British universities are “overstating” the value of overseas students in the funding of research and teaching, according to a new report.
Education Not Immigration: Reforming the UK’s International Student Regime, which can be read here, is introduced by Professor David Goodhart, who states:
The supposed benefits of ‘cross-subsidy’ from international fees to pay for domestic student teaching and research, so often invoked by proponents of the current system, [have] been greatly overstated for many universities.
The analysis indicates that leading universities make an average surplus of £10,400 (€12,078) per international student. In contrast, “low-ranked universities achieve an average profit margin of just £2,900 (€3,367)”, making “the cross-subsidy potential for domestic students and research … far more limited.”
In short, university executives’ claims that overseas students subsidise the teaching of their domestic counterparts rely more on assertion than evidence. Some have hit back accordingly, with the University of East Anglia’s Syed Nooh telling Research Professional News
The suggestion that the benefits of international students are overstated is not supported by extensive research, which consistently shows that they make a net economic contribution of over £40 billion per year.
This misses the wider concern with the damage done to Britain’s social fabric by the graduate visa route being treated as a loophole to allow permanent settlement there. It seems to confirm the analysis of Robert Bates, research director at the Centre for Migration Control, who last year told Europeanconservative.com that
the main function of many British universities now seems to be the distribution of British visas to foreign nationals.
