A major drop in international students applying to study at FE colleges has been blamed on the country being perceived as “unfriendly” as a result of Brexit and a crackdown on immigration.

The number of people from outside the EU applying for a student visa for study at a college dropped by more than 8 per cent in 2016, according to the latest Home Office statistics. This trend was more pronounced in the second half of the year following the Brexit vote; applications between July and December dropped by almost a tenth from the same period in 2015 (see graph, below).

But the most dramatic decline was in the number of applications by students to extend their visas to continue college studies: this plummeted by 83 per cent, from 4,873 in 2015 to 803 in 2016.

Prime minister Theresa May has resolutely insisted that students should be included in the government’s targets to reduce net migration to “tens of thousands” - despite opposition from cabinet ministers such as Philip Hammond, Liam Fox and Boris Johnson.

Earlier this month, peers in the House of Lords backed an amendment to the Higher Education and Research Bill to take international students out of net migration targets. Ahead of MPs having the final say on the matter next month, the latest Home Office statistics suggest that the surge in anti-immigration rhetoric related to last year’s European Union referendum has already had a significant impact on colleges’ international recruitment.

‘A focus on risk over opportunity’

Ian Pretty, chief executive of the Collab Group of colleges, said the UK has a “world-class vocational and technical education offer” that is attractive to international students. “However, the recent tightening of restrictions in visa regulations and the vote to leave the EU has resulted in the UK being perceived as unfriendly to students from overseas,” he added. “This is benefiting other countries, such as the US, Canada, Australia and Ireland, while UK institutions are losing a valuable source of income.”

According to Shelagh Legrave, principal of Chichester College, Tier 4 visa applications to the college from outside the EU have dropped by 60 per cent since 2014-15. The main reason for this, she said, was the removal of the child visas that allowed FE colleges to take students at GCSE level and put them onto level 3 programmes.

“This government has focused on the risk [posed by] immigration figures rather than on the economic opportunities in selling the UK education system,” she said. “If UK education institutions, including FE colleges, are to be given the opportunity to increase their impact on their local economies, international students must be taken out of the government’s immigration targets.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are committed to attracting the brightest and best students to the UK and there is no limit on the number of students who can come here to study. We have taken action to clamp down on immigration abuse in the further education sector, but we continue to have a highly competitive offer for those who wish to study in our world-class universities.”

This is an edited article from the 31 March edition of Tes. Subscribers can read the full article here. This week’s Tes magazine is available in all good newsagents. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here

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