Internationalisation under threat from anti-immigration populism

The United Kingdom's higher education system is in an exceptionally strong global position. For decades the nation has been second only to the United States as an attractor of students and other academic talent. Most of the world's 'wannabee' education hubs would settle for a quarter of the existing drawing power of the UK.

Moreover, unlike the United States - which generates revenues for international education as the byproduct of policies designed to enhance American influence and recruit global talent for domestic purposes - the UK has systematically turned the drawing power of its education sector into a commercial business that generates nearly GBP20 billion (US$33.8 billion) a year in fees and other spending by students and families.

It is almost unthinkable that the British government would take a series of decisions that would undermine the inward flow of students. But amid an immigration debate spinning out of control, that is exactly what it has done.

It is another sign that in a globalising world, in which growing mobility is a fact of life, European states are chronically unable to manage a stable migration policy on a consensus basis.

The UK, France, Germany, Switzerland and the Nordic countries cannot devise an approach to migration that (1) stratifies the demand for entry so as to take in cross-border mobility that meets policy objectives, while satisfying human rights protocols, and (2) sells the preferred migrants successfully to the electorate.

In the UK this chronic policy failure has cranked up the risk factors in higher education finance. International student numbers are falling for the first time in many years. And higher education institutions are highly dependent on this source.

High dependency

The downside of the export industry is the high dependence of many British institutions on the money it provides.

In the UK in 2012-13, higher education institutions received 12.1% of their total income from non-European Union international students. EU students pay home country fees. Non-EU students, the majority of them from Asian countries, can be charged tuition high enough to generate a surplus.

In all, 81 institutions draw more than 10% of revenue from this source.

In 2012-13 the University of Manchester enrolled 8,875 non-EU students. University College London had 7,665 non-EU students, Nottingham 7,280, Warwick 6,415 and in Scotland, Edinburgh had 6,045.

Even the venerable University of Oxford enrolled 4,685 commercial fee paying non-EU students. At the London School of Economics, or LSE, the 4,800 non-EU students who paid tuition on a commercial basis constituted 48.3% of the student body.

Also in 2012-13 in the UK the number of total full-time students from EU and non-EU countries dropped by 1.4%. In taught postgraduate programmes, such as one-year business masters, EU entrants fell 8% and non-EU entrants fell by 1%.

EU student numbers were down because of the GBP9,000 fee regime for local and EU students that was introduced in 2012. This trend was expected. It is the smaller decline in high fee non-EU students that is generating most of the ripples.

The number of students from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh plummeted. This was partly balanced by increases in students from China and Hong Kong. Chinese students are mainstays of taught masters courses. In 2012-13 they were 23% of such students, almost as many as the 26% from the UK.

Government action

The UK authorities have cracked down on rogue colleges and immigration scams in the sub-continent, but that is not the only cause of the downturn in numbers.

The cost of UK visas (US$520) is high, compared to US$360 in the US and only US$124 in Canada. Non-EU students (and only non-EU students) are subject to individual interviews designed to establish 'student integrity'. Lecturers must report on non-EU students (and only non-EU students) on a monthly basis.

In universities many describe the present visa regime as unwelcoming, discriminatory, burdensome and intrusive. Universities UK estimates the total cost of institutional compliance at GBP70 million per annum.

In 2012, post-study work visas, which allowed graduates two years of looking for work to defray the cost of their education, were scrapped.

Graduates must now find jobs worth GBP20,600 a year within four months if they want to stay and work in the UK. This compares to two- to four-year post-study work visas in Australia and three years in Canada, which is emerging as a serious competitor for the UK.

At the same time that South Asian student entry to the UK has dropped sharply, it has surged in the United States and picked up again from a low base in Australia. The Barack Obama government has reduced the surveillance measures established by the previous George W Bush government and has consistently adopted a welcoming approach.

In a report on international students released in early April, the Higher Education Funding Council for England concluded: "The recent slowdown points to increasing challenges in recruitment following a long period of growth. With education continuing to become more globalised, competition from a wider range of countries is only likely to increase..."

International education in the UK is being undermined by a consistent set of moves in policy and regulation that are designed to slow inward student mobility and retard the progression from student to migrant.

Why? The sole goal is to reduce immigration. The present Coalition - Conservative-Liberal Democrat - government is under strong pressure to do this.

Anti-migration politics

The international education sector has been caught by a negative wave of migration politics, like an insect in a spider web.

Politically the main responsibility lies with Nigel Farage's UK Independence Party, which is riding very high. UKIP is expected to gain 30% of the vote in the elections for the European Parliament and out-poll each of the established major parties.

Farage's main target is not Asian international students, who are temporary migrants. Polls reveal more public concern about asylum seekers and illegals than about international students. Farage focuses on Eastern European migrants who are hoping to settle in the UK more permanently. He claims they are taking British jobs.

The UKIP leader is a clever communicator with a gift for calling up and channelling prejudice. His concern, he says, is the 'white working class male' who is being crowded out of the labour market and neglected by Westminster.

He uses racism to tap into a residual older British identity, combined with class solidarity that is more often associated with the political left than the political right. The precedents for this strategy are the national socialist movements of 1920 to 1945.

The major parties are on the defensive in relation to both EU membership and migration and Farage's position has strong support in the right wing of the Conservative Party, which leads David Cameron's Coalition government.

Cameron's strategic response has been to try to steal the ground from under UKIP. This only seems to have strengthened UKIP's position, by mainstreaming it. The Cameron government has promised to hold a referendum on EU membership and to cut the annual intake of migrants from 213,000 in 2013 to less than 100,000.

International students are almost 40% of the migration count. Bearing down on non-EU students is the quickest way to reduce migration. Hence the moves designed to slow the inward movement of students, and to weaken the capacity of graduates to generate enough points to apply for ongoing residency.

Seven select committees of the Houses of Commons and Lords have now called on the government to remove international students from the net migration target.

But it is much more difficult to cut employer-sponsored migrants and to stop applications from the highly skilled, than to cold-shoulder students. So far the government seems determined to hang onto the power to reduce migration by reducing students, regardless of the cost to the GBP20 billion export industry.

The UK might be a nation of shopkeepers, as Adam Smith and Napoleon said, but it seems race-based identity (and political survival) are more important than money.

* Simon Marginson is professor of international higher education in the Institute of Education at the University of London in the UK. Email: s.marginson@ioe.ac.uk.