The UK risks a decline in international student numbers if the government drastically changes policy on post-study work and students bringing dependants, stakeholders have warned.
In recent years, the UK has had “a privileged position” where an “eager” government introduced a strategy featuring the 600,000 student and £35 billion value targets, as well as opened up the postgraduate work route, according to Lil Bremermann-Richard, chief executive officer of Oxford International.
“We’ve seen an influx of student numbers and then we have on the flip side, now the post-Brexit, post-Covid hangover, as I would call it, the see-what-we-are-going-to-do-environment,” she said at PIE Live Europe in London.
“The government is saying we need to reduce migration,” she said, and international students are seen as something that needs to be “controlled”.
