And those providers are Queen’s University Belfast, and Ulster University.
I am, of course, talking about the longstanding Common Travel Area (CTA) arrangements between the UK and Ireland. Both British and Irish citizens have the right to access all levels of education in either state, on terms no less favourable than those available to the citizens of that state – including the right to qualify for student loans. Since 2019-20, EU undergraduate recruitment has grown by 88.64 per cent at Ulster University, and at Queen’s University Belfast it has grown by 93.5 per cent. Ulster is now the largest recruiter of EU undergraduate students in the UK – which, in part, is because there are more Irish students in UK HE than any other EU nationality.
Here’s a map of undergraduate applications and acceptances by EU nation. You can filter by year:
And here’s a scatter plot for all EU undergraduates applications and acceptances, showing changes between 2019 and 2025 by provider, and filterable by subject. Again you can see broad declines in applications for everywhere but Belfast and Ulster, and for most places in acceptances (there’s some smaller outliers, and also St Andrews somehow accepted 145 more EU undergraduates last year than in 2019.)
Irish students, primarily at these two providers, distort a picture that otherwise shows a substantial decline in EU student participation in UK higher education. In the year (2019–20 – chosen as a “peak year” when it was clear that the arrangement was about to end: it finally did in 2021) before the UK left the European Union, EU students – attracted by the excellent reputation of UK higher education, and able to access UK student finance arrangements – made up 5.19 per cent of all undergraduate students and 6.13 per cent of postgraduate students. In 2024–25, these proportions were 1.83 per cent for undergraduates, and 2.83 per cent for postgraduates.
On postgraduate numbers we turn to some data kindly provided by HESA. Here the thick bars show current EU student numbers, and the thinner bars show the situation in 2019-20.
[Full screen] (and if you are interest in specific – CAH3 – subjects I have you covered)
What should be taken from this is that – while UK study has always been attractive to EU students – the numbers of students involved has always been dwarfed by international students from elsewhere in the world, and Ireland (where different longstanding arrangements apply) has always been a very significant part of this picture. And – to speak to the story of the hour – it is unlikely that any fee discount offered by the UK government as a part of EU relationship negotiations would change either of these facts.
International student fees vary: by subject, provider, and student domicile. There is no canonical list of international fees at undergraduate or postgraduate level (indeed, there’s not even a list of UK fees for postgraduate study!) It is a fair proxy to assume that international fees are roughly double home fees on average, but this hides a huge amount of variation especially at postgraduate level.
Even if we had a better handle on fee differentials, we also don’t know what – if any – subsidy the UK government might offer at undergraduate or postgraduate level should an agreement mean that fees should be equalised. And this is even before we think about past, current, and future patterns of applications and acceptance from EU domiciled students – and how changes to immigration rules for student and graduate visas would affect this.
The most I’d be comfortable to venture is that the combined effects would mean that UK providers would make a lower profit on EU student fees, but that probably more EU students would be interested in attending. A government subsidy would make EU students marginally more attractive in financial terms than home students, but less attractive than international students from other sources. Additional applications would likely go to the more prestigious end of the market, and to specialist providers – and decisions as to how many EU students should be recruited will be made at a provider or even course level.
For me, the Russell Group analysis that people are waving about (a cost of £540m as a long run impact) is probably over-pessimistic. It uses all international students by level at a provider as a basis for calculating the fee premium rather than just EU students – ignoring domicile and subject-based fee differentials – does not model any form of government support. Mark Corver’s initial one year estimate of £140m (based on existing recruitment) seems closer, but again this is before any subsidy and doesn’t factor in institutional variation.