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How f—g stupid is this; let me count the ways buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/hi…
Firstly, international students are hugely popular. In fact only 1/4 of the public thinks of them as immigrants and the majority of people want more of them and for them to stay after graduation universitiesuk.ac.uk/news/Pages/New…
Secondly, international students - about 135k a year - are a net contributor to the exchequer of approx £20bn a year hepi.ac.uk/2018/01/11/new…
Thirdly, these students aren’t demand inelastic. We’ve already seen flows to the U.K. decrease since the last cack handed attempt to manage numbers. So higher fees will in all likelihood lead to fewer coming bbc.co.uk/news/education…
Which means that whilst some unis may gain financially, many others will lose EU students at the same time as they may lose unit funding for their U.K. students via Augar reforms
Fourthly, this type of policy really really lands. The changes referred to above still reverberate through the system and would-be intl students think there’s a cap. This is literally the opposite of the type of post Brexit Global Britain narrative
Fifthly, all this does is invite retaliatory measures. Fewer U.K. students go abroad than the reverse but approx 25k a year study in the EU ukcisa.org.uk/Research--Poli…
And sixthly, it won’t be sustainable. Greater access to students including visa reform and fee equivalence will surely be one of the main conditions of an EU trade deal (also with India, China, Australia, US...)
So it’s a short sighted, vindictive, counterproductive, unpopular and unsustainable move which runs contrary to the vision of Britain we should be setting. That’s quite something.
