Government migration advisers have rejected ministers’ calls to slash the number of foreign graduates at UK universities.
The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) said the two-year graduate visa route was “not undermining” the integrity and quality of the higher education system and should remain in place.
It said it found no evidence of “significant abuse” of the route which allows international students to stay in the UK for two or three years after graduation.
The MAC concluded it was helping universities to make up for financial losses on domestic students and research through income from international tuition fees. It warned further curbs on foreign graduates could lead to course closures and “in the extreme”, the collapse of some universities.
It comes amid demands from ministers and senior Tory MPs for the route to be axed amid claims that the visas were being used as a backdoor immigration route rather than education. The Government is under pressure to cut net migration from its record high of 745,000 and has already introduced measures to cut it by 300,000.
Calls to end ‘toxic’ uncertainty over future of graduate route
Common sense minister Esther McVey sparked fury this week when she said she had “no sympathy” for universities facing financial difficulties due to visa changes, branding them “ignorant, ill-informed and dangerous”.
University leaders have, however, called on ministers to end the “toxic” uncertainty over the future of the graduate route by announcing there will be no changes.
The MAC was commissioned to review the graduate route after Home Secretary James Cleverly said he wanted to ensure the route was “not being abused” and demand for study visas was “not being driven more by a desire for immigration rather than education”.
The committee said it was concerned about “potential exploitation” of international students due to poor practices by some agents recruiting people overseas who may be “misselling UK higher education”, but it stressed this was a separate issue from abuse of the graduate route.
The number of graduate visas has more than doubled in a year to 114,000 main applicants, with a further 30,000 for dependants. They are largely concentrated on four nationalities – India, Nigeria, China and Pakistan – which account for 70 per cent of the visas, with India accounting for over 40 per cent.
‘Some institutions could fail’
The MAC said graduate visa holders were initially “overrepresented in lower-paid work” but their outcomes improved over time. It was unable to assess the risk of overstaying due to a lack of Home Office data.
It said that restrictions on foreign students bringing in dependents, announced last year, would reduce numbers, with initial deposits for places down by 63 per cent this year. It warned any further restrictions would increase the decline in overseas students.
This, it said, would mean the Government would miss its target to attract 600,000 foreign students to the UK. It would also mean “further substantial financial difficulty” for universities leading to “job losses, course closures and a reduction in research, and in the extreme it is not inconceivable that some institutions would fail”.
The MAC was, however, critical of “bad practices” by agents. “The potential poor practice by some agents recruiting international students does risk undermining the integrity of higher education in the UK,” it said.
It follows an investigation by the Sunday Times which found Britain’s top universities were paying agents to recruit lucrative overseas students on far lower grades than those required of UK applicants.
The MAC recommended that the Government should establish a mandatory registration system for international recruitment agents, and universities should be required to publish data on their use of agents to “help protect the integrity” of the UK higher education system.
The MAC’s recommendations are not binding on Government but will make it politically more difficult to cut the graduate visa route.
