The home secretary, James Cleverly, has said international students may be “undermining the integrity and quality of the UK higher education system” by using university courses as a cheap way of getting work visas.
In a letter to the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), Cleverly asked the body to investigate whether the graduate visa entitlement – allowing international students to work for two or three years after graduating – was failing to attract “the brightest and the best” to the UK.
But university leaders fear that cutting or restricting the graduate visa route will lead to a drastic fall in international recruitment, and provoke a financial crisis for universities that rely on income from international tuition fees.
Cleverly told the MAC that while the government was committed to attracting “talented students from around the world to study in the UK”, it also wanted “to ensure the graduate route is not being abused. In particular, some of the demand for study visas is not being driven more by a desire for immigration.
“An international student can spend relatively little on fees for a one-year course and gain access to two years with no job requirement on the graduate route, followed by four years’ access to a discounted salary threshold on the skilled worker route,” Cleverly said.
“This means international graduates can access the UK labour market with salaries significantly below the requirement imposed on the majority of migrant skilled workers.”
The home secretary instructed the committee, which gives independent advice to the government, to investigate “any evidence of abuse” of the graduate route, “including the route not being fit for purpose”, and to look at which universities were producing graduates who used the route.
He also asked the MAC to analyse “whether the graduate route is undermining the integrity and quality of the UK higher education system, including understanding how the graduate route is or is not, effectively controlling for the quality of international students, such that it is genuinely supporting the UK to attract and retain the brightest and the best, contributing to economic growth and benefiting British higher education”.
Rachel Hewitt, the chief executive of the MillionPlus group of universities, said the government’s review appeared to be deliberately aimed at undermining the success of British higher education.
“It is impossible to imagine the government going out of its way to make Britain less inviting to investment in almost any other sector – and yet every negative headline and policy reform makes Britain less attractive to international students,” Hewitt said.
“The graduate route is a key component of the offer that UK universities can make to international applicants, and its value should be recognised and not eroded.”
The graduate visa was revived by the Conservative government in 2019 to help UK universities attract international students, in competition with rivals in countries such as the US and Australia, which offered more generous post-graduation work visas or citizenship.
Cleverly said “early data” showed that just 23% of international students using the skilled workers route moved into graduate-level jobs, and that last year only a third moved into jobs paying more than £26,000 a year.
The committee is expected to report back in May, and its findings could come at a difficult time for the higher education sector. University leaders have described student visa restrictions as “an economic act of self-harm” for the UK.
Universities have reported a steep drop in demand for places from overseas applicants since the government introduced restrictions stopping students on taught courses such as master’s degrees from bringing their family to the UK. So far this year, enrolments from overseas have fallen by 40% compared with 2023.
