Following announcement by UK authorities to stop international students from bringing in dependents on their study visa, there is fear that the Universities may fall into deficit as international student enrolment drops.
Vivienne Stern, Chief executive of Universities UK, which represents more than 140 universities, said the sector was facing the prospect of a “serious overcorrection” thanks to immigration policies that deterred international students from coming to study in Britain.
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“If they want to cool things down, that’s one thing, but it seems to me that through a combination of rhetoric, which is off-putting, and policy changes . . .[they have] really turned a whole bunch of people off that would otherwise have come to the UK,” Stern told the Financial Times.
Stern’s plea came as it emerged that some top universities including York, which is a member of the elite Russell Group, were being forced to soften their entry requirements in order to maintain numbers of overseas students.
With the domestic tuition fee frozen for the past 10 years, UK universities have become increasingly reliant on non-EU students to make ends meet.
“The government needs to be very careful: we could end up with, from a policy point of view, what I would consider a serious overcorrection,” she added.