The loss of students from Europe after Brexit is the ¡°elephant in the room¡± when considering many of the problems UK higher education now faces, according to the authors of a new book.

Based on more than 120 interviews with university leaders and academic staff,??explores how the loss of a once ¡°vibrant¡± cohort created a ¡°more impoverished version of UK universities¡±.

Co-author Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at the universities of Bristol and Oxford, said it was ¡°absolutely impossible¡± to properly interrogate?the consequences of the 2016 referendum?at the time because of resistance from the political system.

¡°Once the Brexit vote had occurred, then it was just unshakeable, it was kind of holy writ. Well, that¡¯s almost a decade ago now,¡± he told?ÌÇÐÄVlog.

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¡°It¡¯s possible to rethink this, and our book is a small contribution to the rethinking. Once it¡¯s happened, we have a really clear picture, so academics like us can come in and say this is the reality that we now are in.¡±

The number of EU students entering UK institutions more than halved between 2020-21 and 2021-22 after new rules came in that?made them pay full international student fees.

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In addition to the profound change in student numbers, co-author Vassiliki Papatsiba, a reader in social sciences at Cardiff University, said the book shows how this led to a more ¡°commercial approach¡± in international higher education.

¡°It hasn¡¯t improved equity in the system, it hasn¡¯t given more opportunities to students from the Global South, it has certainly made it more stratified, and I think more unequal.¡±

With far fewer EU students, Marginson said international recruitment has moved from being viewed as a ¡°cross-cultural programme¡± to just a business, with overseas students often seen as a ¡°bag of cash¡±.

Some of the participants, interviewed between 2017 and 2019, raised fears that Brexit represented an ¡°existential risk¡± to the sector. Others were worried that the loss of EU students would threaten a university¡¯s view of itself as European and diminish the international atmosphere on the campus.

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For Papatsiba, EU students were a hybrid between international and domestic ¨C bringing a different cultural linguistic dimension and different worldviews, as well as academic excellence.

¡°I don¡¯t get the sense that anyone really makes a direct attribution [between] having much more competition now and Brexit.

¡°On student diversity, there is no discussion of having fewer, European students, so I don¡¯t think that there is this direct attribution to Brexit. It feels almost like the elephant in the room.¡±

One interviewee was worried that reduced demand from the EU would make competition for UK students ¡°even more intense than it is at the moment¡±.

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Along with the declining value of the domestic student fee and ceilings on full-fee international students, the book raises concerns that ¡°the breaking of ties with Europe will render the sector both poorer and more insular, trapped within shrinking horizons¡±.

Marginson said he hopes the open-access book will draw attention to the ¡°invisible ripple effects¡± of Brexit and the loss of the ¡°positive potential¡± from EU students.

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¡°UK universities have just become more insular, more nation focused, more nation limited, than they were and their European consciousness, their European identity, has been sloughed off like a snakeskin and they roll on regardless.¡±

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com