Outdated policy and unfounded optimism drive British universities to abyss: Discuss

Opening remarks from IHEF Panel on 4 June 2025

I should start by acknowledging that it’s so much easier to say the things I do from my vantage as an ex international director and ex PVCi - rather than the position many of you face, holding responsibility for international activity in your universities.

As some of you may have read in one of my recent HEPI or PIE articles, or heard me at some other event, I’ve been quite critical about what’s happening. But my criticism hasn’t really been about external pressures. Not geopolitics. Not government policy, although that’s certainly not helping.

It’s been about us. And about the strategic choices, or in some cases, the strategic absence, within our institutions.

In her HEPI article last week, Ruth Arnold reminds us that UK international education has always been shaped and constrained by political mood, immigration rhetoric, and how we fund our universities.

The pressures we face today? They aren’t new.

What’s different now is the extent to which so many universities built overly optimistic forecasts into their core planning, forecasts that assumed the post-Covid boom in international recruitment would continue indefinitely. And now we’re seeing the results.

Universities like Cardiff, Edinburgh, Lincoln - very publicly - and many others, more privately - are facing a crisis. Or what the University of Leicester has announced today as “pre-change engagement”. Not just because of external policies, but because of internal decisions that failed to confront risk, cost, and sustainability.

And this isn’t new. Back in the 1980s, University College Cardiff, the forerunner of Cardiff University, found itself in a similar position.

As Paul Greatrix reminds us on his blog site, The wonderful (and frightening) world of HE, the institution relied heavily on tuition fee income from Nigerian students, based supposedly on detailed intelligence and close relationships in the country.

The then-Principal famously said: “The Nigerian students will save us.”.

But that confidence proved misplaced. Nigeria’s exchange control regulations meant students couldn’t transfer funds, effectively defaulting on tuition fee payments.

The result? A serious financial crisis and one that reverberated across the institution, and the whole of the Welsh higher education system.

It’s a powerful reminder: relying too heavily on international student income, even when it looks strong in the moment, is a risky strategy.

So here we are again. Over-optimistic planning based on temporary conditions. A mistake we’ve made before but one we’d conveniently forgotten in the rush to present more positive futures, or perhaps delay difficult decisions.

Like the principal of Cardiff University College all those years ago, many of today’s vice-chancellors presented international student growth as the saviour of their universities to their governing bodies, and those governing bodies accepted the plans, allowing universities to keep making new spending commitments, commitments that in many cases, would prove unaffordable.

So, my provocation this afternoon is simple: we need to stop blaming the outside world for all of our woes.

Yes, government has made things harder. But the strategic fragility of many of today’s university strategies, is a problem of our own making.

As I’ve written recently, many universities still can’t answer basic questions about what they’re trying to achieve. Growth? Diversity? Rankings? Financial sustainability? Talent? Reputation?

Too often, the answer is ‘all of the above’ but with no clear strategy connecting them. And no financial model proving they’re viable.

And when money from student recruitment is the strategy they often fail to fully understand the true costs involved.

Up to a quarter of English universities earn less per international student, after scholarships and discounts, than they charge home undergraduates, an amount they already claim is too little.

And those earnings from tuition fee income published in annual financial statements, are all before we factor in: agent commission, marketing costs, staffing, and bad debt – in some cases, as much as 30% of the net fee.

So, if international students are plugging your financial gaps, are you sure it’s working?

If we want sustainability, we need to be honest. Honest about our costs. Honest about our margins. Honest about our goals. And more than that, we need to think beyond recruitment.

Ruth’s article, this panel, perhaps the whole of this conference, are challenging us to think about internationalisation more purposefully. I hope not just as an export strategy but as a way to shape our institutions, our communities, and the country.

So yes - international students matter.

• But so does global talent in our academic workforce.

• So does helping domestic students build global competencies.

• So do equitable partnerships.

• And so does the long-term future of our institutions.

We also need to ask ourselves: are we rushing into Transnational Education, especially new campuses in India, because we believe in it? Or because we don’t know what else to do?

Let’s be honest.  Setting up a campus in India is a long-term strategy - regulation, investment, partnership-building, and then there’s staffing it, and recruiting students. It’s not a short-term fix. And unless it aligns with long-term institutional mission, it could bring more risk than reward. 

So again, what are we trying to achieve?

This current moment, as difficult as it is,  might be the best opportunity we’ve had in years to rethink what we mean by internationalisation. So, let’s not waste it waiting for the next International Education Export strategy. Instead, let’s take practical steps to regain control. I feel confident that we can:

• Be clearer about what internationalisation is for in our own institutions – not just what it delivers in revenue, but what it means for our academic mission, for our students, and for our staff.

• Build recruitment models that reflect our individual context, not copy someone else’s playbook – and be honest about what they cost, what they return, and what risks they carry

• And  stop presenting short-term survival tactics as long-term strategies.

The Government may not offer us much more than goodwill, if that, but we don’t have to wait for permission to reset our own course. The responsibility, and the opportunity, lie with you!

If you fail to act now, you and our universities risk the same fate as the Leopard, the Prince of Salina, left behind by history.