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Universities: Overseas Students

Answer

​​The government has been clear that we welcome international students who meet the requirements to study in the UK. International students positively impact our higher education (HE) sector, economy, and society as a whole and enrich our university campuses, forge lifelong friendships with our domestic students and become global ambassadors for the UK.

​The Immigration White Paper, published in May, sets out a balanced approach - helping the government achieve our manifesto commitment on reducing net migration while maintaining the UK’s global competitiveness.

​The Office for Students (OfS) has identified reliance on international student fee income as a risk to HE providers’ sustainability. It has been clear that providers will need to change their business models to protect their financial health as a response to this risk and others. HE providers are independent from government and as such are responsible for managing their finances.

​This government has taken action to support the financial sustainability of universities after seven years of frozen tuition fee caps. The maximum fee for a standard full-time undergraduate course in the 2025/26 academic year was increased by 3.1%, from £9,250 to £9,535. To provide long-term certainty over future funding for the sector, so that it can focus on reform, we will increase tuition fee caps in line with forecast inflation in 2026/27 and 2027/28 and then legislate to increase tuition fee caps automatically for future academic years.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

87650

Session

2024-26

Related items

Restoring Control over the Immigration System
Monday, 12 May 2025
Command papers
House of Commons
House of Lords

Grouped for answer

Yes

Subjects

Finance Overseas students Universities

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk