Response to NUS briefing on international students

10 September, 2012

• The majority of students leave at the end of their studies.

There is no evidence to support this claim. The IPS still cannot distinguish departing workers from departing students. A recent Home Office study of a sample of cases, ‘The Migrant Journey’, found that after five years, 20% of students remained in the UK legally. The other 80% were described as “no longer in the immigration system”. However, this is not evidence that they had left the UK.

• International students were worth £8 billion to the UK economy in 2008/09.^[1]

Migration Watch UK estimate that non-EU students were in fact worth £4.3 billion, of which £2.1 billion came from tuition fees.^[2]

The UK is beginning to look less attractive to international students.

Results of an NUS survey suggest that 40% of students would not recommend the UK as a place to study. However, Mr David Willetts, revealed that UCAS applications from outside the EU were up by 13% on the previous year.^[3]

The UK has lost share in the global market for international students.

The NUS claim that the UK’s share fell from 10.8% in 2000 to 9.9% in 2009. In fact, student numbers rose from 223,000 to 363,000. A more appropriate measure of the UK share is that of students who go to MESDCs – Mainly English speaking destination countries. The UK had 24.6% of this market in 2000, falling slightly to 23.6% in 2009.

The timing of the revocation of LMU’s licence is “alarming”

It would seem however that LMU was given a deadline by the UKBA within which to address compliance issues found at an earlier inspection. The situation, it is claimed, had not been addressed satisfactorily so the licence was revoked.

Reducing student inflows reduces outflows in later years, producing a minimal long term impact on net migration.

Bogus students kept out reduce net migration by the same amount as they would not have left at the end of their courses. A reduction in genuine students reduces net migration by about 20% of the fall.

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