Brexit and UK Higher Education – the Elephant Stampedes Across the Conference Room

If UK universities approached last week’s Conservative Party Conference hoping for some clarity on the future of EU students, staff and funding, they left sorely disappointed. Instead the sector has been thrown into doubt over the future of internationalisation in general.

Statements from the Prime Minister and Home Secretary have been met with equal bemusement and dismay, calling into question the future of international student recruitment and doing so in worryingly vague terms.<

June’s referendum result surprised many in higher education, but the storm was soon followed by relative calm.

Jo Johnson, the Minister for Universities and Science (and a supporter of the Remain campaign) was quick to offer assurances for current EU students and those beginning a course in the 2016-17 academic year. In both cases eligibility to study in the UK would be maintained and access to domestic fee and finance conditions would continue.

This would be the case – in principle – until the UK triggers Article 50 and begins the process of leaving the European Union.

The Prime Minister’s recent announcement threw these assumptions into confusion, but Johnson is to be commended for his further reassurance this week that current fee and funding arrangements for EU students - in England at least - will apply to courses beginning in 2017-18.

Moving the safety net forward a year at a time is of little long-term value, however. Clarity is needed for those who might consider starting a course after 2018 – and for universities planning their recruitment and course provision.

Perhaps it is not too much to ask that the government also specifies what it wishes to see from future international and EU-27 recruitment. Johnson’s words are encouraging. The Prime Minister and Home Secretary’s aren’t.

A lack of clarity over Brexit and the future of international recruitment is a particular issue at postgraduate level.

According to HESA data, EU recruitment accounted for nearly 12% of students on taught Masters programmes in 2014-15.

These students are not just concentrated at postgraduate level: they are also concentrated on particular courses and institutions. And, as Times Higher Education reported in July, there is a very real concern that some degree programmes could be left exposed to a drop in EU recruitment.

This isn’t simply a financial issue. It also relates directly to the ‘quality’ of UK universities, in perception and in practice.

The Home Secretary introduced her comments on higher education by paying tribute to the UK’s ‘world-leading centres of academic excellence’. The Prime Minister also spoke of ‘a country that boasts three of the top ten universities in the world’.

Both statements presumably refer to the publication of the 2017 Times Higher Education World University Ranking. Three universities (Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London) do indeed make the top ten this year and a UK institution (Oxford) takes the number one spot for the first time in the ranking’s history.

Yet nearly 10% of the metrics used to determine that ranking are based directly on Oxford’s internationalisation, including its recruitment of international students. And nearly 20% of the university’s postgraduate students were EU citizens in 2014-15.

Meanwhile, the UK as a whole educates 10% of the world’s international students. The only country to welcome more is the USA – coincidentally the only country to outperform the UK in global rankings.

Championing the quality of our universities whilst cutting them off from the international talent that maintains and affirms that quality seems misguided at best.

The least favourable outcome of a hard Brexit would be for future EU students to simply be treated as international applicants.

Prior to the conference there was some consensus as to what this might mean. Students would require Tier 4 visas, would be charged fees at the higher rate and would lose access to public funding – including the new postgraduate Masters loans.

Unfortunately, this understanding only lasted until the Home Secretary gave her speech.

In a surprise attack on international recruitment, Rudd challenged the current tier 4 visa system and its underlying assumptions. Her attempt to explain what might replace it was little more than a confusing and partially incoherent gesture.

A strange definition of generosity

Rudd began by rejecting ‘a student immigration system that treats every student and university as equal’ on the basis that this ‘only punishes those we should want to help’.

It wasn’t exactly clear who the beneficiaries of this ‘help’ should be, but they certainly didn’t appear to include universities.

Higher education, it was implied, had been in receipt of an unnecessarily ‘generous offer’ in being allowed to recruit international students.

Meanwhile, those same students had, ‘irrespective of their talents’, benefited from ‘favourable employment prospects’. This presumably refers to the standard requirement that international students find a job paying over £20,800 a year within four months of graduation – and do so with an employer that hasn’t succeeded in finding a UK candidate for the post.

Nothing about this offer is particularly favourable and it is only independent of an individual’s talents in so far as it presumably relies on rather a lot of luck too. As UKCISA has made clear, a mere 1% of international students (5,000 out of 430,000) were able to take advantage of it last year.

One possible beneficiary of the government’s hitherto ‘generous’ student visa system might have been the UK economy, but Rudd didn’t seem certain of this. Instead she promised to check whether international student recruitment was ‘really adding value to our economy’. The answer to this is ‘yes’ – to the tune of around £13.5 billion.

Future proposals and consultation may explain the rationale behind these proposals (as well as clarifying exactly what they propose).

The concern is that there may not be a policy justification, beyond a continued desire to reduce ‘net migration’ to the tens of thousands.

This is deeply worrying if so - ignoring coherent and well-evidenced campaigns by sector bodies and mission groups such as Universities UK. The government’s commitment to its target seems bloody-minded, but the determination to include international students within that figure looks set to leave someone with a bloody nose.

It isn’t clear what the new student visa system will involve (beyond a name change) or how it would actually work.

Rudd spoke on the one hand of those universities that ‘follow the rules’ and, on the other, of restricting visas for ‘lower quality courses’. The two terms seem oddly incongruous, but they may be revealing.

One possibility is that the government plans to extend its visa pilot scheme, which offers extensions to taught Masters students at Imperial College London, The University of Bath, The University of Oxford and The University of Cambridge.

These universities have been selected based on their sponsorship record and the government may use similar criteria to distinguish between different ‘tiers’ of visa. Rudd seemed to suggest as much when her speech equated ‘our best universities’ with ‘those that stick to the rules’.

The question is how far this scheme could extend – and in how many directions.

At best we may see a surprising – and perhaps welcome – return to some form of post-study work visa, with the top tier of universities able to grant an extended leave for graduates to seek employment in the UK.

At worst we could see caps on international student numbers arrive via the back-door, with restrictions at institutional level and indirect financial penalties for those universities affected. Combined with a hard Brexit, this could be particularly debilitating for universities that currently rely on EU recruitment to sustain part of their postgraduate provision.

The Home Secretary’s reference to the ‘quality’ of universities makes far more sense in the context of the government’s impending Teaching Excellence Framework.

The TEF is intended to group universities into separate tiers – now identified, to some amusement and bemusement, with Gold, Silver and Bronze standards. The most visible function of this is to alter the amount an institution can charge its undergraduates.

In other words, the TEF will group universities according to ‘quality’ and have a direct effect on their income. As such, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume that some connection may be drawn between TEF ratings and the right to recruit international students or sponsor their visas.

If true this will impose an additional penalty for any institutions considering opting out of the TEF: international recruitment may become the stick that follows the carrot of increased fees – a stick that operates at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

On Wednesday the Prime Minister equated being a ‘citizen of the world’ with being ‘a citizen of nowhere’ and a lack of understanding of ‘what the very word “citizenship” means’.

To be a citizen in these very literal terms is to be subject to exclusions. To be a part of a ‘here’, but not a ‘there’.

International students, by definition, are not these kinds of citizens. And this is not the kind of citizenship our universities teach and foster when they welcome the students - and citizens - of the world.

FindAUniversity are not alone in their views on the recent developments in government policy. Many other mission groups, stakeholders and sector bodies have taken similar positions:

• Universities UK – Response to Home Secretary’s comments on student visas
• MillionPlus – MillionPlus comments on the Home Secretary’s speech at the Conservative Party Conference
• Russell Group – Student immigration consultation
• Wonkhe – Conservative Party Conference 2016: The Day of the Brexiteers