Don’t get complacent on international students, Ivison warns UK

UK higher education institutions “should not get too comfortable” despite warm words on international students from the Labour government, warned the new vice-chancellor of the University of Manchester, who pointed the proposed caps on overseas students in Australia as evidence of “how fast the world changes”.

In his first public appearance since moving from the University of Sydney to take over at Manchester from long-standing sector leader Dame Nancy Rothwell, Duncan Ivison told the Universities UK conference that it wasn’t a given that centre-left governments would be more favourable to institutions’ overseas recruitment ambitions.

Despite “really excellent” signals from Westminster government ministers that have stressed international students are welcome in the country after steep drops in enrolments due to the previous government’s visa reforms, universities were still “exposed” to “the eruptions of geopolitics”, Professor Ivison told the event at the University of Reading. 

Universities are hoping the change in tone will result in a more stable policy environment for international recruitment in the next five years and Professor Ivison said the initial steps had been “incredibly welcome”, and there was lots that the government could do that wouldn’t cost anything.

But, he said, his message for the sector from Australia was: “Don’t get too comfortable, things can change.”

Labor ministers Down Under had made the same promises “verbatim” when they came to power two years ago, Professor Ivison said, but were now planning caps on overseas students that would result in a 30 per cent cut in numbers for most research-intensive universities.

The policy had left Australian universities “not in a good place”, he said but did present a “great opportunity” for the UK as it seeks to rebuild its international student numbers.

The centre-left government in Canberra was “very close” to the one led by Sir Keir Starmer in the UK, Professor Ivison said, and “the ministers talk to each other frequently”.

“We shouldn’t be complacent about the kind of challenges that will come,” he added.

Universities should be aware that “we are living in the populist moment”, Professor Ivison said. “Whether you are a social democratic party on the left or a party on the right or far-right, migration is going to remain the disruptive force in politics and universities are at the epicentre of that, for better or worse. That is something we all need to grapple with and work assiduously to address.”

The Canadian, who last worked in the UK 25 years ago, said “winning hearts and minds” on the value of the internationalisation was still a “really significant challenge” and an argument that had not been won globally.

He said the economic arguments that universities tend to stress as reasons for accepting more international students had “little impact” on governments or the “broader political culture”.

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com