Growth in overseas student numbers should be capped, particularly in areas with accommodation shortages, and England’s international education strategy should be rewritten to target diversification by country and qualification level, according to a new report.

Any further moves to limit universities’ ability to take on more students should be accompanied by increases in teaching grants to compensate for lost income, says the paper from the Social Market Foundation (SMF), a cross-party thinktank, which highlights how the outgoing government’s policymaking in this area has been “poorly thought out”.

Another recommendation included in the research, Too much of a good thing? International students and the financial stability of English higher education, published on 24 June, is reforming the country’s visa system so that rising costs can be spread out over time to avoid them becoming a barrier to top international applicants.

The publication comes after the government decided against scrapping the UK’s graduate visa after its Migration Advisory Committee cautioned against the move.

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Despite the respite, the SMF argues in the paper – and a complementary report entitled Crazy for you – that public opinion has shifted to a more negative view of international students in part because of the perception that they are taking the places of domestic applicants.

Universities’ advocacy strategy “risks appearing arrogant and remote, dismissive and misrepresenting of others’ concerns”, the paper says and “ignoring and wishing away these concerns risks missing a golden opportunity to address them”.

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Availability of accommodation is highlighted as a key challenge, as it has been in Australia and Canada, which are also looking at limiting international student numbers, and the SMF links its central recommendation to alleviating this strain.

A cap, the paper says, should apply to universities’ visa allocations, which can currently be increased by up to 50 per cent annually.

This should be reduced to 20 per cent, with the limit “reviewed on a periodic basis” as a way of stopping expansion from “spiralling out of control” without diminishing the UK’s reputation as a study destination, the report says.

“Where student housing shortages are identified, the onus should be on universities to demonstrate that their requested student visa allocation increase would not exacerbate the shortage,” the paper says, and if the institution fails to demonstrate this then its request should be rejected.

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At the same time, the SMF argues the government should increase the direct funding grant provided to universities to remove the need to cross-subsidise domestic students with international fees.

This grant, currently about £1,150-per-student, should be restored to 2020-21 levels in real terms and tied to inflation, the report says.

On reforming the international education strategy, the SMF argues that achieving the target of attracting 600,000 students to the UK “should not be taken as encouragement to revise it upwards”.

Instead, new targets should be introduced around reducing the proportion of universities’ income that comes from one or two countries and encouraging institutions to allocate more of their student visas to undergraduate and research students as opposed to master’s courses, in order to provide a more sustainable source of funding and strengthen the UK’s research pipeline.

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Jonathan Thomas, a senior fellow at the thinktank, said the past year had seen a shift “away from the policy presumption that attracting international students without limit is immune from any trade-offs and tensions”.

“This shift is a good thing, as it provides the UK with an opportunity to acknowledge and address them, rebuilding slipping public confidence and maintaining public consent to the UK’s continued openness to international students,” he added.

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tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com