The View
Measuring the Benefits of International Education
There are many ways to grasp the net benefit of international students, and HEPI is committed to making sure people understand so.
By Nick Hillman, Director, HEPI
“If any university were to lose its licence to recruit students from overseas, it could well prompt an existential crisis.”
"If there is one thing today’s heightened geopolitical tension proves above all else, it is that people across the world need to work even harder to understand and learn from one another."
When I took over as Director of an Oxford-based think-tank, the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), over a decade ago, I knew we had to focus relentlessly on the benefits international students bring to the UK. To people working in higher education, these benefits may seem obvious and to arrive with few downsides. Yet to many others, including those in power, the opposite can seem true. So, the majority of the really big projects HEPI has undertaken over the past few years have focused on people who have travelled from all over the world to the UK to earn their higher education.
These projects include calculating (more than once) the net economic benefits of international students to the UK. The latest iteration found a gross benefit of £41.9 billion for just one incoming cohort of students and a net benefit (after taking account of the impact on public services) of £37.4 billion.
Unlike others who have tried similar calculations, we split up the total to reveal a number for each one of the 650 parliamentary constituencies across the UK. So, we were able to prove every single part of the UK benefits. The biggest benefits of all are found in constituencies in the north of England, in places like central Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle upon Tyne. At a regional rather than a constituency level, we can see that London and Scotland particularly benefit too.
We have separately calculated the tax contributions of those former international students who stay in the UK to work after completing their studies. Even before the introduction (in 2021) of the Graduate Route visa, which has allowed international students to stay in the UK for two years after completing their studies, each cohort of students opting to remain in the UK contributed billions of pounds to the Exchequer.
Follow-up work on the Graduate Route visa itself found further financial benefits as it became easier for people to stay. Just as importantly, we were able to prove that former international students have filled in some of the severe higher-level skills shortages that have been holding back the UK’s productivity. Many worked in public service roles suffering shortages of staff; others earned higher-than-average salaries in private businesses, suggesting their contribution was particularly significant.
Each year, we also produce a Soft-Power Index which looks at how many very senior world leaders have been educated to a higher level outside of their own home country. If they return home with fond memories of their time in the UK and a better understanding of country, then this tends to bring real benefits. The Soft-Power Index is a methodologically trickier exercise than it sounds because, for example, you have to decide who world leaders are (we limit ourselves to monarchs, presidents and prime ministers) as well as what higher education is (for example, we include some military training alongside Bachelor’s and Master’s courses). Moreover, the information on some world leaders is surprisingly opaque and we aim to find more than one reliable source for each fact that we report. But all this work is worthwhile for the results are staggering: in 2024, across 195 countries, we found there were 58 serving world leaders who received some higher education in the UK, second only to the US, where 70 had studied.
So, anyone who engages with HEPI’s output is unlikely to doubt the academic, economic, labour market or soft power benefits of hosting hundreds of thousands of students from around the world here in the UK. We know the research has had an impact because it is regularly quoted in official documents, in the media and by policy makers. Most importantly, it appears to have helped shape public policy.
The UK’s Conservative Government in power until mid-2024 threatened to stop the Graduate Route visa altogether. But our evidence – often produced with partners, including Kaplan, Universities UK and the National Union of Students – along with the evidence from others, persuaded Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Government not to tighten up the rules.
The successor Labour Government, in post from July 2024, followed their predecessor by similarly contemplating the removal of the Graduate Route visa. Once more, however, Ministers opted not to do this: the evidence we and others supplied showed it would simply hamper universities that were already strapped for cash because of the holding down of tuition fees for home students.
However, while rejecting the wholesale abolition of the Graduate Route visa, the Labour Government’s recent immigration white paper, Restoring control over the immigration system, did announce a modest reduction in the period covered by the visa from 24 months to 18 months. This paper also heralded various other changes, such as tougher compliance thresholds for higher education institutions – including reducing the acceptable visa refusal rate from 10 percent to 5 percent.
Such changes sound technical, dry and boring, so they are prone to being overlooked in public discourse, but they are vitally important. If any university were to lose its licence to recruit students from overseas, it could well prompt an existential crisis. (No UK university has pockets as deep as Harvard’s.)
Most worryingly, the UK Government’s white paper sought to copy the debate in Australia by floating the idea of a new levy on international student fees – and at a rate of 6 percent compared to the Australian idea of just 2 percent. It seems as if this idea was pushed in at the very last minute, perhaps as a sop to the Home Office in return for not abolishing the Graduate Route visa altogether. Not surprisingly, the idea of a levy has prompted fierce opposition from across the higher education sector.
This should all serve as a reminder that the policy context is constantly changing. I was recently asked, when appearing on a panel at a conference, ‘does the migration white paper herald future stability or will policy go on changing?’ In reply, another panellist said she felt the white paper was merely a ‘comma’ rather than a ‘full stop’. I went even further because my experience in Whitehall, as a political adviser to the Minister for Universities (2010 to 2013), taught me policy constantly evolves and almost never stands still or even pauses.
For one thing, there always seems to be a new Minister in charge (England has had 11 Ministers for Universities in the past 11 years) or a new civil service team who are still getting up to speed or a new cadre of education journalists looking for the next big story – not to mention the rapidly changing wider political scene, with the success of different individual political parties waxing and waning.
Many political observers are currently predicting a shift from a two-party model to a multi-party one at Westminster, repeating what has already happened in Scotland. Another moving piece of the puzzle is the situation in the United States, with Donald Trump’s unpredictability remaining very hard to deal with.
What to do? First, the UK would ideally strive to provide an even better experience for international students opting to study here. Secondly, we would improve opportunities for transnational education. Thirdly, we would recognise more UK citizens need to have experience studying abroad, if we want to remain an outward-looking country with links all over the world.
HEPI’s recent report on Chinese students in UK universities found many want universities to do more to understand and support their lives. We could start by striving to diversify students’ living arrangements, so that it becomes easier for international students to integrate fully with their fellow learners, and aiming to divert a somewhat higher proportion of international students’ fees to better careers support.
Simultaneously, we should work to boost transnational education. There are already over half a million people studying UK qualifications abroad, many of whom could not afford to study in the UK itself. While student surveys reveal these learners are generally satisfied, we still know relatively little about them. In his recent HEPI report, Professor David Carter of the University of Reading recommended more oversight to instil more confidence, protect the reputation of UK higher education and provide a secure basis on which to increase the reach of transnational education.
Finally, we should aim to have more UK citizens spending time abroad learning. If the decline in school exchange programmes and the ridiculously low take up of languages in secondary schools sum up the challenge, then the official review of the 11-to-19 curriculum provides a fresh opportunity to revive language learning.
The three areas for change that I have outlined here may come across as naïve, given the way the world currently seems to battening down the hatches and the widespread sense that we are living in a post-globalised world. On the other hand, countries which remain open may make further strides in international education, thereby strengthening their institutions as well as deepening their host nation’s soft power. If there is one thing today’s heightened geopolitical tension proves above all else, it is that people across the world need to work even harder to understand and learn from one another.
Nick Hillman is the Director of the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and serves on the QS Global Advisory Committee: UK.