An over-reliance on tuition fees from overseas students – especially those from a single country such as China – is a financial risk for English universities, the higher education watchdog has warned.
The Office for Students (OfS) has written to institutions with high levels of student recruitment from China to ensure they have contingency plans to protect them from any possible drop in income from overseas students.
Any event that “reduces the flow” of international students to universities – such as a changing geopolitical environment – could cause a “significant impact” on the income of institutions that rely heavily on international student recruitment, the higher education regulator in England has said.
The OfS’s annual report on financial sustainability suggests that the sector is “highly reliant” on the tuition fee income from overseas students – and particularly on the fee income from Chinese students.
It adds that an “over-reliance” on overseas fees is a “vulnerability” for some higher education providers in England.
The watchdog has written to 23 institutions that are partially exposed to these risks to ask them to share their contingency plans in the event of a possible interruption to the flow of overseas students.
