The number of international students enrolling in universities in England has dropped for the first time in nearly three decades, in a worrying reversal of a long-term trend of double-digit growth.
A new report by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, or Hefce, examines recent shifts in enrollment patterns and discusses their possible causes. The nations that make up the United Kingdom have individual responsibility for higher education, and the report addresses only the situation in England.
Britain attracts more international students than any country except the United States, and puts a figure for the overall value of higher-education exports to its economy at around £10-billion, or nearly $17-billion.
The report says that the number of students enrolling in full-time “taught graduate programs,” which include many master’s programs, declined by 1 percent from the 2010-11 to the 2012-13 academic years. That decline is especially worrying for institutions because those programs tend to be dominated by foreign students. According to the report, in 2012-13, 74 percent of entrants to full-time master’s programs were from outside Britain.
Master’s programs, which are usually a year long, are often a significant source of income for universities, as well as a potential future source of teaching staff members. Their short duration, relative to similar programs in other countries, means that British universities are under more pressure to maintain international recruitment levels.
According to Janet Ilieva, the author of the Hefce report, a recent analysis by the council indicates that there is a high progression rate from the full-time taught graduate programs to doctoral programs, so the recent drop could be a worrisome sign for future teaching and research capacity. “The implication is that this is putting the long-term viability of certain subjects under threat,” she said.
Higher Tuition
Another development the report highlights is a sharp drop in the number of full-time undergraduate entrants from other European Union countries. Those students pay the same tuition as domestic British students, for whom the government caps the amount of tuition that universities can charge. Their number fell by a quarter in 2012-13, when the tuition cap at most universities in England rose to £9,000, or around $15,000. The report identifies the tuition increase as the likely cause of the decline in students from other EU countries.
The last time international-student numbers decreased in Britain was in the early 1980s, when universities began charging international students tuition.
The report also calls attention to the growing numbers of Chinese students at British universities. They now represent nearly a quarter of all students enrolled in full-time master’s programs and make up the second-largest cohort after British students, at 26 percent.
That increase has taken place as the numbers of students from India, Pakistan, and Iran, which historically sent large cohorts of graduate students to Britain, have declined. The numbers of students coming from Pakistan and India have halved since 2010, even as entrants from other countries have increased, according to the report.
Those developments paint a worrying picture for British universities, which seem to have borne the brunt of a confluence of events. “We can’t point to causality,” Ms. Ilieva said, but the timing of the shifts suggest some factors that might be at play.
Immigration, for one, has become a contentious political issue in Britain in recent years, and the government’s efforts to limit immigration figures have at times conflicted with the aims of universities. Universities UK, the lobbying organization for vice chancellors, has opposed the government’s approach to immigration, warning that including students in migration figures would be detrimental to universities.
Policy revisions, such as the elimination of work entitlement for foreign students at private institutions, a move designed to curb abuses by bogus institutions, also had an effect on international enrollments.
Those shifts, all of which may have suggested to international students that Britain was becoming less hospitable to foreigners, coincided with efforts among Britain’s main competitors for foreign students to ease the path for them.
In a statement in response to the Hefce report, Nicola Dandridge, the chief executive of Universities UK, emphasized what is at stake. At a time of growing international demand for higher education, she said, “we should be seeing a significant rise in international recruitment figures, given the global standing of our universities. At the same time, competitor countries, who are actively promoting policies to encourage international students, have seen rises in international-student numbers.”
The report, “Global Demand for English Higher Education: An Analysis of International-Student Entry to English Higher-Education Courses,” is available on Hefce’s website.