UK universities could be hit badly by UK student visa restrictions

United Kingdom, 18th October: The tougher UK student visa norms could deal yet another blow to the already struggling UK universities, findings of a recent report show.

Tougher UK student visa norms bad for international student market--According to chair of the Universities UK Longer Term Strategy Network, Professor Paul O’Prey, the share of the UK in the international student market has considerably declined in the recent past thus losing its sheen to other foreign nations hunting for foreign students.

Named Patterns and trends 2011 in UK Higher Education, the report states that around 2.5 million students are enrolled in various higher education institutes in the UK each year, thus registering an increase of over 28 percent as compared to the last ten years.

The international student sector resulted in £26.8bn turnover in the year 2009-10 with education contracts and tuition fees accounting for 31 percent of this revenue as compared to 23 percent in the previous decade.

And if the impact of recent UK student visa norms is taken into consideration, then the results could be manifold, warns O’Prey.

These UK visa rules could literally throw the nation out of the international competition and could mean big losses for the universities in the UK as well as the UK economy. It may be worth mentioned here that the number of international students hailing from non-EU nations has doubled in the past ten years period taking the total international student figures in the UK to 400,000.

And the share of China happens to be highest in the international student market while India ranked at the top for being the major source of post-graduate international students in the UK.

High employment rate among university graduates in the UK—Although, the UK is struggling to cope up with soaring unemployment rates, but despite this, the employment rate among university graduates is between 86-94 percent Four higher education institutes in the UK have managed to emerge at the top in the international market, the survey of higher education institutions shows.

These include Cambridge, Oxford, University College and Imperial College London reaching among the top 20 institutions thus posing a tough competition to the US universities.