Don't copy Donald Trump - foreign students should be welcomed to UK with open arms: Andy Brown
For many years advanced economies like Britain and the United States have been becoming increasingly dependent not on their ability to make physical products but on their service industries.
Much of the jobs and the income of those countries have depended on what is called the knowledge economy.
Many of us would welcome an increase in the jobs available in local manufacturing and farming and less dependence on highly complex just in time international supply lines that are vulnerable to disruption. The disappearance of significant numbers of those service sector jobs would be a lot less welcome.
Yet that is what is at risk as a consequence of some of the policies that are being implemented on both sides of the Atlantic at the moment. We are in danger of replacing significant parts of the knowledge economy with ignorant economics.
Countries with a strong tradition of free speech and independent scientific enquiry have a big advantage over ones where access to ideas is fiercely controlled. Authoritarian regimes can train their citizens to learn fixed and static ideas. They cannot succeed in establishing cutting edge exchanges of creative energy.
Britain is brilliant at creativity and at scientific research and this is a major economic strength. We earn a lot of money from creative activities such as computer games, music, cinema and the media. Our biggest foreign currency earners are financial activities that depend heavily on exploiting cutting edge ideas in mathematics and an openness to understanding international events and economic changes.
America has gained from having Silicon Valley where highly innovative enterprises feed off ideas and talent coming out of top-quality universities. It depends heavily on drawing in ambitious people from across the globe and allowing them to challenge established ideas and practices with little respect for authority.
Inventions like the world wide web rarely come from countries where rote learning of already established ideas is the main method of education. They come from places where there is a strong tradition of challenging authority and of experimenting with ideas and discussing them with few restraints.
Any cutting-edge research driven economy comes under threat whenever the authorities that be try to control and manage thought and education. Which is why it is so very dangerous that Donald Trump has started to try and limit freedom of speech in US universities and bring them under control and why some of the policies that Keir Starmer is following might be almost as damaging.
Harvard University is currently coming under fierce attack from the Trump administration which is using every financial lever it has to try and bully that institution into falling in line with its wishes. Already over $2 billion of funding has been taken away from it encounters a stream of accusations from the US government that it is teaching “dangerously woke” and liberal ideas to immigrants who can’t be trusted. Now it is being told that it is likely to be banned from admitting foreign students until it falls in line with the administrations wishes.
What does that do to independence of thought? How does the States gain from refusing entry to top international talent that will help drive forward intellectual thought and scientific research? What remains of genuine freedom of expression if universities are bullied until they comply with the wishes of government? How many other universities in the States that aren’t as rich and powerful as Harvard have already started to self-censor and to make sure that they don’t lose funding by displeasing a moody and capricious President and the acolytes who surround him?
In normal circumstances the sudden decision of the United States to cut off funding from much academic research and stop the influx of talent from foreign students would represent a huge financial and social advantage to Britain. We should be experiencing a sudden leap in applications to attend UK universities that would result in a significant influx of money into communities like York, Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford and Huddersfield.
Instead, those areas are suffering from a severe drop in income from foreign students because Keir Starmer has decided that he is not interested in economic growth if it might result in him looking weak on immigration.
Every foreign student who studies in Britain brings in huge amounts of much needed foreign currency not just to pay their fees but also to pay for their living costs over here. They add to the vibrancy of our universities and strengthen their research activities. They also enable our universities to educate more British students as the revenue they bring in helps cover costs and improve the available equipment.
So any government that was genuinely committed to strengthening the British economy would be welcoming foreign students with open arms and working to build world class science parks and enterprise zones around the factories of ideas that our universities and colleges represent.
Only a government that is scared to stand up and expose silly far right theories would choose to actively turn away the opportunity to earn money from bringing more talented students into this country.
Our future success depends heavily on building a knowledge economy. We are at danger of copying Donald Trump and giving in to prejudice instead.
Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley in North Yorkshire.