UK universities should brace for “short-term pain” in international recruitment as student mobility trends look set to slow, according to a new report, but it will benefit in the long term.
The British Council found that challenges including changes to migration policy and increasing costs of UK study will mark the end of the post-Covid boom in international student mobility.
Its research suggests that growth in new enrolments of international students will slow across the four major host destinations in 2024 – Australia, Canada, the UK and US – as markets revert to the steady but unremarkable long-term growth rates that preceded the pandemic.
The UK was found to be at the forefront of the post-Covid bounce back, with the issuance of study visas returning to pre-pandemic levels by the third quarter of 2021, earlier than any other major host destination country.
