Clamping down on international student numbers could lead to collateral damage - Charlie Jeffery

As the local elections showed, voters agree, but their concerns focus very much on illegal migration, especially small boat crossings from France.

But because international students make up almost half of legal visa numbers, they are easily seen by the government as part of a solution to getting net immigration down - even though only 4 per cent of the public prioritise reducing international student numbers as a way to do so, according to recent polling by British Future.

Nonetheless the Government signalled in the White Paper that it will tighten the rules on international students by restricting their right to stay on for a limited period after graduation to take up jobs in the UK, as well as proposing a new levy on universities of 6 per cent on their international student fees.

The danger here is one of collateral damage. Some of that is, obviously enough, to universities. The higher fees paid by international students help to balance the way successive governments have underfunded home undergraduate places.

They make many postgraduate courses viable that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to run, and home students benefit from that too by having a greater choice of courses. And - because government funding covers only about 70 per cent of the costs of research - those fees also help to support the brilliant research that make UK universities world-leaders in new technologies, medical advances and much more.

But if my arguments for keeping international students were just about balancing university books, I fear I’d not get very far. But that’s not the case. Through new research we have commissioned from Public First we can show that restricting international students risks collateral damage well beyond university finances.

The new work shows firstly that students are a vital export industry for many local economies. This seems counter intuitive - people think of exports as goods or services which we trade overseas. But in fact, every international student coming and living in York and Yorkshire is an export - bringing in foreign currency and supporting our city. Recently, the Department for Education estimated this export value nationally at £23.7bn.

If we take that down to constituency level the Public First work estimates the export value of international students in the Parliamentary constituency of York Central to be £127m, directly supporting over 1,000 jobs in that constituency alone. And that doesn’t even begin to take account of the wider economy they support in the shops, cafes, houses and transport systems of the city and the region.

We rightly praise and champion our high profile exporters in Yorkshire - Nestle, McCains, Taylors of Harrogate, as well as the region’s legal and professional services. We need to add international students to that list.

Secondly, our research addresses the widespread misconception in Westminster that while international students may contribute to universities via their fees, they impose costs on people in university towns and cities.

Our analysis comprehensively debunks that. Instead, we show that international students are net contributors to the taxpayer and to domestic living standards. In York Central, average wages are almost £1,900 a year higher than they otherwise would be because of the impact of these students - the equivalent of over three weeks’ wages.

That makes a real difference to many people when the average annual wage in the UK is £37,000.

These local-level impacts are often well-recognised by MPs and councillors. They are not yet in national-level debate.

The risk here is one of collateral damage to local economies, and that could also have electoral consequences. Looking at the 100 constituencies in our research where international students provide the biggest export benefit, and the biggest boost to wages, the overwhelming majority - more than 80 per cent in each case - are currently held by Labour MPs.

I can appreciate the bind the Westminster government finds itself in, with voters demanding both higher living standards and a reduction in immigration. But I also suggest caution.

Professor Charlie Jeffery is Vice-Chancellor at the University of York.