YOU might think vice-chancellors would be more preoccupied with the government of the day’s education policies, but in recent years, it’s been the Home Office which has kept University principals up at night.

The reason? International students and the UK Government’s increasingly twitchy approach to immigration rules as the rhetoric of curbing immigration meets the reality that UK higher education has become increasingly reliant on folk coming here from across the world to learn, grow, and foot the bill.

The numbers are striking. Back in 2014, the UK hosted around 450,000 international students. In the last decade, this has ­increased to just under 680,000 students.

For folk working outside the sector, the shift is probably most visible in terms of the rise of more and bigger blocks of ­student ­accommodation to house them during their studies. Most come here to study from ­China, India, Nigeria, the United States and Pakistan.

Global reputations

Given their formidable international ­reputations, Scottish institutions ­continue to attract more than their share. We learned last week that a record number of international students enrolled in Scottish institutions during 2022/2023.

Just under 84,000 of Scotland’s 292,000 students came from outside the UK, with the balance ­being made up of 173,745 home students and 33,805 from England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

A few numbers give you a flavour of the impact of international fees on Scottish institutions. At Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt, research by The Ferret suggests a stonking 43% of all of the university’s income during the last couple of years came from international student fees. At Glasgow, this made up a full third of all the money it brought in.

The median proportion of income across the sector sits at a little more than a quarter, supplemented by tuition fees paid for by the ­Scottish Government, public funding, ­research grants – and for some of our older, wealthier institutions, dividends from ­historic endowments. Two institutions – Edinburgh and St Andrews – actually have more international students than Scottish students on their books.

Historically, UK governments used to smile on this practice. Universities are by their nature internationally minded institutions in dialogue with the world,........

© Herald Scotland