Fifty per cent, or some 560,000, of those admitted to the UK under the student visa system since 2022 remained in the country after their original visa expired. Meanwhile, close to one-third of asylum claims now come from those who originally came her on a student visas.
These are the stark findings of a report published this week by the Think Tank Migration Watch UK which exposes what ministers and the influential and well-funded education and international student lobby refuse to admit: that the driver of Britain’s very high net migration is not illegal arrivals in dinghies – not to underplay the seriousness of illegal immigration – but the influx of international students going to struggling and poor-performing universities.
While the political spotlight remains fixed on small boats, universities have quietly become immigration machines on a staggering scale
While the political spotlight remains fixed on small boats, universities have quietly become immigration machines on a staggering scale. Abuse of the international student route goes back many years. It was an issue I repeatedly came across as an immigration officer and entry clearance officer at our High Commission in Lagos forty to fifty years ago. Nevertheless, abuse of the system intensified in 2019 when the May government came up with its naive International Education Strategy with set the target of increasing the number of international students in the UK higher education system to 600,000 by 2030.
The target was met within a year, helped by the additional incentive of allowing all foreign students graduating from any recognised UK university to stay on in the country to work in any job (or not work) for two years. Up to this point the postgraduate work period had been reduced to four months.
Since then, the consequences have been serious. In May the government admitted that more than half of student visa holders have stayed on in the UK since 2022 after graduating. More than half a million people have entered or remained in the UK via the student route alone in just three years – and twice this number could remain in the UK via this route over the next three years.
This is not the only concern. Last year, student visas accounted for 45 per cent of all entries last year, making them the largest legal visa route into the country. This is the main engine of immigration, and it is legal, sanctioned and encouraged by government policy.
The May government’s attempts to increase international student visas, with the enticing prospect of inflated overseas fees, encouraged universities to recruit indiscriminately. Many courses are now little more than a façade, designed not to educate but to provide a ticket into Britain. Abuse is widespread, from students disappearing once inside the country to asylum claims lodged the moment a course ends.
Nor are the consequences merely academic. Dependants of students added another 135,000 visas in 2023, before the Conservative government belatedly put a stop to unlimited dependants joining students undertaking one-year postgraduate courses. Even more egregious was that the whole family could stay on for a further two years to do any job, with any children brought over free to attend school at the taxpayers’ expense.
Our higher education system was never intended to be a safety net for struggling institutions. These institutions, propped up by demanding astronomical fees from students hailing from countries that can ill afford it have dug their own graves in many cases: the example of Dundee University – which faced a financial crisis after Nigeria, from where many of its foreign students come from, devalued its currency – is both egregious and not beyond the realms of possibility for other universities. If institutions can’t survive without such fees and would fold without them, I would say, then so be it. In any case, limping along while providing inferior courses to those with limited ability, can only harm the status, prestige, and perceived quality of an education system that has always been seen as the very best.
The message is clear: in the interests of our education sector and the way it is perceived abroad, lower-tier universities cannot continue to use high fees from international students to stay afloat. Ultimately, this can only prove harmful to the perceived status and quality of UK higher education. Moreover, if immigration is to be reduced in any meaningful way, student visas must play their part. They must be rigorously controlled and limited; a cap is essential.
In light of this, we recommend four immediate steps. First, the government should abolish the graduate visa which permits anyone leaving a higher education course to remain in the UK for two years after graduating. Universities should then be mandated to reintroduce overseas interviews for applicants, ensuring that those coming here to study have a strong grasp of English and are of the academic calibre expected. Above all, in order to grasp a system in crisis, there is an urgent need for an immediate cap on international student numbers.
For too long, universities and the education lobby have peddled the myth that student migration is somehow distinct from immigration and can only benefit the UK economy and our universities. The reality is different.
By the government’s own figures, study visas are now the single largest route into Britain, accounting for nearly half of all visas issued last year. What was meant to be a modest, carefully managed flow has become an uncontrolled torrent.
Universities must stop behaving like immigration clearing houses, drawing in vast numbers with little regard for quality, or indeed for whether the ‘students’ intend to leave or to study at all. This cannot go on.
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