A UK government list of top-ranked global universities giving graduates eligibility for “High Potential Individual” visas has added two Chinese institutions and lost two US ones, but the scheme remains too focused on North American universities, according to an immigration lawyer.
The High Potential Individual visa grants the right to work in the UK for two years – three after a PhD – to graduates of selected prestigious foreign universities. It’s an equivalent to the post-study work visa granted to overseas graduates of UK universities.
To be eligible, graduates must have graduated in the last five years from a university that featured, in the year they graduated, in the top 50 of two out of three global university rankings: Times Higher Education, QS and the Academic Ranking of World Universities, known as the Shanghai Ranking.
The Home Office, which announced the visa scheme in 2022, has now published its latest version of the list of institutions. In the 2023 version, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Delft University of Technology are newcomers to a list comprising 39 institutions; while the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Queensland drop off the list.
