UK universities are facing a high funding crisis because falling numbers of international students are threatening to destabilize their finances. International students, who were grossly charged in greater tuition fees compared to their local peers and therefore greatly contributed towards university revenue, have been put off by an assortment of factors including Britain’s tighter visa rules and after-effects of Brexit.

The UK hosts more than 150 countries in its universities; it welcomes nearly 760,000 international students. The United Kingdom comes second on the global popularity list of higher education; the United States ranks first. Over a long period of time, the backbone of UK university finances has been drawn from students from India, China, and Nigeria. International students pay much higher fees than home students do. To illustrate, for example, tuition fees for non-EU students can rise up to £31,000 a year, and the highest tuition fees for UK students will not exceed £9,250.

Data indicates that student visa grants declined by 5% last year, while applications for visas also sharply declined by 16% between July and September 2024, down from the same period last year. These statistics may therefore depict a shift in demand for higher education with students preferring more destinations such as Canada and Australia whose international enrollments are also increasing.

This partly has been blamed on the rigid visa policies of the UK, which started after the country’s exit from the European Union in 2020.

Also combined with worldwide competition for international students, which puts UK universities at a disadvantage. The financial implications are alarming because institutions mainly depend on foreign tuition fees to carry out their activities, conduct research, and build infrastructure.

In response to these facts, many universities are diversifying their funding sources and recruiting students from the expanding markets. This challenge again underlines that international students are becoming particular about the destination university: visa policies, work opportunity post-graduation, and general cost of living.

For many universities, the decline in foreign student numbers represents a critical moment, as they seek to maintain their status as world-leading institutions in an increasingly competitive global market for higher education.