AS THE number of foreign students entering the UK soars to record levels, experts and officials are voicing alarm at unintended consequences.
In a Parliamentary committee session last week, Professor Brian Bell, Chair of the Migration Advisory Committee, echoed our warning earlier this year that British universities have grown overly reliant on international student fees, creating perverse incentives to ‘sell’ visas into Britain.
You can hear or read Professor Bell’s full remarks here, but it’s worth summarising just how badly the student visa scheme is being abused.
Student visas have become the single biggest pathway into Britain, now accounting for roughly 45 per cent of all entry visas, the largest of any immigration route. This surge was spurred by a 2019 government target of 600,000 overseas students by 2030, which was ultimately achieved eight years early in 2022.
Universities, free to recruit internationally and charging up to triple the tuition of home students, have turned the study route into a major migration pipeline. The Home Office projects that about 500,000 recent international graduates have remained in the country even after their visas expired.
There is also evidence that the student route is being misused. As Migration Watch has reported, cases have emerged of applicants inflating bank statements or pooling funds to meet visa requirements. Some enrol in courses with little intention of studying – nearly half of all asylum claims made by visa holders now come from those who were admitted as students.
The post-study ‘Graduate Route’ visa (which allows work for two or three years after graduation) has effectively become a back door into the UK job market, with certain nationalities exploiting it disproportionately (for example, Indian students are 22 per cent of study visa holders but more than 41 per cent of graduate visa holders).
To make things worse, the boom in enrolment has skewed toward lower-ranked higher education institutions. Since 2013, the number of foreign students at non-Russell Group universities has more than doubled; only one of these universities ranks in the global top 100.
Instead of exporting world class education, Britain’s universities have simply become grubby visa mills, selling access to Britain to balance wildly inflated budgets.
We have a full 30 page report on the ongoing scandal of student visas, which you can read here on the Migration Watch website.
