Just a quarter of new foreign students are on courses that benefit the UK, new research reveals

Body awareness, gender studies, pop music, circus arts, baking, and footwear production are just some of the subjects being studied by international students at UK universities.

Sep 19, 2024

Last month, figures released by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) showed that a record 758, 855 foreign students were enrolled at UK higher education institutions.

Body awareness, gender studies, pop music, circus arts, baking, and footwear production are just some of the subjects being studied by these students.

Using HESA data, the Centre for Migration Control has found that less than a quarter of recent foreign students are on courses that the Department for Education classifies as “strategically important” for the UK.

In 2022/2023 there were 459,170 foreign students that began a course at a UK higher education institution. However, just 111,295 (24.9%) of these are on courses that the British government views as important for supporting the NHS, the engineering and technology sectors, or the country’s labour market needs.

With almost 60% of foreign students now remaining in the UK at the end of their studies, this presents huge problems to the country’s job market.

Why this matters

This is important for the UK economy because, data released in May, shows that a record number of foreign students are remaining in the UK at the end of their studies.

Since the introduction of the Graduate Visa Route in 2021, the number of students remaining in the UK after their studies has increased from 20% to 56%.[1]

Under this visa route, any foreign student who completes their studies at a UK university (regardless of the quality of the institution or the course) is eligible to remain in the UK for a further two years, without the need for an actual job offer.

According to a 2021 Home Office impact assessment, the “main strategic objectives of the policy are to use the new Points Based Immigration System to attract talent from around the world and contribute to the UK economy” and that they hope it will “enable employers to recruit the skilled graduates they need and ensure labour market pressures in key sectors are managed effectively”. [2]

First announcing the policy in September 2019, the then-Home Secretary Priti Patel said that “the new Graduate Route will mean talented international students, whether in science and maths or technology and engineering, can study in the UK and then gain valuable work experience as they go on to build successful careers.”[3]

Despite the hopes of Conservative ministers, these findings show that the majority of international students are not pursuing courses deemed, by the Department for Education, to be essential to the UK economy.

“Strategically important” courses:

Since the 2000s the British government has been classifying courses that it deems to be “of national strategic importance” but may require intervention to ensure that they remain accessible.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England defined them as those subjects which “provide vital research and/or graduates with recognisably specialist knowledge, skills and competencies to the economy or society”[4], and acknowledged that “broadly, these are STEM plus Modern Foreign Languages and quantitative social science”.[5]

The most recent iteration of this prioritisation was set out in January 2021 by the then-Education Secretary Gavin Williamson, in which he set out that the new priority for the Teaching Grant would focus on supporting “strategic priorities across the sector, including subjects vital for the economy and labour markets”.[6]

This priority ultimately saw the creation of the Strategic Priorities Grant that was “designed to protect funding for high-cost and strategically important subjects”.[7] The government has identified these as being the following subjects:[8]

Clinical medicine
Clinical dentistry/dental hygiene and therapy
Veterinary science
Nursing and allied health professions (pre-registration courses)
Anatomy and physiology,
pharmacy and pharmacology
Sciences (agriculture, forestry and food science; earth, marine and environmental sciences; biosciences; chemistry; physics)
Engineering subjects
Information technology

The Office for Students defines these courses as “vitally important courses that support the NHS and wider healthcare policy, science, engineering and technology subjects, as well as those for specific labour market needs”[9] and the Russel Group summarises them as being “strategically important subjects such as medicine, engineering and nursing”.[10]

Subjects falling under these classification are those awarded a grading of either A, B, or C.1.1. Other classifications, such as those in the humanities, social sciences and arts, are awarded gradings of C1.2, C2, and D.

The classification of all university and higher education courses can be found here: MAPPING OF HECOS CODES TO PRICE GROUPS.[11]

Further findings:

Over 323,200 of the 459,170 foreign students beginning a course in 2022/23 were on taught postgraduate programmes – which usually last just one year. As a proportion of the overall cohort this represents 70% and is a huge increase on the 55% of new foreign students who entered the UK in 2019/20 to pursue a taught postgraduate degree.

This matters, because it shows a substantial increase in the number of students entering the UK to pursue a short-term course, likely in the knowledge that, once completed, they will be eligible to remain for a further two years and enter the UK workforce.

Indeed, this is borne out by the fact that in 2023, 69% of those entering the Graduate Visa route had been on a course that was one year in duration, and 86% were on a course that was less than two years in duration.[12]

Furthermore, the percentage of foreign students pursuing a taught postgraduate course in a “strategically important” subject is just 23%.

Information obtained via Freedom of Information requests reveals some of the courses that foreign nationals are entering the UK to study:

They include Film making with Raindance at De Montfort University, Art Psychotherapy at Brunel University, and research at the Inclusion and Diversity unit at the University of Bradford.

Other courses currently being studied by foreign students include anarchism, interior design, general studies, television studies, recreation & leisure studies, office administration, hair & makeup, furniture making, computer games, beauty therapy, and alternative medicines & therapy.

(Note: some of these courses are not being studied by the 2022/23 cohort).

[1] Analysis of migrants use of the Graduate route - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

[2] Impact Assessment template (publishing.service.gov.uk)

[3] UK announces 2-year post-study work visa for international students - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

[4] Strategically important and vulnerable subjects (guardian.co.uk)

[5] Strategically Important and Vulnerable Subjects: the HEFCE advisory group’s 2009 report to HEFCE and Government (ioe.ac.uk)

[6] rt-hon-gavin-williamson-cbe-mp-t-grant-ofs-chair-smb.pdf (officeforstudents.org.uk)

[7] Consultation on recurrent funding for 2021-22 (officeforstudents.org.uk)

[8] Consultation on recurrent funding for 2021-22 (officeforstudents.org.uk)

[9] Guidance to the Office for Students from the Secretary of State for Education on the allocation of Strategic Priorities Grant funding for the 2024-25 Financial Year and associated terms and conditions

[10] Russell Group response to the Strategic Priorities Grant for 2024-25

[11] HESA - Experts in higher education data and analysis