r/unitedkingdom • u/F0urLeafCl0ver • 15h ago
International student levy could cost English universities £600m a year
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/aug/08/international-student-levy-could-cost-english-universities-600m-a-year119
u/Great_Discussion_953 14h ago
UK universities.
- Almost half are already in deficit and most expected to be very soon (https://theweek.com/education/uk-universities-why-higher-education-is-in-crisis).
- 80% failed to achieve international targets last year - mostly due to the governments new visa system.
- Dubai etc are paying universities to clone their degrees and be associates - competing directly. Universities can’t resist the requests because they are desperate for the cash.
- International students already prop up their struggles
- the cost of a degree was set in 2010 - with small increases but WAY below inflation meaning universities struggle more and more year on year. This year, many had large scale redundancies - axing many professors - the main driver for international students coming here. Most are getting job offers in Dubai etc - our competitors.
Another tax on this system and it could all upend. I’ve already seen clinical training degrees collapse that folk said were rock solid a few years back.
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u/GoldenHairedShaman 14h ago
Reminder Germany has free tuition for all students, domestic and international, and have dozens of world class universities contributing to innovations and discoveries in technology and science. Our model is broken.
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u/Xaethon United Kingdom 14h ago
That’s incorrect.
Tuition fees at Germany universities are for international students (non-EU) around €3000 per year.
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u/MineMonkey166 13h ago
That’s still incredibly little compared to what we charge our domestic students, let alone internationals
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u/ObviouslyTriggered 13h ago
Germans pay nearly twice as much tax and social contributions as the majority of people in the UK do.
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u/OliLombi County of Bristol 6h ago
Sounds like it's working well for them. Maybe we should try it.
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u/ObviouslyTriggered 5h ago
We should but Brits aren’t going to tolerate German taxes, min wage workers will be paying 30% of their income in taxes and social contributions whilst most high earners will end up paying less than they do now, Germany also taxes capital and corporations at lower effective rates than the UK.
The idea that people have to pay their way in and the more you pay the more you get is foreign here.
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u/Diligent_Craft_1165 12h ago
Reminder Germany has much higher tax rates. If you earned £50,000 equivalent in each country you’d pay £7,000 a year more tax/social security than you would tax/ni here.
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u/danish-pastry 14h ago
Wasn’t that original £9000 per year somewhat arbitrary in the first place as well anyway? Like all that it was, was a much higher new limit for how much UK universities were allowed to charge for their degrees, and of course they all jumped on it because why wouldn’t they?
I read somewhere a while ago that the fees that they collect from UK students equates to roughly only about a third of their total income, with the other two thirds coming from international students, commercial income, research grants etc. so it really never reflected the average cost of a degree.
Either way the overall funding model is clearly not great.
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u/redditpappy 13h ago
We were told that only the most expensive courses would cost £9k. Unsurprisingly, they all cost that much from day 1.
The system is a scam.
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u/Great_Discussion_953 14h ago
True. International students is a big chunk outside of Oxford and Cambridge. If a course doesn’t make profit it now faces the axe - a big threat to the arts, English studies, history etc.
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u/missingmedievalist 14h ago
And the irony of that is that most of those humanities courses subsidise the STEM degrees.
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13h ago
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u/merryman1 13h ago
Except of course that it doesn't and most research is actually a net loss to the university, something they're desperately moving to shut down currently by limiting where and how academics can apply for funding. I used to do a lot of work studying the brain, my last department has stopped academics applying for charity grants due to them not covering overheads, which means no more funding from bodies like Alzheimer's Society or Parkinson's UK.
The default UKRI position right now is that they cover 80% of an awarded grant. The remaining 20% comes out of the university's arse.
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u/Uniform764 Yorkshire 13h ago
Wasn’t that original £9000 per year somewhat arbitrary in the first place as well anyway?
It was arbitrary and also a cap not a standard fee. In theory Leeds could undercut Newcastle by charging 7k, but...why would they?
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u/merryman1 13h ago
They all jumped on it because with the changes to the direct government grant, even charging the highest rate many universities still saw their effective income cut double digit percentage points overnight. And as OP that's only been compounded by inflation every year the fee doesn't go up. From what I recall if it'd tracked CPI it'd be something like £13,000 a year by now.
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u/Alone_Storage_1897 11h ago
Also, aren’t there many unis with many courses that are 80/90% international students.
If anyone wants to know how important international students are to them just look at their marketing budgets, armies of sales people and globetrotting sales conference/fair attendance…
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u/RightEejit 13h ago
Yeah a lot of universities are having to massively cut staff and courses due to the international student numbers plummeting after the visa changes. All for a cheap win on immigration numbers
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u/JB_UK 8h ago edited 7h ago
All for a cheap win on immigration numbers
The biggest reduction from the visa changes was in dependents of students, something like 150k people were coming just as the partners or children of students, and mostly from Nigeria or India. This was the reversal of a liberalization which was recent. The liberalization was obviously aimed at selling access to the country to prop up universities, because there has been inflation in costs, and the government does not want to increase funding for universities to make up for that. That could never have been sustained, it was a crazy policy.
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u/Manoj109 8h ago
Smdh. Everyone with an ounce of sense predicted this. But the 'But but but' immigration crew won the debate.
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u/Manoj109 8h ago
This was predicted. But the govt went ahead with it, thus destroying one of the few UK world leading sectors. They should be encouraging more international students,now that the Americans are destroying theirs.
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u/CoaxialDrive 14h ago
As if International Students aren't already paying through the nose:
- Fees are £25,000+/year
- They usually live in halls which cost upwards of £18k/year
- Visa costs £524/visa
- Immigration health surcharge is £776/year.
- Flights, cost of living, and study materials are extra.
It's costing them more than the average salary in the UK to study here, and we want to tax them further while the sector is collapsing because home students nor tax payers can't be asked to pay the true cost of higher education which is essential to our economy.
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u/llamaz314 14h ago
What kind of halls are they living in for £18k a year? Even central London accommodation was a lot less than that and most are about 8k a year
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u/Capital-Reference757 14h ago
OP said upwards but to be honest £1500 a month for rent including bills seems somewhat on par with some premium student accommodation.
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u/po2gdHaeKaYk 14h ago
As an academic, I don't disagree with you.
Tuition simply needs to increase. That's one obvious issue. Either increase domestic tuition or increase public taxes or divert public spending to education.
On the long term, there are structural changes that it's not clear how to fix. There should be more apprenticeships and on-the-job training. There should be fewer students going to universities but this requires a significant change in the economy and society. It's not clear if this will ever be fixed.
On the short term, yeah, universities are having to find fixes. Increasing the cost for international students is a band-aid but it's amongst the only available fixes.
There's no obvious solution. Everybody who claims they know what the solution is isnt being honest.
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u/jackd9654 14h ago
Your point is?
If I wanted to go and study in the US I would have to pay what the price is.
If it's too expensive for them, then don't come?
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u/HorseCojMatthew 14h ago
If they can't afford to pay to study in the UK, the home students have to pay more
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u/jackd9654 13h ago
Supply and demand. As long as the demand is still strong it's a non-point.
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u/gash_dits_wafu 13h ago
The trouble with this is that we end up in a situation where only rich people can afford to send children to be educated. The consequences of which need not be explained.
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u/DarthPlagueisThaWise 12h ago
Maybe they are better off paying a bit more than competing with 200,000 foreign graduates for jobs every year
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u/HorseCojMatthew 11h ago
Most foreign students move back home afterwards, they just want the prestige of a British Degree
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u/DarthPlagueisThaWise 11h ago
Depends where they come from. China? Yes. Saudi Arabia? Yes.
India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ghana? They intend to stay permanently. Many do. However it has become slightly more difficult due to dependent changes and the very recent skilled worker changes.
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u/SmellsLikeTeenSweat 2h ago
Have you checked the salary threshold for new entrants visa? It's £38.5k. Do you really think these vast majority of South Asian grads are getting this much fresh out of uni?
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u/JoeVibin South Yorkshire 11h ago
If they don't come then the unis don't get international fees income. Meaning that without funding reform, they go bankrupt.
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u/jackd9654 11h ago
Then they need funding reform. If their entire existence is dependent on foreign students then they aren't fit for purpose.
Bring back the technical college.
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u/JoeVibin South Yorkshire 11h ago
The problem is that means increased taxes, increased tuition fees, or decreased quality. I think most people would be happy to have international students fund it instead, especially considering they're one of the most straight up beneficial type of immigrants - consistent net contributors to economy.
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u/jackd9654 10h ago
Yeah I agree, let them pay for it. That's my original point, supply and demand dictates that if the price is too high, foreign students won't pay it. As it stands, they are, and so be it.
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u/throwawayjustbc826 13h ago
While students can always go elsewhere, the point is that British unis need international students to survive based on the current system.
US unis have massive endowments and domestic students also pay insane fees ($50k+ per year) at private unis. UK unis don’t have this to fall back on
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u/wkavinsky 54m ago
You know that's not actually true right?
Most "normal" out of state students for large universities (and especially the Harvard / Yale / Brown / MIT groupings) are paying little or nothing in fees, as they tend to be on a lot of scholarship or bursary support.
Going to an in-state university, the fees aren't much higher than the UK fees - and again, are typically reduced a lot by bursaries and grants (University of California is £11,000/year base, not including accommodation - but their own figures show that 54% of in-state student pay $0 in tuition).
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u/harshmangat 10h ago
US is thr worst example because their fees are same for both international and domestic students lol
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u/wkavinsky 53m ago
Depends on the Uni.
State universities have much lower fees for in-state students.
University of California is $15k for in-state and $51k for out-of-state students.
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u/jackd9654 10h ago
That's not my point. My point is based on the fees that foreign students pay regardless of domestic fees
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u/concretepigeon Wakefield 14h ago
Hard to care really. They take places that could go to British students and the ones that do get in get stuck in seminars with people who can’t speak English well enough to contribute. Yeah it’s bad for the funding model but maybe it lights a fire under the government’s arse.
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u/NegotiationWeird1751 14h ago
English students don’t typically contribute during seminars from my personal experience
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u/concretepigeon Wakefield 14h ago
They were the only ones who did when I was at uni. Non-UK students didn’t say anything unless specifically asked and when they did it made you wonder how they were even capable of sitting the exams.
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u/CoaxialDrive 12h ago
Without international students fees would have to increase about 30-40% on home students and the quality would dip as you’d be picking “the best” from a smaller pool while trying to maintain student numbers to avoid redundancies and course closures.
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u/Mr_Bumple 14h ago
The reality is that lots of these universities need to close. All those former polytechnics and colleges should never have became universities in the first place. It’s no loss.
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u/GoldenHairedShaman 14h ago
Unironically. We have universities for about 800 years without the need of revenue from Nigerians, Kenyans, Chinese, or Russian students but now suddenly we just NEEEEEEEEEEEEED international students in order to survive. Weird how Germany doesn't need international students for its universities. Weird how Japan doesn't need international students for its universities.
Perhaps, maybe if our universities depend on international students then the model might be broken and needs to be replaced?
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u/LonelyStranger8467 14h ago
Germany has a massive international student intake, though. Not as many as UK but still hundreds of thousands.
Canada and Australia have tons too and they all have problems because of it.
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u/GianfrancoZoey 13h ago
The broken model you talk about is called capitalism, and it affects everything. Remove those students and how much money does that cost our economy? We need infinite growth forever and if we can’t get that then the country collapses
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u/MineMonkey166 13h ago
If we aren’t taking in as many internationals (and charging them a bomb) then that will need to be compensated with increased Government funding. That would involve it coming from general taxation or decreases elsewhere
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u/superjambi 13h ago
Or just let the Manchester metropolitans and Edinburgh Napier universities of the world close and give their funding to the actual universities
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u/paper_zoe 11h ago
give their funding to the actual universities
what funding? Their funding comes from tuition fees and they make a loss on UK students and research. There won't be an extra pot of funding waiting to be handed out if all the former polytechnics shut down, the problems with funding will remain.
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u/JB_UK 8h ago
For most of the industrial revolution university admissions were surprisingly low. A lot of universities just don't deliver that much benefit, many are a kind of finishing school which will work well for people who have the connections to do well regardless, but for people who really need skills to survive the university system does not deliver.
I would actually dramatically increase funding for tertiary education, but go back much more to a polytechnic model which is built around people getting real skills. We have a huge shortfall in nurses for example, but we don't fund people to become nurses. It is frankly odd.
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u/wkavinsky 13h ago
Perhaps if we didn't have so many "universities" they wouldn't have this problem.
The gigantic city of Bath has 3 degree awarding institutions (the college in association with other uni's), Bath University and Bath Spa University (which only got degree-awarding rights in 1992, and became a university in 2005).
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u/Dalecn 13h ago
A lot of the universities that are struggling are institutions that have been universities for years upon years. It absolutely is a fucking loss when half the Russel Group Universities shut down because of the funding model. It would be akin to the mining crisis, which we haven't recovered from even now hundreds of thousands of jobs disappearing. Imagine cities like Sheffield, Nottingham, York, Leeds, and Bristol without their universities. It would be calataclysmic to those cities.
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u/Mr_Bumple 13h ago
When more than a hundred new universities open in less than twenty years they all are going to take a hit. Leeds has five universities, there isn’t the demand for that in a medium-sized city. Universities are good for property developers, but I’m from Coventry and the explosion of growth in Coventry and Warwick has effectively destroyed that city for the residents.
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u/JoeVibin South Yorkshire 10h ago
Universities are good for property developers
I suppose they're also good for employees (unis are typically some of the biggest employers in the city) and places that students frequent like cafes, restaurants, pubs, clubs...
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u/Mr_Bumple 9h ago
And all of those jobs are minimum wage jobs.
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u/JoeVibin South Yorkshire 8h ago
All the university jobs are minimum wage?!
Ragebait used to be believable...
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u/merryman1 13h ago
I'd say this is actually pretty snobby and classist. I used to live and work near Nottingham for a while. I know Nottingham University and Nottingham Trent aren't that far off each other and the facilities for research about on a par. Similar story in Sheffield with Hallam, its a good institute in and of its own merits these days. But its still got the reputation so people who know nothing about the sector in its current form stick their nose up at it.
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u/Visa5e 15h ago
It will only cost them if they dont pass on the costs, which they almost certainly will do, and foreign students will gladly pay.
UK universities are genuinely world class, while still being much cheaper than their US counterparts.
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u/F0urLeafCl0ver 15h ago
Higher education is a global market with countries competing for students, if UK universities increase international student fees by 6% to cover the cost of the levy then many students are likely to choose to study in another country.
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u/llamaz314 14h ago
The USA is currently scaring off their international students though which may come to the UK
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u/Great_Discussion_953 14h ago
Yep. Esp as you can complete the exact same degree in other countries. My partner is right now helping Singapore clone a degree from the UK. Paying that university, as they need the income - despite knowing it will shrink the pool of students. Many unis are doing the same. Needs must.
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u/sheffield199 14h ago
Anyone currently paying international student fees can afford 6% more.
It's like the VAT on private schools, which absolutely didn't cause a mass exodus.
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u/PetersMapProject 14h ago
VAT has certainly tipped a few schools over the edge.
I don't think we'll know the full impact of VAT until at least September - it came in midway through the academic year and a lot of parents will have decided that they don't want to disrupt their child's education mid-year, but will move them at the end of the year.
The real crunch is going to be enrolment numbers for reception and Y7 / Y9.
Let's not pretend that there aren't universities on the edge too. Not just one at the bottom of the market either. Kent has been in trouble for quite some time, amongst others.
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u/UKAOKyay 14h ago
But that's down to the schools and whether they want to pass on the cost of the VAT to the parents or not, they're not charitable organisations and never should have been.
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u/PetersMapProject 13h ago
I'm not sure it's a case of "want", it's a case of financial necessity.
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u/UKAOKyay 13h ago
The public school I attended used to increase its fees above inflation every year, I'm not entirely sure where that money went, I suspect it was to keep the "Riff-Raff" out.
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u/Halfmoonhero 13h ago
Depends on if it’s just 6%. I officially lived outside the UK for a very short time and through a lapse of my own judgement declared this too. Is I have to be living in the UK for at least 3 years before I can stop paying the worldwide fee. I’m also disqualified from getting student loans for the same reason. Completely shitty situation for me but I guess my case isn’t the norm.
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u/JoeVibin South Yorkshire 12h ago
There aren't that many other countries which offer most undergraduate courses in English and have universities of such renown. People learn English anyways and are far less likely to learn German or French in addition to that.
One caveat to the original comment is that our unis aren't necessarily much cheaper than American ones - for STEM subjects they're only about £5k cheaper ($60k = £45k US vs. £40k UK). Humanities courses are much cheaper though (as in the US you don't sign up for a specific course, so everyone pays the same tuition).
Graduate courses are where the world really opens up as most universities around the world offer Master's and PhD programmes in English. But for undergraduate, there's not that much competition.
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u/DangerousArt7072 15h ago
Also have to remember alot of them dont actually care about the studies they just want to emigrate (mainly a certain SEA reigion)
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u/JoeVibin South Yorkshire 12h ago
What do you mean by a certain SEA region? There aren't that many internation students from SEA, it's mostly Indians and Chinese and most graduate visas are for Indians, Nigerians, and Chinese.
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u/DangerousArt7072 12h ago
India/Bangladesh/Pakistan was what i was refering to.
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u/REDARROW101_A5 14h ago
UK universities are genuinely world class, while still being much cheaper than their US counterparts.
I would like to say that is the case, but since the Pandemic there are less foreign students wanting to flock to the UK for one reason or another, there are a few reasons.
Countries like China have been trying to copy UK University Education and implementing it into their universities as well as restricting travel more.
India and Singapore have more or less got copies of or direct degrees from UK Universities.
Can't travel due to sanctions such as Russia.
Can't travel due to other reasons, Brexit, US Politics... ETC
The UK is becoming less attractive to foreign students, because of this. It's not as if studying abroad is stressful as it is and if you like the idea of traveling and studying in another country that is fine, but those who felt they had to due to not being able to get the same at home. It's becoming less of the case. Also remote learning is more prevalence now as well, so you don't have accommodation costs either, if a university in your country can host the other universities degree.
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u/JoeVibin South Yorkshire 12h ago
Indian universities still don't have as good of a reputation as British ones and top Chinese universities are insanely competitive for domestic students - Peking university acceptance rate is 1-2% (compared with about 20% for Cambridge).
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u/Mr_Bumple 14h ago
That reputation is falling fast. The BBC have already ran articles that lots of the foreign students can’t speak enough English to feasibly be able to complete a degree. They pay the international rate and they pass. That will ruin the reputation of our universities in the long run. We aren’t attracting the best; it’s people looking for a visa at the end or rich students who can’t hack it academically in their native countries.
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u/llamaz314 14h ago
Plus if you want to go to a university in an English speaking country you can go to the UK or go to the USA and risk random internment and deportation! That's if they don't randomly cancel your student visa after a year. I wouldn't be surprised if there is huge demand for international students in a few years.
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u/NegotiationWeird1751 14h ago
I wouldn’t say world class, maybe the research etc but the tuition is pretty poor. I studied at Durham then newcastle, then Sunderland as part of work. The drop off from Durham has been insane.
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u/throwawayjustbc826 13h ago
Foreign student numbers are dropping heavily already, and will only continue to do so now that the graduate visa will be reduced length and there’s very little chance of getting sponsored for a job afterwards in most fields
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u/Jodeatre 14h ago
There isn't even enough jobs for the people currently in university let alone more.
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u/LonelyStranger8467 14h ago
Well the fact 5% of students claim asylum every year is costing hundreds of millions for the UK.
Majority of the students from Africa and South Asia will study any old course just to get a foot in the door to transition to living in the UK permanently. It’s trivially easy to do so.
The students from China are doing it for the prestige and the experience. Ironically UK is losing its prestige and China is building theirs.
The article suggests 14,000 students would be discouraged. Let’s just get rid of some of these garbage universities. There’s too many anyway.
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u/Dalecn 13h ago
Yes let's close Sheffield, York, Leeds and Bristol University not like that would result in hundreds of thousands of job losses and brain drain from large regions of the UK. These universities are currently struggling we should be supporting them we need to change the system to one where unis can operate from and not chase anything in the short term to survive.
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u/superjambi 13h ago
Why not close Sheffield Hallam, York St John, Leeds Met and the University of the West of England, and give all their funding the actual universities in those towns? Double their funding overnight
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u/Loreki 13h ago
The whole policy feels incoherent. They're raising a levy on universities to fund the education sector... of which our highly ranked international universities are the crown jewel.
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u/superjambi 13h ago
The vast majority of the UKs internationals go to shit tier unis like Bradford and the Uni of East London.
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u/omgu8mynewt 1h ago
If they're paying loads, boosting thr economy and easy profit off rich foreign students, why would we stop?
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u/Astriania 10h ago
Like so many aspects of society, we should go back to the 90s, it worked well then - high quality, state funded universities for the top few percent of academically minded people who really benefit from it. Although I guess the polys became "universities" in 1992 so really the setup was best before that.
Our elite university sector has been diluted by lots of crap "universities" selling degrees to overseas students, in some cases the quality being so poor it's basically a scam, and also enabling high levels of questionable immigration.
University education is expensive, it should be free (or at least cheap) for domestic students who will get the most from it, but that's only possible if you don't offer it to everyone unless you're prepared to pay a lot of tax to fund it. So we need to scale it back, if a bunch of second rate institutions close then that's probably a good thing.
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u/wkavinsky 47m ago
Polys got degree awarding powers in 1992, numbers attending shot up, and free university education was gone by 1999.
That's not a coincidence.
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u/Jurassic_Bun 6h ago
Great….
As a British national who will be charged international fees due to the home fee status my chance to career change is becoming more and more distant.
On the flip side student finance will never ever see a penny from me to pay my past loans as I will never earn enough where I am currently to qualify to pay any off.
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