Universities step up overseas recruiting

Harriet Swain

Access to university should be based on ability to learn, not ability to pay, the prime minister, David Cameron, insisted earlier this month. Denying reports that the government would allow universities to recruit above their student number limit so long as the extra students paid higher fees, he was adamant. "There is no question of people being able to buy their way into university," he said.

But universities are already allowed to recruit extra students who pay higher fees – if those students are foreign. With students carrying more of the burden of funding in future, as home and EU tuition fees rise to up to £9,000, and with government support for humanities subjects being withdrawn, will foreign students become ever more valuable as cash cows?

"Most universities' costs are close to £9,000 or very nearly," says Les Ebdon, vice-chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire and chair of the university thinktank Million+. "Many people feel that by the time they have made provision for the spending required by access agreements and the abolition of the Hefce [Higher Education Funding Council for England] central grant, they will be getting less from home students than they are at the moment, so it makes them even more interested in the international market."

The average overseas student fee for 2010-11 was £11,435 – more than £2,700 higher than the average home/EU fee expected to be charged from 2012. Unlike for home students, there is no cap – Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College, London, all charged more than £18,000 for lab-based subjects last year – and no obligation to ensure fair access for different social groups. Institutions can recruit as many international students as they like and recruitment is positively encouraged by the government as foreign students contribute an estimated £8bn in fees and other spending to the UK economy.

Financial forecasts published by Hefce last month showed that universities' income from overseas students had more than doubled over the last 10 years, rising to 9.6% of the higher education sector's total income by the end of 2009-10. For 2010-11, English higher education institutions aimed to increase this income still further, from £2.1bn to £2.3bn, a rise of 9.5% – higher than for any other income source.

While 21 institutions forecast a reduction in overseas income this year, they were in the clear minority, and the same number were expecting this source of income to increase by more than 25%, prompting Hefce, which will publish the sector's longer-term forecasts in July, to warn of "optimism in current growth forecasts".

Among those looking to increase overseas recruitment are Durham, which aims for a 97% increase in the number of non-EU undergraduates by 2015, increasing their proportion of the student body from 9% to 16%; Exeter, which plans a 28% rise in the same timescale – 73% in colleges other than the business school – and Middlesex, which recently won a Queen's Award for Enterprise for outstanding achievement in international trade, after growing its overseas income by £10m over the last three years. It has overseas campuses in Dubai and Mauritius and a new centre opening near Delhi in October.

Michael Driscoll, Middlesex's vice-chancellor, says: "Because of changes to the way English universities will be funded, the success of our international operations is more important than ever."

Ebdon echoes this sentiment. Bedfordshire, which also received a Queen's Award this year, has nearly trebled its number of international students in the last three years to nearly 4,000, and wants to increase this by another 1,000. "We spent some time concentrating on growing our home market and then growth in the home market was stopped, so it has been the only growth area available to us," says Ebdon.

He says that, like other universities, Bedfordshire is looking to offer a wider range of programmes on its UK campus that appeal to students from different countries, such as international business and law programmes, and possibly a degree programme in Islamic banking, and is also considering partnership arrangements with campuses overseas.

But Shaun Curtis, director of International Exeter, a new internationalisation strategy at the University of Exeter, says that his university's plans to increase overseas student numbers from just under 3,000 last year to 4,000 by 2015 is not about raising money – he argues that the shrinking differential between home and overseas student fees will actually make this less of an issue. Instead, it is about ensuring a diverse student body.

"We believe that if we want to be a global university as opposed to a national one we have to recruit the best students, not just around the UK but around the world," he says.

Exeter has just become the first British university to open an office in Bangalore, and in the last couple of years has opened offices in Shanghai and Beijing. But its Chinese offices are looking not at recruitment, but at employability options for returning Chinese and home students, raising Exeter's profile and keeping in touch with alumni.

"With the new fee regime, the pressure on universities to demonstrate value for money in the student experience is going to be immense and every good university is going to want to be able to offer a proper international experience," he says.

Durham University also insists that recruiting more international students is less about the bottom line than about ensuring that "all of our students benefit from the diverse educational environment which produces global citizens".

Matthew Andrews, academic registrar at Oxford Brookes University and chair of the Admissions Practitioners Group, says that all universities recognise the importance of having dynamic international student bodies, but they also realise that having too many overseas students could put pressure on facilities and make for a worse student experience.

As a result, he does not anticipate that the new fee regime will lead to huge increases in overseas recruitment. "Universities want to maintain their overseas numbers, and that's certainly our position at Oxford Brookes," he says.

For many institutions, simply maintaining numbers is becoming more difficult. While the exchange rate has been in their favour in recent months, they are facing increasing competition from within the UK and abroad, and must now cope with changes to the visa system.

These state that from July, foreign students at private colleges will no longer be able to work during their studies, and the right of foreign students at all institutions to work in the UK after graduating will be restricted.

Dominic Scott, chief executive of the UK Council for International Student Affairs (Ukcisa), says that these changes will make the UK a far less attractive option for overseas study and predicts that many private feeder colleges could go under by the summer, with knock-on effects for universities.

Worst hit are likely to be poorer overseas students. While foreign students from wealthier backgrounds tend to go to Russell Group institutions, he says, those who are less well-off often choose private colleges in the UK that charge much lower fees for franchised courses.

"The ones going into the private colleges will be the ones no longer entitled to work part-time," he says. "The sad thing is, those kids will suddenly realise that the package doesn't add up any more."

He suggests that some will calculate that it is worth paying a higher fee for a university course if it means they can work part-time, which could benefit some universities lower down the league tables. Others could choose to study elsewhere, or stay at home.

Whatever the government's intentions for home students, when it comes to international students, ability to pay and ability to learn have long been hard to separate.

• This article was amended on 24 May 2011. In the original, the London School of Economics was mistakenly included in a list of institutions that charged more than £18,000 for lab-based subjects in 2010. This has been corrected, and the picture has been changed to reflect this. Telegraph