UK struggles with low foreign student intake sequel to dependant visa curb
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Many universities in the United Kingdom are experiencing low admission uptake from Nigerians and other international students because of the dependant visa ban policy coming into effect in January 2024.
Westminster under former Home Minister Suella Braverman introduced the policy that restricts foreign students from bringing family members with them in fear of an exploding number of immigrants in the country.
British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Richard Montgomery, explained in June the policy is to avoid overburdening UK housing infrastructure and to control the inflow of migrants.
However, several UK universities and business schools said they can no longer meet admission targets for 2024, according to a report by 023 Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) Annual Membership Survey.
“In what appears to be an early signal of the impact of an important change to UK visa policy, nearly half (44%) of the country’s business schools are reporting that they will miss their non-EU recruitment targets this year,” the survey disclosed.
“When reporting on performance against non-EU recruitment targets for the 2023/24 academic year, nearly three in ten responding institutions (29%) said they had either significantly or moderately exceeded their goal. Another 27% said they had met their recruitment target.
“But the remaining 44% said that they fell short of their recruitment goals, of which 22% reported being ‘significantly below’ their target enrolment.”
__________________________________________________________________
Related articles:
Visa curb on foreign students’ dependants poised to cost UK £10b yearly
‘Japaing’ Nigerians get 132,000 UK visas in 6 months
Diezani risks jail in UK over bribery allegations
__________________________________________________________________
Variation in results by level of study
“There is significant variation in the results by level of study for non-EU international enrolments, as at undergraduate level nearly half of the schools either significantly or moderately exceeded target compared to one-third of schools at postgraduate level,” CABS said, per reporting by Vanguard.
“At postgraduate level nearly 50% of schools reported recruitment that was either significantly or moderately below target for non-EU international students, compared to 21% at undergraduate level.
“Survey respondents reported that they were seeing some of the most significant increases in non-EU enrolment from India, Pakistan, and Ghana.
“All these countries had more business schools seeing increases in enrolments for the new academic year than decreases.
“Growth in enrolments from Nepal and Saudi Arabia were also cited by several schools. None of the schools cited decreases in enrolments from Nepal, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.”
The report disclosed Nigerians and Chinese have reduced their admission to British universities, saying “the most frequently cited countries for declining enrolments were China and Nigeria, which could suggest a reversal in the growth in recruitment from these key countries in recent years.”
Canada and Australia benefitting from UK loss
The number of international students seeking admission to study for Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) has reduced, especially from Nigeria and China.
These foreign students have turned to Canadian and Australian universities which are now migrant-friendly destinations.
London announced in May 2023 international students would be prevented from bringing dependants with them from January 2024 (unless students are in postgraduate programmes with a research focus).
The Home Office disclosed at the time that almost half a million student visas were issued in 2022.