THERESA MAY’S POLICIES AS home secretary (minister) have “butchered” the UK’s relationship with India leading to the first-ever decline in overseas student numbers, a vice chancellor has claimed.
But the University of East Anglia’s Edward Acton has declined to blame the downturn for the closure of the institution’s London campus, which lost £7 million (Rs.72.8 crore) in its first three and a half years. Prof. Acton says that home office rhetoric on immigration is having “a horrible, negative effect” abroad, ruining institutions’ efforts to recruit international students. “Ms. May’s policy of treating university students as immigrants to be discouraged by endless pinpricks, insults, red tape and negative vibes from the home office (ministry) has stopped growth in UK recruitment (of overseas students) dead in its tracks,” says the vice chancellor, who is leading Universities UK’s lobbying for international students to be removed from government immigration targets.
He was speaking after figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency revealed that the number of non-European Union students at UK universities fell by 1 percent last year: the first such decline since records began in 1994-95. They also show a 25 percent drop in the number of Indian students starting courses in 2012-13, meaning the number of Indian entrants has halved in just two years — from 23,985 to 12,280. “India is going to be by far the biggest market, along with China, as the century progresses, and Britain has a natural affinity (with India),” says Acton, “Ms. May has just butchered it.”
However Mark Harper, the immigration minister, says: “UK universities are continuing to attract the brightest and best students from around the globe. There is no limit on those allowed to study here.”
(Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)