Destination education: Reforming migration policy on international students to grow the UK's vital education exports

The government's policy focus on reducing net migration is causing unnecessary harm to the UK's international education sector, one of the UK’s biggest services exports. This report asks how, through better informed policy, the UK can attract more students in a growing and increasingly competitive global marketplace.
The government’s policy on international students has, for the past six years, been driven in large part by its objective of reducing net migration to the tens of thousands. The government has argued that a large number of non-EU international students – around 90,000 – do not leave the UK at the end of their studies, a claim made on the basis of data from the International Passenger Survey. Its policy towards international students is designed to reduce this number, in order to progress towards achieving its net migration target. Read more...