The chaos around the resignation of the UK Prime Minister saw the country have three Secretary of State for Education in as many days. While there is something deliciously ironical about someone called Cleverly holding the ball when the music stops (sic) it was less edifying to see the Under-Secretary for Education demoted to Minister of Skills, Further and Higher Education for giving the middle finger to the gathered press pack. May be the first time that higher actually means lower but as someone recently said, “them’s the breaks.”
It leaves higher education in the hands of James Cleverly who might find himself replaced under a new Prime Minister in September. He does not appear to have any previous experience of an education portfolio. He is joined by Andrea Jenkyns, who threw the hand gesture, because “I’m only human” but who also appears to have no links with education administration.
Given their inexperience they may be amenable to suggestion from outside sources and they will certainly face commercial interests who have established an inside track to Government and a powerful lobbying position. The voices they listen to could determine whether the UK becomes a beacon for international students or a place where hopes are crushed by economic and political considerations. It’s unclear who will ensure students don’t become filling in a sandwich between reduced public spending and private ambition to monetize global mobility.
When Love Comes to Town
Past experience would suggest that the voice of Lord Jo Johnson, who is usually heralded as “former universities Minister” or Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School rather than his more commercial position as Chairman of ApplyBoard International, will be among the loudest. If his views carry weight there are several indicators as to the direction of travel for international students coming to the UK. His demands in mid-2020, shortly after taking the ApplyBoard post, were a four-year post-study work visa, “a strategic push to rebalance student flows by doubling those from India”, and “cutting back the time-consuming and offputting red tape affecting overseas students.”
He is joined on ApplyBoard’s UK Advisory Board by the UK’s International Education Champion, Professor Sir Steve Smith, the Director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, Nick Hillman and HEPI Trustee, Mary Curnock-Cook. With all that industry insight and connection the outcomes could help the Board achieve its stated aim to “guide and support ApplyBoard’s expansion within the United Kingdom.” It certainly begins to feel as if some other stars may be aligning.
UK universities have already been revelling in a benign recruitment environment since the introduction of a more relaxed post-study work regime in 2021. It helped reach the Government’s ludicrously low target of 600,000 international students a decade early but for some that is not enough. Vivienne Stern, the current director of Universities UK International and soon to be chief executive of Universities UK, has said universities want a review to ensure the UK had a “competitive post-study work offer” and there are other interesting synergies emerging.
Stern, a colleague of Smith’s on the UK Government’s Education Sector Advisory Group, has also started to bang the drum about the risks for universities of any deterioration of relationships with China. Added to that is the voice of Nick Hillman who said, of growing Chinese numbers, “…it does put our universities at serious risk of shifting geopolitics.” These assertions broadly mirror Johnson’s March 2021 statements about “poorly understood” risks of increasingly close collaboration between UK universities and China and his November 2021 suggestion that the financial risks were such that the government should consider making English universities over-reliant on Chinese student fees take out insurance policies.
Some might argue that the echo chamber of views warning about potential catastrophe are overstated. It seems entirely possible recruitment from China will grow post-pandemic because it is driven by strong country-based agents and local connections where the growth of aggregator and remote technology led approaches has been more of a struggle than in markets such as India. As interesting is whether the UK can go head to head with Canada for the Indian market if it means underpinning its strategy with longer-term post study visas and the Holy Grail of simple routes to citizenship, which some research suggests may be the aim of 75% of Indian students.
Another thing to watch out for might be the way that the UK International Education Strategy’s aim of, “Enhancing….the student application process for international students”, is met. In 2021, Johnson was promoting technology to verify incoming students’ documents, check English language skills and review their finances which sounded like a proposal to adopt a UK version of ApplyProof – a “standalone platform powered by ApplyBoard“.2 What might the odds be on a public-private partnership bringing this technology to the UK?
Total Eclipse of the Heart
On the other hand the post-pandemic world looks to be moving increasingly towards a relatively hard economic landing and there are reasons to be wary of the UK’s position. One symbol is the, perhaps hyperbolic, sentiment that the British pound is taking on the characteristics of an ‘emerging market’ currency. Already abandoned by European workers there is some evidence that agricultural workers from around the world will be in high demand but if you are a graduate with more interest in picking stocks than strawberries the post-study work environment in the UK could be a concern.
Information on international student post-study outcomes has been notoriously hard to come by and HESA has been roundly criticised for stepping back from Government demands for more and better quality data. AGCAS has tried to step into the breach and offers the most recent insights which broadly tell us that one in three international students have not found employment of any kind. The amount of effort needed to find a job is suggested by the finding that 42% of students employed applied for over 50 jobs.
Views on the Graduate Route suggest that graduates feel some employers have “poor knowledge of post-study work visas”, others “openly refused to accept applications from international graduates” and that the cost of the Route was a barrier. On top of this Office for Students research suggests that “less than half of students at some English universities can expect to find graduate level jobs or further study shortly after graduation.”
Even more troubling are the recent revelations that student visas to UK universities may be providing cover for human trafficking. If abuses can happen when a university is meant to be aware of the way the student is engaging with their course, this may be the tip of the iceberg of exploitation under post-study work visas. As the number of students staying in country grows the potential for this to become a big issue seems clear.
While things may turn out right, a great deal will hinge on the economic prosperity of the UK. As survivors of the global recession of 2007 to 2009 will recall there was significant growth in unemployment among young people. It was one factor that may have contributed to the decision in 2011 to remove post study work rights for international students.
Announcing the decision in March 2011 then Home Secretary Theresa May said, “We had too many people coming here to work and not to study. We had too many foreign graduates staying on in the UK to work in unskilled jobs. And we had too many institutions selling immigration, not education.” If the number of students deciding to stay and work goes up at a time when the UK is struggling with recession and unemployment it is difficult to see why a future Government would not make a similar decision. Total wipeout of post-study work visas is only ever a political step away.
NOTES
- Love Island is a popular but controversial reality TV show in the UK, involving strangers meeting up and being obliged to pair up or be ejected from the competition. Total Wipeout ran from 2009-12 and involved competitors taking on an obstacle course and other challenges until the one who is fastest around the Wipeout Zone course wins. Both have similarities with the challenges facing international students.
- It is unclear to me what “standalone” means. ApplyBoard and ApplyProof share the same logo colorways, have headquarters in the same building, and the head of ApplyProof is a standing member of ApplyBoard’s information governance committee. The Head of ApplyProof’s LinkedIn profile places the ApplyProof role under his ApplyBoard experience and its Director of Engineering’s profile suggests he also works for Apply Board.
- Colleagues of a certain age will recognize that the sub-headings are taken directly from 1980s songs by U2 (When Love Comes to Town) and Bonnie Tyler (Total Eclipse of the Heart). Guilty pleasures:)
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay