Category: Education

The Australian government has implemented a significant increase in student visa fees. Effective 1 July 2024, the application fee will increase to AUS$1,600, representing a 225% jump from the previous fee of AUS$710.

An official government release explains, “This increase reflects the increasing value of education in Australia and reflects the Government’s commitment to restoring integrity in the international education sector.”

The statement notes that the increase will help fund a number of important initiatives in education and migration, including the “ongoing implementation of the Migration Strategy.”

“The changes coming into force today will help restore integrity to our international education system, and create a migration system which is fairer, smaller, and better able to deliver for Australia,” added Minister for Home Affairs Clare O’Neil.

The updated fee schedule for the Student visa (subclass 500) has been published on the Australian Department of Home Affairs website. Alongside the increased fee for main applicants, the Australian government will now charge AUS$1,445 for each accompanying applicant aged 18 and over. Accompanying family members under 18 years of age, will be charged AUS$390.

The moves comes less than two months after the government increased the minimum funds requirements for international students. A significant increase in visa fees was rumoured at the time as well. There was no mention of any increase in the government’s budget tabled on 14 May 2024, but the understanding at that point was that visa fees were “likely to go up significantly ‘at a later date.’”

Today’s announcement makes it clear that that “later date” is 1 July 2024.

Also of note is that the fee increase is being put in place even as rejection rates for student visa applications have reached historically high levels in at least the first four months of this year.

For additional background, please see:

There has been a surge in international student mobility since the pandemic, and that rapid growth has certainly tested many of the existing quality assurance measures in place across the international education sector. Student services have struggled to keep pace, the global stock of student housing has been tested, and a number of the models we have for recruiting and teaching international students have come under greater scrutiny.

Viewing all of that through a student lens, we have to acknowledge as a sector that, amid that rapid growth over the last couple of years, there have been increasing reports of students having had a negative experience of study abroad. Those reports are grounded in a variety of issues, including shortages of affordable student housing, mental health concerns, poor integration into local communities, difficulty accessing support services, poor programme delivery, and sub-par graduation and career outcomes for some students.

Those reports have in turn led to growing calls for increasing regulation of the sector, and the resulting wave of new policy settings brought forth by national governments has been well documented over the past year. They include enrolment caps in a number of countries – notably the Netherlands, Canada, and Australia – and a variety of new restrictions and requirements for visiting students.

Parallel to that pattern of more restrictive policies around international students has been a growing call for increased regulation of education agents. It is well established that agents play a critical role in student recruitment, and in providing invaluable support for students, parents, and institutional partners. But the education agent space is largely unregulated, operates at a considerable scale (with an estimated 22,000+ agencies worldwide), and offers few barriers for new entrants, especially in an era of aggregated agent networks and remote work.

Partly because the agent space is so large, varied, and with few barriers to entry or to the expansion of agent networks, it has also been highly resistant to regulation. In practical terms, a given national government has little influence over an agency abroad that can quickly rebrand or restructure, or just as quickly shift its recruiting activity from one sector to another or from one country to another.

For all those reasons, there is a broad consensus that self-regulation – that is, measures that come from the industry itself – represents the best path forward for creating and implementing effective quality assurance measures for education agents.

The building blocks

Resistant to regulation it may be, but that does not mean that there hasn’t already been a lot of great work done to strengthen standards of practice for education agents, and to advance the professional qualifications of agency-based student counsellors.

The work to date in this area has largely occurred in three key areas: codes of conduct, agent training, and agency accreditation. There are a swirl of terms in this space, including “certification”, “accreditation”, and more. They are sometimes conflated with each other but it’s important to look beyond that varying usage to understand what is being referred to, whether training or agency vetting or something else. At the end of the day, each of these three components is quite distinct from – but highly complementary to – the others and an effective self-regulation regime will combine all three.

Standards of practice

There are a number of codes of conduct and best practice guidelines in place today, both pertaining to agent conduct and to the professional practices of institutions engaged with agents. Examples include the London Statement (formally, The Statement of Principles for the Ethical Recruitment of International Students by Education Agents and Consultants); the National Association for College Admission Counselling’s (NACAC) Guide to International Student Recruitment Agencies; the British Universities’ International Liaison Association’s (BUILA) National Code of Ethical Practice for UK Education Agents; the Australian Agent Code of Ethics (ACE); the Association of International Enrollment Management’s (AIRC) Best Practice Guidelines for Institutional Members; the Association of Language Travel Organisations’ (ALTO) Best Practice Guidelines for Education Providers and Agents; and the ICEF Code of Conduct for the Ethical Recruitment of International Students.

As those examples suggest, some codes of conduct are more oriented to one or more education sectors or to a given destination. If we were to put them side by side, however, we would find that they almost universally advance a common set of core principles, including transparency, accountability, integrity, fair dealing, and a commitment to high standards of student service on the part of education agents and also their institutional partners.

We can conclude as well that any effort to strengthen quality standards for education agents – that is, any serious effort of self-regulation – rests in part on a clearly framed code of conduct, the standard of practice that it reflects, and a global mechanism for enforcing those standards.

An expanding field of training options

Put yourself in the shoes of a student counsellor working in an education agency. She may have studied abroad herself, or, through fam tours or other visits, have gained a firsthand experience of one or more destination countries. Alongside that knowledge of a study destination, its student visa programmes, and other relevant regulations, she also has to be an expert in any number of institutions and schools, their respective policies, and the many programmes and services they provide.

By any reckoning, that is a tremendous base of knowledge for any counsellor to establish and maintain, especially given that those programme offerings, policies, and other key points of information are changing all the time.

That explains the high demand for training among agency-based counsellors, both on best practices in recruitment and student services as well as training on advising students to study in one country or another, and of course ongoing training on individual institutions or schools.

It explains as well why many institutions invest heavily in counsellor training in support of their agent-partners, and why there is an expanding emphasis on agent training across the international education sector.

Agent training, for example, is embedded in the UK’s Agent Quality Framework (AQF), a package of measures that includes specialized training courses for agency-based counsellors advising on study in the United Kingdom. And there are other specialized platforms, including TrainHub, which provides a hosted solution that institutions and schools can use to deliver training for agent counsellors, and ICEF Academy, which provides a growing portfolio of destination-focused courses along with other professional development options and qualifications for counsellors.

Within the AQF, the UK Agent and Counsellor Training Course was developed and is administered by the British Council, and is also delivered in partnership with ICEF Academy. To date, 23,000 counsellors have registered for the course and nearly 10,000 have completed it and also endorsed the AQF’s code of conduct. “Until recently, the AQF was a voluntary framework where UK universities pledged to meet the standards set to evidence their good conduct,” says Jacqui Jenkins, the Global Lead for International Student Mobility at the British Council. “To the best of my knowledge almost all UK providers pledged to the AQF by the time the government made it mandatory [in spring 2024]. Independently, agents have also made public statements about their support of the AQF. Since the pledge was launched the number of agents registered for the [UK course] has increased from 8,000 in December 2023 to more than 26,000 in June 2024.”

Agent training is similarly embedded in the quality assurance standards in Australia, where agent-counsellors referring students to Australian institutions can complete the Education Agent Training Course (EATC) in order to earn a Qualified Education Agent Counsellor (QEAC) designation. The EATC is a long-established course, now delivered by ICEF Academy, with more than 13,000 graduates. “The EATC is a perfect example of how training can become part of an industry standard,” says ICEF Academy Director Stacey Crosskill. “It provides counsellors with a strong foundation for effective student advising, and it allows individual institutions and schools to concentrate their own training efforts on their respective programmes and services.”

Alongside the British Council course for the UK and the EATC for Australia, ICEF Academy provides specialized courses for counsellors advising students on study in Canada, the United States, France, Ireland, and, as of this week, New Zealand. All told, those courses have registered more than 127,000 learners and conferred professional qualifications to more than 19,000 in 130 countries that have successfully challenged the course exams.

Aside from the huge demand for training on the part of agency-based counsellors, perhaps the biggest takeaway from this review is that training courses can form an important part of a larger quality assurance mechanism, especially where they are explicitly incorporated into national or international models for quality assurance.

Validating and vetting the agency

If codes of conduct set a threshold of professional standards for both agencies and individual counsellors, and training advances the qualifications and professional development of agency-based counsellors, the last piece of the self-regulatory puzzle would appear to be verifying the bona fides, good practices, and compliance of the agency itself. This is where agency accreditation comes in.

There are lots of different mechanisms in the marketplace to screen or check agency qualifications. These especially include the requirements of the 14 national agency associations that comprise the supranational agent body Felca (Federation of Education and Language Consultant Associations). They also include the vetting that occurs within the agent networks maintained by pathway providers, such as INTO University Partnerships or Navitas. Similarly, event organizers, such as ICEF or ST Alphe, pre-screen agents that join their networking events. And of course many institutions or schools will conduct their own vetting of agent partners.

Against that varied backdrop, there are only two fully articulated agency accreditation programmes globally. One is administered by the Association of International Enrollment Management (AIRC), and the other is the ICEF Agency Status (IAS) programme. (Please note that in the United States, where AIRC is based, the term “certification” is more commonly used than is “accreditation”.)

AIRC has been certifying agencies since 2009. Its process is extensive, encompassing five broad areas of agency operation and a combined 40 requirements that agent-applicants must satisfy in order to earn the AIRC Certification seal. To date,163 agencies have been certified and 107 are active certified members. The process typically takes nine months, sometimes more or less. Agencies are initially accredited for a five-year term and, pending a successful reassessment in year five, may be renewed for subsequent ten-year terms.

Reflecting on the role of such accreditations, AIRC’s Director of Operations and Certification Jennifer Wright says, “They are designed to provide a full vetting of the agency company and recruiting operations and can be wholly accepted as a qualification for institutions to partner with an agency, or they may complement an individual institution’s agency vetting efforts. I’ve had institutions send staff to our reviewer training at AIRC with no intention of working on agency reviews for us. But they are going to use those skills in their own due diligence work in evaluating new agencies or agency performance, and the AIRC certification gives them a running start on their own engagement with the agency.”

Meanwhile, the IAS, says Nick Golding, ICEF’s VP Government Relations and Strategic Partnerships, has become the de facto global standard for agency quality assurance and represents the “the highest common denominator of good agency practice in all of the major study destinations.”

The programme reached an important milestone earlier this month with the accreditation of its 2,000th agency across 125 countries. Another 1,000 agencies are currently in the midst of a comprehensive vetting process that includes reference checks, operational audits, and extensive document verification.

Agencies are reassessed annually, and agent compliance with accreditation requirements, including the ICEF Code of Conduct, is overseen by ICEF’s global agent team, which currently numbers 26 staff across 16 countries.

“In order to be a true standard for the industry, any accreditation scheme needs to be credible, accessible by a wide variety of agencies, and administered by a market-neutral organisation with global reach and expertise,” adds Nick Golding. “These are the core ingredients of IAS, and it’s why we are seeing such rapid adoption of this accreditation model by agents and industry stakeholders alike.”

For additional background, please see:

English Australia is the national association for ELT providers in Australia, and earlier this week it offered what some observers have referred to as a “master class” in responding to proposed legislative and policy change for the sector.

The association filed its consultation brief on Australia’s Draft International Education and Skills Strategic Framework, and its implementation via the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024 (the ESOS Amendment Bill). The brief is very well argued, and may stand as a helpful example for international educators in other major study destinations facing the prospect of significant regulatory change.

The consultation brief sets out that, “The most significant changes introduced by the Framework and the ESOS Amendment Bill are not related to ‘quality and integrity’, were not developed in consultation with the sector, are wholly misaligned to the realities of the sector, and are likely to have dire consequences for the sector and Australia’s economy. English Australia notes that these changes focus on an alarming move away from a free-market economy to a central-government-controlled economy.”

The paper urges government to address the small minority of poor-quality providers “via targeted regulatory compliance activity…not through broad industry-wide measures.” It then links any integrity issues in the sector to two underlying factors:

• Visa policies and practices that have “incentivised activity other than study”; and
• Chronic underfunding of regulatory and visa compliance mechanisms.

In other words, that it was in fact government policy that opened the door to bad actors and the misuse of the study visa programme, and, at the same time, compliance systems are under resourced.

“Government maintained the availability of unlimited work rights, COVID 408 visas, and concurrent eCoEs for an extended period,” adds the paper. “As well as attracting parties more interested in economic rather than educational outcomes, this inflated the [net migration] figures by reducing departures. Having now removed these options, government must have the patience to let the impacts work through the system.”

On the question of compliance, the paper continues, “Decisive action against identified bad actors should be expedited. English Australia notes that warning letters were sent to 34 CRICOS institutions for undermining the integrity of the Student Visa programme. English Australia also notes that this represents only 2.3% of the 1,479 CRICOS providers and that these warnings gave six months to improve performance. This suggests the size of the integrity issues amounts to 2.3% of the market and that the seriousness of the integrity issue only warrants warnings, not sanctions.”

A central aspect of the draft framework is the introduction of an enrolment cap, which is anticipated for January 2025. English Australia strongly opposes the measure, arguing that an annually reset cap, “Would be wholly at odds with the realities of the timeframes involved in students being attracted to, applying for, being accepted into, and commencing a programme, which may have a lead time of 18 months or more. It would be even more at odds with the realities of the timeframes involved in a provider deciding there is a particular level of enrolment demand in a particular course at a particular location and then resourcing the provision of that course by investing in course curriculum and assessment development, and then making available campus, facilities and equipment, appropriate staffing and academic expertise, not to mention planning, resourcing and implementing the student recruitment cycle.”

Moving too fast

As is the case in other major study destinations this year, the Australian government is moving very quickly to implement new migration settings, including the draft framework and its related legislative instruments.

English Australia urges the government to delay implementation of the pending legislation until it has carried out meaningful consultation with the international education sector and conducted an economic impact analysis of the proposed regulatory changes.

“English Australia views requesting sector feedback on the impact of a system enabled by a Bill already before parliament, for which government has not even shown the due diligence of commissioning an economic impact study, as representing a significant failure of governance. This is even more true when the sector represents Australia’s 4th largest export and its largest service export, represents a significant proportion of the export earnings on the country’s second largest service export (tourism), employs more than a quarter of a million Australians, funds the lion’s share of research at universities, subsidises the facilities, staffing, and programme development for domestic students’ studies at university, and provides much needed part-time labour force for Australia’s retail, hospitality, childcare, aged-care and construction sectors.”

A separate brief from the Group of Eight, a consortium of Australia’s top research intensive universities, reflects many of the same themes, noting that, “The Go8 believes that the introduction of these measures will fundamentally compromise Australia’s international education sector and constitutes what is effectively a breach of good faith in the consultation on the Draft Framework…The central ‘command-and-control’ approach to international education in the Draft Framework and ESOS Amendment Bill represents an unjustifiable risk to the nation. There is no evidence the approach will work – and significant evidence that it will fail. It is not practically implementable by the proposed 2025 start date. It will cause significant financial damage to the sector and the Australian economy. It is founded on a false conflation of international students and Australia’s housing crisis. And it will leave a long-term legacy of political interference in an AUS$48 billion export industry.”

Proposing a new direction

The English Australia brief calls on government to focus instead on an urgently needed transition to policies that support the international education sector, including:

1. A shift to “efficient, transparent, fair, and consistent student visa processing”;
2. A reliance on evidence-based arguments with respect to the impact of international students on Australia’s current housing crisis and on the scale and nature of integrity issues in the international education sector;
3. Removing provisions for an enrolment cap from the ESOS Amendment Bill 2024;
4. Financial relief for high-quality providers that have been “severely financially strained by recent restrictions on visa grants”;
5. Improved supports for targeted compliance action by regulators.

“English Australia strongly believes that any attempt to force the implementation of limits on enrolments…would put 100s of organisations across the sector at financial and legal peril. English Australia urges government to delay implementation of these changes until at least 1 January 2026 so that meaningful consultation, planning and resourcing can take place both in government and in the sector and so that appropriate amendments to the Bill and Framework can be made.”

For additional background, please see:

Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced on 21 June 2024 that, effective immediately, international students may no longer apply for a post-graduation work permit (PGWP) at the Canadian border.

The new rule puts an end to a practice sometimes referred to as “flagpoling”, where students attempt to bypass processing times for work permits within Canada by accessing same-day immigration services at a Canadian border crossing.

“Flagpoling uses significant resources at the border, taking officers away from enforcement activities, causing delays for travellers and slowing down the movement of goods,” explains a statement from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). “From 1 March 2023, to 29 February 2024, PGWP applicants represented about one fifth of the foreign nationals who attempted to flagpole.”

“While we continue to support and recognize the contributions of international graduates to Canada’s labour market, ‘flagpoling’ is unnecessary,” added Minister Miller. “The time and effort required to process applications from ‘flagpolers’ takes officers on both sides of the border away from their crucial role in protecting the safety, security and prosperity of Canadians and Americans. This measure will help prevent this practice, while maintaining the integrity of our immigration system.”

IRCC notes as well that, in most cases, a study permit expires 90 days after the expected completion of an international student’s study programme. When an eligible student applies online for a PGWP before their study permit expires, they can work full-time while they wait for approval on a work permit and receive an automated letter that can be shown to employers. When a work permit is approved, it is then mailed directly to the student.

In line with the 21 June ban on flagpole applicants for PGWP, IRCC has reduced the availability of same-day immigration services at 12 ports of entry across Canada to better allow “border services officers to efficiently process the large volume of travellers in peak periods and to focus on other key priorities, including high-risk travellers and trade facilitation.”

IRCC says it also moving to speed processing times for PGWP applications filed within Canada, simplifying the online application process for foreign graduates, and allowing PGWP holders to begin working for a new employer right away, rather than waiting to have a new PGWP application processed before making a job change.

For additional background, please see:

Career motivations are consistently revealed in major global research studies to be a primary driver of the choices students make about study abroad, from where in the world to study to which institution to which programme. Prospective students search out available information and speak with other students (current and former) to determine where and what to study, but sometimes they are frustrated by the scarcity of data with which to base their decisions.

A new report from Intead and job search platform F1 Hire, “Connecting Dots: How International Students Are Finding US Jobs,” explores this very issue as it relates to career outcomes in the US. The introduction of the report notes the broad parameters of the research:

“We set out to evaluate international students’ post-education career opportunities and outcomes in the US. We also wanted to learn more about how international students are seeking and finding US jobs. So, the Intead team partnered with our friends at F1 Hire to examine the career opportunities and outcomes using both public and proprietary datasets.”

STEM for the win

Not surprisingly, the research found that international students prefer STEM programmes because of the link to three-year Optional Practical Training. The reason the US government provides this three-year opportunity is because there are such skills shortages in tech-oriented industries. The vast majority of companies sponsoring international students for US jobs (9 in 10) in 2023 were in technology.

International degrees in demand

More surprisingly, the research revealed that: “International students earning a degree outside of the US can make a higher starting salary in the US than those graduating with a US degree and seeking a US job.” This finding suggests there is a long way to go in terms of US institutions being able to offer a key graduate outcome – better salary – that international students are looking for.

The true value of a US degree for international students, as revealed by the research, is that US employers tend to look for fewer years of prior work experience, lowering the entry bar for students with limited work experience.

Intead makes the following important recommendation, for which we’ll provide some explanatory notes: The H-1B is the work visa that allows US employers to hire foreign workers with specialised skills, especially in technology, finance, engineering); F1 Hire is a platform launched in March 2023 dedicated to helping international students and workers to find jobs in the US; and PERM – which stands for Permanent Labor Certification Program – is used by US employers to sponsor an employee for permanent residence in the United States. Intead says:

“Universities investing in robust career service offices and developing strong relationships with corporate partners will win. Does your institution make an effort to partner with H-1B- and PERM- friendly employers in California, New York, and Texas? How about local employers with a propensity to sponsor H-1B applications? One of the advantages of the F1 Hire data is the ability to identify international talent-friendly employers. Universities can partner with F1 Hire to build their employer network.”

Opportunities abound outside of the most popular regions

The research also found that certain states outside of California, New York, and Texas are notable for boasting the “highest ratio of H-1B jobs per international student attending universities there.” Those states include New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Tennessee, and Montana. Intead also found that North Carolina, Michigan, and Virginia also have a “high proportion of international student-friendly employers.” This represents a competitive advantage for institutions in those regions when recruiting international students – one that they might not have been aware of without the Intead data analysis.

Report highlights need for better data on graduate outcomes

Intead notes a serious problem facing US institutions (but the point could be extrapolated to institutions in many destinations): “Institutions seem to have the hardest time making the case [that their degrees boosts career prospects] to their prospective students—or some of the schools simply don’t have the student data on the whole job search process.”

They advise:

• Making a long-term investment in career services, and they cite Northeastern and Drexel as examples of institutions “with strong and well known co-op programs that produce both career experience and careers.”
• Taking advantage of “readily available content from your recent and relatable graduates demonstrating that they are on the career path they so wanted (testimonial social media posts, video, etc.).”

The following graphic represents other top-level advice in the Intead report:

For additional background, please see:

Data from Australia’s Department of Home Affairs shows that study visa grants are down significantly for the first four months of 2024. There were a total of 74,421 study visas granted to offshore applicants from January through April of this year, a nearly -30% decline (-29.1%) from 104,808 granted in the same period in 2023.

To put the overall decline for the first four months of this year in context, that compares to a -53% drop in visas granted to offshore students between 2019/20 and 2020/21 as the pandemic took hold.

The vocational education and training (VET) and language training (ELICOS) sectors have been especially hard hit so far this year, recording -69% and -56% declines in visa grants respectively. Except for the pandemic period, that marks the lowest levels of visa grants for both sectors for a decade or more. The two sectors combined accounted for nearly two-thirds (61%) of the total decline in visa grants for the January-April period this year.

Those data points provide a concrete indication of the immediate-term effects of new migration settings introduced by the Australian government in December 2023. That was the beginning of a period of related announcements aimed at restricting student migration in recent months, including an increase in minimum funds requirements, the established of a cap on international enrolments (to be implemented in January 2025), and, most recently, new measures to prevent onshore students from transitioning among visa classes.

From January onward, there have been increasing reports of rising rejection rates, and calls for greater transparency in visa processing. In short, in the wake of the new migration settings prospective students must now prove a higher level of savings, a higher level of English proficiency, and otherwise pass a “Genuine Student Test.”

Those heightened requirements are reflected as well in the latest Department of Home Affairs data set, which indicates that – again for offshore applicants for the period January-April 2024 – that overall approval rates fell to 77.4% compared to 80.5% the year prior. This is an incomplete but still important indicator of tightening visa requirements during the early months when those new policy settings were taking hold.

To put that in context, the Home Affairs data set captures the years from 2005/06 through 2024/25. Except for those first four months of this year, the overall approval rate for offshore applicants has never dipped below 80%. Over the 18 years leading up to this year, the average approval rate was just under 90%.

Picking up on the significant impact for the ELICOS and VET sectors that we noted earlier, their approval rates dropped to 74.8% and 37.8% respectively. Outside of the pandemic years, that represents historically low approval rates for both. “[The] ELICOS-only grant rate has fallen to record lows,” says a recent analysis from English Australia. “Colombian ELICOS-only grants for offshore applications was 32% for the first two months of 2024. In 2023, it was 95% and the 10-year average was 86%.”

Commenting on the recent series of policy announcements, Troy Williams, the chief executive of the Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA), said, “Just as many quality skills training and higher education providers are just beginning to recover from the financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated border closures, the Australian Government’s approach to international student visa approvals threatens the commercial sustainability of these organisations. There will be job losses that can be directly attributed to Australian Government policy.”

An earlier statement from Universities Australia’s Chief Executive Officer Luke Sheehy adds that, “Decades of careful and strategic work by universities and the Government has seen Australia grow to be a leading provider of international education. We can’t let this work go to waste.”

“The sector contributed AUS$48 billion to the economy last year, accounting for over half of Australia’s economic growth and supporting the vital work our universities do on behalf of all Australians. Stability and growth in the sector is essential for our prosperity and to ensure universities can meet the nation’s skills needs and continue helping the Government to deliver national priorities.”

For additional background, please see:

A 13 June data release from the UK Home Office confirms a decrease in student visa issuances for the 12 months ending March 2024.

Visa issuances to main applicants (as opposed to dependants) declined by just over 6% year-over-year and 10% compared to the historical peak from June 2023. The Home Office explains that, “Following a fall in numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of visas issued have subsequently increased sharply, reaching a peak of 498,626 in the year ending June 2023. The number of visas issued in the latest year are slightly lower than the peak, at 446,924.”

The decline appears to be strongly related to the January 2024 rule change that now prevents international students from bringing dependants with them during their studies in the UK, unless they are enrolled in postgraduate programmes with a research focus.

However, the relatively modest dip in visa issuances through March may foreshadow a more significant trend. As the Home Office earlier reported, there was a 44% decrease in study visa applications in the first three months of 2024, compared to the same period last year.

The downturn reported this year follows a period of considerable growth in visa volumes from 2016 on. That growth was closely tracked by a corresponding increase in the number of visas extended to accompanying dependants. The Home Office notes that, “In the year ending March 2024 there were 111,481 visas issued to student dependants, 25% fewer compared to the previous year but almost 7 times higher than in 2019…The number of dependants has grown at a faster rate than main applicants in recent years. The numbers peaked in the year ending March 2023 with around 3 dependants for every 10 main applicants. However, the number of main applicants and dependants have since fallen with dependants decreasing at a faster rate in the first quarter (January to March) of 2024. In the year ending March 2024, one-fifth (20%) of sponsored study visas were issued to dependants.”

We see that drop in dependant visas (in concert with the decrease in visas for main applicants) illustrated in the chart below.

As we have reported previously, much of that growth – and the more recent decline in study visas issued – can be traced to two key sending markets: India and Nigeria. The number of study visas issued to main applicants from India and Nigeria through March 2024 fell by 16% and 38% respectively, compared to the same period last year.

A significant majority of study visas for the UK are issued for graduate studies (66% of main applicants for the year ending March 2024), with another 25% issued for those enrolled in undergraduate programmes.

For additional background, please see: