Lift paid work cap for international PhD students, UK urged

Visa rules that prohibit international postgraduate research students in the UK undertaking more than 20 hours of paid work per week at their university should be reviewed, a new study recommends.

Highlighting what it calls the “important role” played by overseas PhD students in “powering the engine” of UK science and research, the report explains how 42 per cent of the UK’s postgraduate research (PGR) students (49,830 in 2022-23) are from overseas – of which about half are clustered at 15 research-intensive universities.

That proportion has stayed broadly constant at about 40 per cent since 2018-19, with many PhD supervisors stating that “universities simply could not run many of their PhD programmes without international PGR students’ input,” explains the report, titled Powering the engine: The non-financial contribution of international postgraduate students to the UK, which was commissioned by Universities UK International (UUKi), and undertaken by analysts from consultancies Public First and Counterculture.

Overall, the biggest source of international PGRs was China in 2022-23 (12,295 postgraduates), followed by the European Union (10,355), Saudi Arabia (3,045) and the US (2,785). Over the previous three years, postgraduate research numbers from Europe fell steadily while Asian numbers climbed.

Despite their pivotal importance, however, there is a “lack of any deliberate government strategies to attract, retain, and maximise the benefits of international PGR students”, explains the report, which describes this as a “missed opportunity to enhance the UK’s research base, given the benefits these students bring”.

One obstacle that could be removed concerned visa restrictions on the amount of paid work that international PhDs can undertake, which is generally capped at 20 hours a week in term time, even if it related to professional roles within a university that could enhance the skills of PhD graduates.

The government should “review the practicalities of an exemption to working time limits where an international PGR student is employed by their own university in a role which is adjacent to their programme”, urges the report.

It also urges the government to consider whether the post-study visa rules for PhD graduates are still competitive, noting that a chemical scientist with a PhD would normally require a salary of at least £31,000 to obtain a three-year skilled worker visa.

Additionally, the Home Office should “urgently review whether the collation of incidental costs to study, and mandated upfront payments, including visa fees and the Immigration Health Surcharge [at about £1,000 a year] are inhibiting the attraction of international PGR students” and whether these “pricing strategies” were deterring high-skilled researchers from coming to the UK.

In addition, the report also urges universities to do more to capture the benefits of having international PGRs, including gathering more data on graduate outcomes and PhDs’ research outputs.

For instance, the report found that the 23,690 PhD students at 22 leading research universities were likely to be responsible for about 10,000 research outputs in their time at university.

Drawing on the words of one PhD supervisor interviewed for the study, the report concludes that “international PGR students ‘power the engine’ of the UK’s science and research capabilities, providing new insights and technical capacity.

“However, we have not yet done enough to measure their impact and unless measures are taken to join up policy initiatives, address challenges in the visa regime, collect better data, and otherwise make explicit how valued their contribution is, the UK risks losing their talents to other nations.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com