London

Many leading institutions in Britain have an “unhealthy reliance” on international students, especially the Chinese, a report led by a former minister has stated.

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As the undergraduate fees have been frozen for local students since 2018 and due to the increased costs, many universities rely on international students to recover tuition fees.

The report by the Industry and Regulators Committee says that the universities are struggling to diversify the international student population as the British government has frozen tuition fees for local students and due to increased costs, the Industry and Regulators Committee led by former universities minister Lord Jo Johnson, BBC reported.

The report calls on the government and the regulator, the Office for Students, to tackle the "looming crisis", adding that a sustained diplomatic rift between Britain and China could financially affect the universities.

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The undergraduate fees were frozen at £9,250 in 2018 to deliver better value for students. As a result, the institutions are now making a loss when teaching domestic students and conducting research, the report says.

China accounts for 22% of international students in UK

According to Higher Education Student Statistics, there were 469,160 international students in the UK in 2017-18, rising to 679,970 by 2021-22.

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And last year, the Office for Student figures showed that 22.3 per cent were from China, followed by students from India and Nigeria.

“The sector continues to follow a ‘cross your fingers’ strategy that decoupling is in the future never necessary for China, in the same ways it was for relations with Russia in February 2022. The China question therefore to a great degree remains unanswered,” the report states.

The paper noted that China has become the world’s largest spender on research and development and UK universities benefit from the higher tuition fees paid by Chinese students.

“The government must urgently help universities with a framework for how to maximise the benefits from research collaboration and student and academic mobility, while managing the downsides, including the risks to national security from bad-faith actors and the dangers of over-reliance on a single country,” the study said.

Financial risk for British universities?

The proportion of Chinese full-time doctoral entrants had increased significantly over the past five years, from 17 per cent in 2017/18 to 28 per cent in 2021/22, even if they had declined in number in the most recent data, according to the report.

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In May, the Office for Students (OfS) warned that an over-reliance on tuition fees from overseas students – especially those from a single country such as China – was a financial risk for English universities.

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The OfS wrote to 23 institutions with high levels of student recruitment from China to ensure they had contingency plans to protect them from any possible drop in income from overseas students.

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