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Overseas Students

Question for Department for Education

UIN 208945, tabled on 15 January 2019

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department has taken to ensure that the number of international students choosing to study in the UK grows over the next 10 years.

Answered on

21 January 2019

The government fully recognises the important economic and cultural contribution that EU and international students make to the UK’s higher education sector. The government welcomes international students and there continues to be no limit on the number who can come here to study, and there are no plans to limit any institution’s ability to recruit them.

The UK remains a highly attractive destination for non-EU students with their numbers remaining at record highs, with over 170,000 non-EU entrants to UK higher education institutions for the seventh year running. The UK is a world-leading destination for study, with four universities in the world’s top 10 and 16 in the top 100 – second only to the USA. The government actively promotes study in the UK through the GREAT Campaign and to over 100 countries through the British Council.

In the Immigration White Paper, published on 19 December 2018, the government proposed to increase the post-study leave period for international students following completion of studies to 12 months for those completing a PhD, and to six months for all full-time postgraduate students and undergraduate students at institutions with degree awarding powers. Going beyond the recommendations set out by the Migration Advisory Committee, these proposals will benefit tens of thousands of international students.

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