Funding Higher Education

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Carol Monaghan

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Paul Blomfield]

Again, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. From the point of view of the needs of the NHS and the opportunities for mature students, and just for the sake of justice, we need to look again at nursing, midwifery and allied health courses.

I will make my third point very briefly, because this is a much bigger topic. I raise this issue as co-chair of the all-party group on international students. Universities’ financial stability is partly based on this country’s enormous success in attracting international students to come and study here. Those numbers are flatlining as a result of measures taken by the Home Office and the inclusion of international students in the net migration numbers, which inevitably leads to policy decisions that discourage international students. The Minister will say that the numbers are holding roughly up, but holding roughly up is not good enough in a growing market, because it means a relative decline.

There is a huge risk as we leave the European Union, because some 125,000 of our 450,000 international students come from the EU, and most universities are modelling on the basis that we will lose about 80% of them. One third of non-EU students said before the referendum that if we chose to leave the European Union, they would find the UK a less attractive place to come to. The Government need to put in place measures within the framework of the strategy to actively encourage more international students. They can start by removing them from the net migration targets.

[Carol Monaghan]

One of the other issues with international students is that we have lost a lot of the diversity within that group. Whereas in the past, students came from India, Australia, the United States and Canada, we are more and more relying on the Chinese student population. That is problematic, because if anything happens politically to change that relationship, our universities could have difficulties.

[Paul Blomfield]

The hon. Lady makes a very important point. The numbers have been sustained only by the huge increase in the number of Chinese students. Of course, Chinese students are very welcome in the UK, but no business would be satisfied with becoming over-dependent on one customer. China is moving ahead in leaps and bounds in developing its own universities, and now has some of the finest universities in the world, doing some of the finest research in the world, so we cannot rely on that market. The hon. Lady is absolutely right that part of the new strategy that we need to encourage people to come from all over the world needs to be about looking at countries such as India, from which the numbers have dropped.