The United Kingdom Home Secretary, James Cleverly, has disclosed that international students may be “undermining the integrity and quality of the UK higher education system” by using university courses as cost-effective way of obtaining work visas.
Cleverly stated this in a letter written to the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), while requesting visa review over concern that courses are being used as a means of gaining work permits.
The Guardian UK reported that Cleverly asked the agency to investigate whether the graduate visa entitlement, which allows international students to work for two or three years after graduating, was failing to attract “the brightest and the best” to the country.
University leaders however fear that reducing or restricting the graduate visa route will lead to a great fall in international recruitment, and trigger a financial crisis for universities that rely on funds from international tuition fees.
Cleverly told the MAC that though the government was committed to attracting “talented students from around the world to study in the UK”, it also wanted “to ensure the graduate route is not being abused. In particular, that some of the demand for study visas is not being driven more by a desire for immigration”.
Cleverly said: “An international student can spend relatively little on fees for a one-year course and gain access to two years with no job requirement on the graduate route, followed by four years’ access to a discounted salary threshold on the skilled worker route.
“This means international graduates are able to access the UK labour market with salaries significantly below the requirement imposed on the majority of migrant skilled workers.”
He ordered the committee, which gives independent advice to the government, to probe “any evidence of abuse” of the graduate route, “including the route not being fit for purpose”, and to look at which universities were producing graduates who used the route.
Also, he also asked the MAC to analyze “whether the graduate route is undermining the integrity and quality of the UK higher education system, including understanding how the graduate route is or is not, effectively controlling for the quality of international students, such that it is genuinely supporting the UK to attract and retain the brightest and the best, contributing to economic growth and benefiting British higher education”.
Cleverly stated that “early data” revealed that just 23% of international students using the skilled workers route moved into graduate-level jobs, and that only a third moved into jobs paying more than £26,000 a year in 2023.
The committee will report back in May, and its discoveries could come at a difficult time for the higher education sector. Enrolments from overseas have fallen by 40% so far this year compared with 2023.
