Large numbers of UK universities are at risk of falling into financial deficit due to a sharp decline in international students after hostile rhetoric by Rishi Sunak’s government, the head of the sector’s main lobby group has warned.
Vivienne Stern, the chief executive of Universities UK, which represents more than 140 universities, said the sector was facing the prospect of a “serious overcorrection” thanks to immigration policies that deterred international students from coming to study in Britain.
“If they want to cool things down, that’s one thing, but it seems to me that through a combination of rhetoric, which is off-putting, and policy changes . . .[they have] really turned a whole bunch of people off that would otherwise have come to the UK,” Stern told the Financial Times.
Stern’s plea came as it emerged that some top universities including York, which is a member of the elite Russell Group, were being forced to soften their entry requirements in order to maintain numbers of overseas students.
“The government needs to be very careful: we could end up with, from a policy point of view, what I would consider a serious overcorrection,” she added.
With the £9,250 domestic tuition fee effectively frozen for the past decade, UK universities have become increasingly reliant on non-EU students to make ends meet, with fees from non-EU students now accounting for nearly 20 per cent of sector income.
Universities are warning privately that numbers have softened sharply this year following a series of hostile policy moves by the government, with indications that enrolments may have fallen by more than a third from key countries including Nigeria and India.
One senior university insider told the FT that the sector as a whole had been “spooked” by data that showed the number of international students taking up places in January 2024 was “way below the bottom end of projections for everyone”.
