Revised transcript of evidence taken before

The Select Committee on Science and Technology

Inquiry on

International STEM Students

Evidence Session No. 2                            Heard in Public               Questions 16 - 31

TUESDAY 4 March 2014

10.35 am

Witnesses: Daniel Stevens, Ian Bradley, and Philip Lockett

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Members present

Lord Krebs (Chairman)

Lord Dixon‑Smith

Baroness Hilton of Eggardon

Baroness Manningham‑Buller

Lord O’Neill of Clackmannan

Lord Peston

Earl of Selborne

Baroness Sharp of Guildford

Lord Wade of Chorlton

Lord Willis of Knaresborough

________________

Examination of Witnesses

Daniel Stevens, International Students’ Officer, National Union of Students, Ian Bradley, Head of Academic Services, Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Manchester, and Philip Lockett, Pro-Dean, Faculty of Engineering, Science and the Built Environment, London South Bank University

Q16   The Chairman: I welcome our witnesses for this first evidence session today, and in a moment I will invite you to introduce yourselves briefly for the record. If you wish to make any opening comments, please feel free to do so, but also, please do keep your comments very brief because we have a lot of discussion ahead of us and we do not have a huge amount of time. We would like to leave time for us to put questions to you, and for you to respond to them. As you know, we are very interested today in hearing from you about trends in the numbers of international students coming to the UK—and to your institutions in particular, for the two witnesses from particular universities. Later on, we want to ask about changes in immigration policy that might have influenced those factors and the changes in numbers. Perhaps I could ask Philip Lockett to kick off and introduce himself, and then the other two witnesses.

Philip Lockett: My name is Philip Lockett. I am Pro-Dean (Academic) for the Faculty of Engineering, Science and the Built Environment at London South Bank University.

Daniel Stevens: I am Daniel Stevens. I am the International Students’ Officer at the National Union of Students. I am a Brazilian who has also studied at both undergraduate level and postgraduate level in the UK. The NUS, as representatives of international students, really would hope to make clear the argument—both through our experiences talking to international students and our extensive research—that the current immigration policies are clearly deterring international STEM graduates. They are also providing a really detrimental experience to the international STEM graduates currently studying in the UK. We are just incredibly concerned with the way international students have been politicised. There needs to be a dramatic change in the way international students are treated, so we really do welcome this inquiry at this time.

Ian Bradley: I am Ian Bradley. I am the Head of Academic Services for the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences at The University of Manchester.[1]

Q17   The Chairman: If I may kick off, in doing so, I wish to declare an interest, in that I am the Principal of Jesus College, Oxford, and therefore part of Oxford University, and we have a large number of international students, at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. What I would like to do first of all in this opening question is really to understand—particularly from the two representatives of particular universities, but also from Daniel Stevens—about the actual changes in numbers of students in STEM subjects coming from outside the European Economic Area to the UK. I would like, perhaps, to start by asking Philip to describe, for your institution, in your experience, and perhaps also more generally for the sector if you have broader information, what the trends are in numbers of students coming in, in relation to particular subjects and particular countries of origin.

Philip Lockett: Certainly for South Bank University, we saw steady growth in international students until 2009-10. Then, there was apparently quite a significant drop-off of something like 15%. Since then, we have seen a return to slow growth. Now, we are perhaps 10% down on where we were in 2009-10. I would describe that as plateau-ing. We were seeing good growth, and then it has become much more difficult to increase student numbers, but we are roughly maintaining them.

The Chairman: Is that particular to STEM or is it across the piece?

Philip Lockett: That is across the piece. It varies a little once you get down to the subject level, but when you start looking at subject levels within the university, then you get random effects coming in. For instance, we are doing quite well on petroleum, but that is because that is Nigeria and Qatar, and we have contacts with institutions or companies there. I get quite nervous about drawing trends from individual subject data, because you are often talking about a maximum of 50 students in one particular subject area.

The Chairman: Would you have similar reservations about teasing out particular countries of origin?

Philip Lockett: The big one I would single out is India. Certainly, as a university and in STEM, we have seen big reductions coming in from India. I was looking at the statistics provided to a previous meeting. They pretty much describe what is happening at London South Bank University in terms of some growth here, some growth there. Again, at the subject level, you sometimes see spectacular increases, but that is due to a contact with an institution or a company.

The Chairman: I would like the others to come in in a moment. Can I just also tease out, in terms of the impact on the business model of your university, how important international students are for some of the courses that you are running?

Philip Lockett: For some of the courses, quite important, particularly petroleum engineering and chemical engineering, where up to half the cohort can be international. In terms of our overall numbers as a faculty, about 15% of our full‑time numbers are international. The faculty also has rather large part‑time numbers, so, if I look at headcount, it is more like 10%. It is important, and we would like to grow it, but it is not our main business.

Q18   The Chairman: Perhaps I will turn to Ian Bradley to tell us about Manchester, and then ask Daniel to come in from an NUS perspective.

Ian Bradley: Over the last couple of years, we have seen different patterns of recruitment to STEM subjects at The University of Manchester. Just picking up on one of Philip’s comments, I think it is India where we have seen the most drastic drop. We have seen around a 61% decrease in Indian students over the period from 2010 to 2012. We have also seen significant drops from Nigeria and Pakistan. We are concerned, as I said, particularly about India. Obviously, India is an important market for the UK in terms of inward investment coming in and the links with India. We have probably seen a slightly larger decrease in STEM subjects than other parts of the university as a whole. There is a line that says that STEM subjects are being slightly more affected than other areas. What we see seems to be consistent with data, particularly in the engineering area, from the Engineering Professors’ Council, for example, where they have also seen a drop. Probably the most marked drop is at postgraduate level, particularly for master’s courses, PGT. However, we are seeing a slightly worrying drop over the last couple of years in terms of PGR recruitment as well, which is obviously important for research and development.

Lord Wade of Chorlton: What is PGR?

Ian Bradley: PhD students, so postgraduate research students. Sorry, I should have said that. Similar to Philip, we see our STEM students as important in terms of the intellectual addition that they make to us, particularly at postgraduate level, and, particularly for research, the outputs that they bring to us. Clearly, there is an income line as well, which is important, but it is also the contacts for the future that it provides us as a university and the UK as a whole. As we are wanting to attract the best and the brightest, these are likely to be the influencers of tomorrow.

The other thing I would say is that, when we look across all our STEM subjects in different areas, while we have seen some growth in some countries, we would expect to see much greater growth at present. In countries like Saudi Arabia, for example, we are seeing quite significant numbers going to the US and Australia. Going back to the Indian student numbers, I quoted a figure of around 60% for us; I think it is about 20-30% nationally. The US has increased its student numbers from India over the last year or so by 40%, and Australia by 20%, so it is clear that it is not a matter of Indian students not wanting to leave India to study; it is just where they are choosing to go.

The Chairman: Before I come to Daniel Stevens, just to go back to Philip Lockett, Ian Bradley made it clear in his evidence he was talking about both graduate students—PGT and PGR—and undergraduates. I forgot to ask you whether the evidence that you gave us would primarily relate to undergraduates or to postgraduates.

Philip Lockett: In terms of international numbers, our undergraduate numbers are holding up better than postgraduate. Postgraduate research has been increasing. The deliberate policy of the university has been to raise its research profile. Our international numbers at postgraduate research have gone up from 18% to 45% within STEM in the last four years, so there is quite a strong growth. That is deliberate policy. It is the postgraduate taught where we are being hit hardest in terms of international numbers.

Q19   The Chairman: Daniel Stevens, do you want to add anything about the numerical trends over time?

Daniel Stevens: Yes. From the national perspective, we know what the trends are by subsector, by nationality, and by subject area. Overall, the number of tier 4 visas issued—so the number of student visas issued—has declined by 36% according to the Office for National Statistics. Now, the problem is that there has been a disproportionate impact by subsector. If you look at further education, for example, the decline has been 80%.

Lord Willis of Knaresborough: In terms of the decline, what period are we talking about?

Daniel Stevens: We are talking about between June 2011 and September 2013. Further education saw a decline of 80%. In English language training, there was a decline of 83%. For independent schools—where international students come to do A-levels—there was a decline of 21%. You are seeing a massive decline, not at university level, but at pre‑university level. This is going to have a huge impact down the line.

UUK found that 40% of international students come to university through pathway providers. They found that, in 2007-08, 46% of first-year undergraduate students had progressed from other UK education institutions. The Independent Schools Council found that 77% of independent students at UK schools go on to universities in the UK. In many ways, you will see a huge impact down the line that is not apparent now.

There has been a focus on university numbers, but what is happening at further education and before that is going to be quite critical. If you look at university numbers, for the second year in a row there has been a decline in first-year enrolments. This year, for the first time since the statistics have been recorded, the number of international students at universities has declined. It is only 1%, but if you remove China and Hong Kong, the number is actually closer to 4.5%. This is critical. The numbers from China are not sustainable because of the demographic shift in China. There is going to be a 50% decline in the 20-24 bracket in the next 10 years because of the one-child policy.

What is interesting is the trajectory. In 2010, there was a 12% increase in international students; in 2011, a 6% increase; in 2012, a 1.5% increase; and now a decline. It is almost a steep nosedive. To give you a comparison with other countries, in Australia, the number of international students has increased by 8%; in the United States, it has increased by 7%; and in Canada, it has increased by 10%.

Now, the data tables provided show that STEM has been hit harder. In computer science, in the past two years, there has been a decline of 33%, and subjects allied to medicine have declined by 25%, to give a couple of examples. This has been more profound in PGT subjects. Postgraduate taught subjects are where you have higher concentrations of international students, so it is inevitably going to hurt STEM programmes a bit more. Numbers show higher drops in STEM subjects compared to non-STEM. STEM subjects fell by 8% and then by 3% in the past two years, compared to non-STEM subjects, which increased by 3% and then flat lined at 0%. If you go by individual countries, when you look at the numbers of Indian students on STEM programmes, there has been a 55% drop. In the numbers of students from Saudi Arabia, there has been a 35% decline; Nigerian students, a 5% decline; in the numbers from Pakistan, a 38% decline; from Thailand, a 3% drop recently; and a 0% increase from the US.

I just want to focus quickly on three countries: India, Nigeria and Pakistan. These have seen the largest drops. From our research, it is perfectly clear that this is because of the immigration policies. We did a survey of international students’ perceptions of the UK. 50.7% of non-EU students think that the UK Government has been not welcoming, or very unwelcoming, towards international students. However, this was significantly higher for students from Nigeria, at 63%; India, at 62%; and Pakistan, at 56%.

Then, if you ask those international students, “Would you recommend the UK to a friend?”, 19% say “No”. If you look again at that question for India, Nigeria and Pakistan, the number was much higher: closer to 40% of the students from Pakistan, 37% of the students from Nigeria, and 35% of the students from India. We are seeing these students—who, predominantly, if you look at the figures, are more likely to choose STEM subjects—not choosing the UK. We think it is clearly because of the immigration policy.

Q20   The Chairman: We will delve more into the impact of immigration policies in a moment. Could I just ask the two members of South Bank and The University of Manchester respectively: when I asked about the impact on your business model, are there particular postgraduate taught courses that might become unsustainable if numbers of international students decline, have done, or might do in the future? Philip Lockett, is that an issue for South Bank?

Philip Lockett: We have certainly seen a decline in electrical engineering at postgraduate level. That is still just about sustainable, but it was much more buoyant, so we are seeing effects. Petroleum engineering is another large degree programme, with large numbers of international students. Because that is recruiting from Nigeria and the Middle East, we are not seeing quite the same declines as we are in other disciplines, so it is discipline-specific. Not all disciplines recruit equally from each country, so yes, but not large numbers of programmes. There are certain ones that are being hit. Electrical engineering is one that particularly comes to mind.

Ian Bradley: I have just realised that when I mentioned one of my stats earlier about the 60% drop for India, I should have said that that related specifically to postgraduate taught courses. In the short term, we are comfortable. However, in terms of the long‑term business model, then yes, we would not be running many of our postgraduate taught master’s courses if it was not for the international students that we have on the courses. That is pretty much the case for virtually all our STEM subjects, with one or two exceptions that still attract UK or "Greater EU" students.

Q21   Lord Willis of Knaresborough: Could I try to get beyond the statistics? They are a little baffling as cold statistics. What I am interested in, in this inquiry, is not just the quantity of students coming in, but the quality of them. Perhaps you could explain whether students are just getting a better offer from somewhere else; whether it is the best students who are going somewhere else; whether it is things like currency fluctuations, and therefore it is a better financial offer to go to Canada, the US or Australia; or whether it is the changing Immigration Rules that are causing it. If it is the former and not the latter, that really is a different question than if it is purely the Immigration Rules. Perhaps, Philip, you could start. Surely, students should be going to where they get the best offer.

Philip Lockett: Can I start by saying that I do not have lots of statistics to support what I am about to say? This is my experience from talking to students, if that is understood. The quality of international students coming in is not dropping; that is clear. I do not think it is a quality issue. If anything, it is going up slightly, in my view. What we are seeing is that other countries are perceived to be more attractive. If you think about how international students apply, they start by choosing their country and course; the institution is some way down the line. It is looking at their perception of that country. My concern is that the messages we are giving out are making students feel unwelcome. It is as simple as that. Sometimes, those messages are not accurate. It is not necessarily to do with the objectivity of the visa process. The visa process is reasonably fair. It is the perception that students have about how welcoming the UK is and what messages they pick up. I am afraid that, certainly in India, what goes into the UK press quite quickly appears in the Indian press. If we send out messages or perceptions that we are not wanting to attract international students, they will go elsewhere.

Lord Willis of Knaresborough: Before I go on to both David and Ian, let me just tie this down very briefly: would you accept that it is not the Immigration Rules themselves that are the main problem here?

Philip Lockett: Yes, I would accept that.

Daniel Stevens: I would disagree completely and say it is the Immigration Rules, and give a clear example. 100 students from the Science Without Borders programme, a flagship Brazilian programme to bring Brazilian students here to the UK—completely funded by the Brazilian Government—were turned away. They were turned away because they did not meet the minimum English language requirement, even though the universities themselves thought that the students were more than capable. Because of a Home Office-imposed requirement, some of the brightest students from Brazil could not choose the UK to come and study. This is a clear example of immigration policies deterring students.

Lord Willis of Knaresborough: So should we accept students with poor English?

Daniel Stevens: I think that universities are best placed to determine who is best suited to go on to a course. These are students studying STEM subjects, where you many not need the higher level of English language that, perhaps, the Home Office expects. These are students from the Brazilian Government who are only going to go to the best programmes for STEM in the UK.

Q22   Lord Willis of Knaresborough: Are there other examples that you can point to where, specifically, Immigration Rules are causing students not to come here?

Daniel Stevens: I can point to nine examples.

Lord Willis of Knaresborough: Just do a couple.

Daniel Stevens: A couple, sure. In terms of current students, students in London had to queue overnight to register with the police at Borough. You had students as young as 17 having to literally queue overnight, because the capacity to register students with the police was not sufficient.

Lord Willis of Knaresborough: That is not the rule, it is? That is the process following the rules.

Daniel Stevens: It is difficult, because the process and the rules are tied together. You have to go through this process anyway if you want to come to the UK. You have the issue of credibility interviews that are now being introduced. I have the example of a student who had to travel 400 miles twice in Pakistan: once to get his biometrics taken, and the other time to follow up with another credibility interview. You have the fact that the Home Office is now imposing attendance monitoring requirements, so you have PhD students who are having to travel miles to check in that they are still studying on their course. You have ATAS; a lot of students studying courses have to get clearance from something called the Academic Technology Approval Scheme. It is taking nine months for this clearance to come through.

Q23   Lord Willis of Knaresborough: Can I just stop you there? It would be useful if you could let the Committee have that list of things. I do not want to be rude to you, but clearly it would be better for us to have that in writing. Then we can include that as a piece of hard evidence. Can I go on to you, Ian, and ask that same question? Do you think it is the rules, rather than the perception, causing the problem?

Ian Bradley: It is probably a bit of both. It is probably about 70% perception, and 30% rules.

Lord Willis of Knaresborough: Which are the rules that are causing problems?

Ian Bradley: The big rule was the removal of the post-study work visas. That particularly affected India and one or two other countries. I understand aspects of why it was removed, but it was not that thousands upon thousands of students were taking it up. It was actually the opportunity, and the thought that, if they were able to secure a job, they could stay in the UK for a year afterwards. That has had a major effect.

Lord Willis of Knaresborough: Let me challenge you on this, because you now have the open application for Tier 2s, which are not restricted. Why is that not being used, then, as the clear alternative? You have PhDs who can stay for another year for a job. You have the post‑doc salary scheme. There is plenty of stuff here. Why is this not working?

Ian Bradley: You would probably need to approach some employers for the direct answer. Certainly, the evidence that our careers service has is that a significant number of what are graduate-level jobs do not pay the required starting salary. A poll was taken of employers who were coming to the University to recruit graduates towards the end of the year. A significant portion of them—and this included some high-street brands—were not prepared to support Tier 2 sponsorship, so there is a concern. Yes, some companies are, but many of them are not. I think about 40-45% were not.[2] The other area, particularly when we are looking at STEM, is the SME (small and medium enterprise) community. These are often the companies that are not able to pay the same competitive starting salaries, but are offering very good jobs and are also at the heart of our recovery.

Daniel Stevens: If I can just jump in and add one quick thing, a student e-mailed me today about this inquiry and said, “I can give you a great example of how the current Tier 2 system is not working. I came with a cohort of 300 Indian students to the UK. Only 10 to 12 of us managed to actually stay on and get that work experience after the studies, even though many, many tried”. The fact is that you have Tier 2 but, as Ian pointed out, it is not working for a variety of reasons. We are selling students this; we are saying, “Come here, you can work after your studies”, when the reality is that the number of jobs available is so incredibly small that many cannot. They feel let down by the UK after being told that this is an option.

We have done many surveys of students that point to the fact that this is, as Ian pointed out, one of the critical factors why the UK is not being perceived to be attractive. We did a survey of 8,000 international students, 2,600 of which were STEM. 75% said that they would not come to study in the UK if post-study work was removed. We then did a survey a year after the removal of post-study work, and out of 1,000 students that were studying in the UK, 45.3% would not recommend the UK to a friend because of the work experience and the opportunities available. That is for many reasons. There is the short time period students are given to find a job.

Philip Lockett: I would agree that the view that the loss of the work-study visa has affected recruitment. It is one of those where we are perceived as less welcoming.

Lord Willis of Knaresborough: Is that because we have not sold the other alternatives?

Philip Lockett: Well, no. Can I talk about the other alternative? The problem is that the previous work-study visa meant that an employer could simply interview you and offer you a job. The new rules mean that not only do they have to do that, but they have to then go through the bureaucracy of getting a Tier 2 visa, which is not always easy. There are many additional processes that an employee goes through, so the inhibition for an employer to take on international students is much higher. There is much additional bureaucracy, so they are simply not going to do it. You would have to be committed to, perhaps, developing your international exports, and so you wanted to get more knowledge of a particular country and invest that additional resource in employing an international student. The idea that it is just available misunderstands employers who say, “Why should I bother? I can get a UK graduate. I do not want to go through all this bureaucracy”.

Q24   Lord Willis of Knaresborough: Ian, I was particularly interested in your opening comments, and Daniel has emphasised it. The problem seems to be mainly in terms of India, Nigeria and Pakistan, in terms of the student imbalance, if you like. What are universities doing, themselves, to actually correct that? In terms of India, the way in which Indian students finance their education here is quite unique. Could you just say whether you are doing anything in Manchester or, Daniel, whether there is stuff being done by other universities to address that unique problem of Indian students mortgaging their parents’ home to come here?

Ian Bradley: You are right that India, Pakistan to an extent, and Nigeria to some extent, tend to be self-funding markets. Therefore, it is about the individual, or the family of the individual, providing the income. We promote the schemes that are there. We promote the Tier 2 option. However, it was much easier to promote the post-study work option because, in a sense, you could say to a student, “It is up to you to get a job. You have a year”, whereas, for the Tier 2, you could have the best and the brightest student, but, if the company they want to go and work for is not playing ball, that will not help them. We try to talk to our applicants and offer-holders, so that they understand what the situation is. We are still seeing Indian students coming, but we are seeing fewer than we could do otherwise.

Certainly at Manchester, as our international students have grown, we have also improved the careers support that we can give to students who are returning to their own country. The way that the job market works in the UK is very different from how it works in China, and is very different from how it works in India. India has much greater networking opportunities, and so it involves working with our alumni who are there, who had positive experiences, to help—maybe with internships or similar—our Indian graduates. It is all very well saying, “Come to the UK, spend your money here for a year and then go home”, but the thing that we are missing here is that, if we are looking for people who are going to be influencers and help UK plc in years to come, if those students were coming over here for a year or three—depending on what they are studying—and then working and being part of the culture and society for a year or two, and then returning home, they would be even greater ambassadors. I take your point, and we were pleased that PhD students are able to stay. However, it is particularly the postgraduate taught students that we are concerned with.

Q25   The Chairman: Can I just come back to a point? I think it was Daniel who mentioned earlier that while numbers of students coming in to this country from overseas, from certain countries of origin like India, have been going down, elsewhere—for example, Australia, Canada and the United States were mentioned—they have been going up. Is that correct?

Daniel Stevens: Yes.

The Chairman: One hypothesis that was presented to us by BIS officials in the previous session was that the changes that took place in numbers coming from India in particular were only coincidentally linked to changes in immigration policy, but might actually have been caused by changes in the value of the rupee against the pound. Now, unless the rupee held up its value against the US dollar, Canadian dollar and Australian dollar, it would seem to me that your figures speak against the argument that it was a currency fluctuation. Can you just respond to that? Daniel, I think you mentioned the figures, did you not?

Daniel Stevens: Yes. In the past, we have had extreme situations of currency fluctuations impacting on international students. My own MSc research points to this. However, this has never impacted on the overall figures in the UK. It has always been quite small. It can explain it to a certain extent, but the dramatic shift and the dramatic declines have to point to something else.

If I may, I will just quickly talk about what other countries are offering these students; it is quite significant. If you are an international student in the United States, they allow STEM graduates to work for up to 29 months after graduating. In Canada, international students are allowed access to the labour market for up to three years, and they are looking to give 10,000 permanent residency visas to students who are going to Canada. Australia and New Zealand have similar, very attractive post-study work options. It is important to note that not only is our system for working after your studies very restrictive, but other countries are offering much more generous post-study work opportunities to these students.

Q26   Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I was going to ask about the bureaucracy linked to Tier 2, which you have largely answered. However, can I just add a rider to this? How far do you think that the Border Agency—which I know has now got a different name—is tougher on Indian, Pakistani and Nigerian students than they are on Chinese and Hong Kong students? For example, you were instancing the fact that in Pakistan they have to travel 400 miles in order to do the interview, and that they were required to do this twice. Now, does the same happen in China?

Philip Lockett: I would anticipate that the answer is yes, because there are only limited places that students can be interviewed, and China is a big country, so, yes. My perception is that we are not picking up huge variations in Border Agency officer decision‑making. When students complain to us that they have been unfairly treated, we see quite a high consistency of process. I do not think we are seeing huge variations. I was talking to our international office; there are probably five to 10 cases a year where we think there is really quite poor processing. For most of the rest of the decisions, we can see why they were made. That does not necessarily mean we agree with the decision, but at least you can see a consistency in terms of the process.

Daniel Stevens: With the Immigration Rules, you have two sets of countries. You have low-risk and you have high-risk. These countries, from what we have been able to see, have been determined by something in the 1960s and have yet to change. Brazil is a high‑risk country; Argentina is not. It is completely arbitrary, and has not been changed. Only high‑risk countries have to register with the police, for example. So Indian students do not, but students from China do. It makes no logical sense. You see examples of this bureaucracy everywhere within the UKBA.

I can give you another example. There is no firm clarification from the Home Office that international students can volunteer. We do not know because they will not tell us. We have many examples of the Home Office not providing certainty about changes and not accommodating differences. They said in July 2013 that there would be a period of policy stability, and now we have the Immigration Bill. There are these constant issues. I will just say one positive thing about the Home Office; they have committed recently to providing better service standards for international students. We have had a good relationship with certain individuals but, unfortunately, they are trapped within this entire bureaucratic system.

I would like just to focus on police registration. After the incident in London, which had hundreds of international students having to wait upwards of 14 hours overnight, in the rain, to register with the police, we have yet to receive a decision on whether or not it will be scrapped. No one understands why this process still happens. We have been waiting for a decision for over a year, and it has to have ministerial approval. We are not able to receive it.

Q27   Lord Wade of Chorlton: To come back to a point mentioned earlier, Lord Willis made it clear that there are arrangements under the Immigration Bill where people can stay and work, but that does not have anything to do with the availability of jobs, which is quite a different matter and applies just as much to UK students as it does to students from abroad. I do not quite see why you blame the immigration law for preventing people from getting a job, who otherwise are available to get a job. If the job is not there, there is no job for anybody. I must ask you, if you are so critical of Britain, why are you here?

Daniel Stevens: Well, to give you an example of why I am here, it is because my grandparents are British, and they moved to Brazil.

Lord Wade of Chorlton: Why do you not go away again, back to Brazil, if you think this is such an awful place?

Daniel Stevens: No, I think that the UK is fantastic. The education provided in the UK is second to none. The universities are world class. I have had a life‑changing experience. If you ask international students, they just want to stay on for one or two years to get work experience to be able to be better equipped when they go back home.

Lord Wade of Chorlton: Surely, that is the point—if the job is available.

Daniel Stevens: Not necessarily. The reason they cannot get jobs is, as was pointed out, companies just do not have the sponsorship for international students These are companies that want to recruit international students, like SMEs: small businesses that would, say, for example, want to break into a foreign market. It would be great if they had that Brazilian student or that Russian student. They cannot, because they just do not have the ability to sponsor that student. The second reason is that the salary limits are quite high. It is a minimum of around £20,000. Many graduates will not be earning that amount. The third issue is the fact that they just do not have the time to even apply for a job. If you are a postgraduate taught student, you have a year to do your course and, on the side, apply for jobs. Applying for jobs is a job in itself, so they just do not have the time.

The great thing about post-study work was that a student could stay here for a year or two years. If they did not get a job, that was fine, because that was up to that student’s ability. It was fair. There were no problems. The problem that we have with the current system is that they do not even have a fair chance. That is all international students want, when we look at post-study work opportunities. They just want a fair chance to gain that work experience. If there are no jobs available, that is fine. I do not think that international students would be crying that there should be job creation, or the fact that they should get a job over a student in the UK. It is just a matter of fairness.

Philip Lockett: As I said earlier, the post-study work visa at the moment is biased very much against international students applying for work with UK companies. Many UK companies would be interested in taking on international graduates, because if they have any intention of exporting whatever their product or service is, then building relationships with people from that country is very useful. It gives them that opportunity to also understand more about the culture. My personal view would be, if you make it effectively up to companies to decide, rather than making it particularly bureaucratic with the post-study work visa, if they do not want to take on an international student because it does not fit their model, that is fine. I do not think you need to bias it in their favour. However, at the moment, it is so biased against taking on an international student that you really have to have a very strong case. What I am looking for are more opportunities for companies, if they wish, to take on international students, without the quite heavy bureaucracy of the Tier 2 process.

Ian Bradley: Certainly, when we looked at some of the data a few years ago, it was the perception of being able to get jobs. I cannot remember the exact stats. I was sitting here a couple of years ago with that information, but I can send it back in again. There was a survey of whether you wanted to stay and whether you did actually stay, and it was a small minority that actually ended up staying. It was something like only 19% of students, so it was partly a perception thing.[3]

It depends on the sectors you are looking at as well, in terms of what jobs are available. Take engineering, for example. According to an EngineeringUK document, what the UK needs—not what the world needs—is a doubling of engineers by 2020. Those are not, unfortunately, going to come from UK students as our current science policy stands. We and other universities try to encourage primary school, secondary school and A-level students to go into engineering, but it is very difficult. If we want to drive the UK economy forward, we are going to need other students coming in.

It may well be that we need to look at the forerunner to the post-study work scheme, SEGS, the Science and Engineering Graduates Scheme. That was targeted to certain sectors of the UK economy where there was a need for more employment, and where there were jobs available. It may well be that we need to go back and look at a step change.

Lord Wade of Chorlton: I agree we need a policy to generate more interest in the high‑tech SME sector. It is a different policy statement from an immigration policy. That is the point I want to make. The two things are really different. Now, if you have views on how we can encourage Government to have a scheme that encourages the SME sector, particularly SMEs that will potentially export, to take on more students, I would be very much in favour of that. However, it is not the same as immigration policy.

Ian Bradley: Not directly, but the two have become linked.

Lord Wade of Chorlton: That is right—and probably wrongly.

Ian Bradley: Potentially, yes. Again, I think it goes back to the perception of the UK being a welcoming place.

Q28   Lord Peston: If you were to go into the Lords Library and look at all our newspapers, you would see that the majority of them would portray us as a nation of xenophobes. Their obsession against foreigners is unbelievable. I might add that I only read those papers to remind myself of what I do not myself believe. You were asked by Lord Willis whether there is anything the universities can do about this to create a different image. I would have thought, on the whole, that our universities are no different, say, from the Americans; they simply want the best students. I can tell you—my alma mater was over there—the Americans are rubbing their hands with glee at what this country is doing along the lines of the Immigration Bill and all that sort of thing, because nothing could help them more to get the best students than what we are doing. Now, is there anything the universities can do to say, “We really want you”, or is that a waste of breath?

Philip Lockett: The problem is that a university cannot tackle a whole market or a whole country. You can build partnerships with individual institutions—South Bank is one of those that do; so do most other universities—but it has to be quite localised. The amount of resource we can put into this is limited. You cannot pretend you can influence a whole country, but you can influence an institution or a small group of institutions. At that level, we are operating, but we do not have the resources to do it at national level. How can we, as an individual university, or even as groups of universities, have the firepower that the Government does, in terms of its influence on the press? What goes into the press gets transferred to the press in other countries.

Ian Bradley: Certainly Manchester, and virtually every university, does a huge amount of international recruitment work. My Dean, Professor Colin Bailey, is in China at the moment on a visit, meeting a particular Chinese partner over there. The UK universities and the British Council do a tremendous job promoting UK plc around the world, and our alumni absolutely do an even more phenomenal job in terms of promoting UK plc, but there is only so far we can go. What we do not know are the students that we are not even getting to. The British Council will run a big exhibition, but the US and Australian equivalents will be running theirs too. We cannot see all those students, because they are going, “We are going to the US because it is easier to get a visa”. We have been very firm in trying to preserve the UK as a destination of choice in terms of high‑quality education, and I think all the universities have been prepared to accept, if necessary, a reduction in student numbers to ensure that we preserve that. However, there needs to be a partnership between the UK universities and BIS, the Home Office, and the Foreign Office all together promoting the UK.

Q29   Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan: I am going to ask two questions, the first one to Daniel Stevens. Is there any difference in the downturn in numbers across the UK as a whole? Not every place is as expensive to live in as London, so if one went, let us say, to Newcastle or perhaps one of the northern universities where the cost of living tends to be a bit lower, would that not counteract any currency fluctuations?

Daniel Stevens: Yes, I think it will. I do not actually have that data, but I know that it is available and I can get back to you on that. My inclination would be that the numbers are down across the board, regardless of area. While living in certain regions of the UK is an issue, we actually find that London is more attractive to international students. You have that paradox there. However, I would say that I just do not think it is down to currency fluctuations. I would say it is because of the Immigration Rules.

Philip Lockett: Students are not that price sensitive. If you have a currency shift of 20-30%, yes, that will have an influence, but smaller changes do not. The cost of living is more expensive in London, but fees are quite similar across all universities. The cost of living is not that much different in the north. Because London is known—students apply for where they know the name and the location—it attracts a disproportionately high number of international students. Currency fluctuations, unless they are very large, do not have an impact, and I think you can overdo the sensitivity of students in terms of fees. It is other things that influence them.

The Chairman: Ian Bradley, you represent a northern university. You have alluded to a drop in incoming students from India in your university. Do you have any comment on cost-of-living differentials?

Ian Bradley: Not really. Arguably, the fees are a more significant figure for a student to cover, particularly for a self-funding student. Having visited a number of countries and exhibitions around the world, I know that, while students usually ask what the cost is, you do not tend to see people balking at that cost. They have done their research before they come, and they have a reasonable idea of what it is going to cost. Let us say, for argument’s sake, that there is a difference of £1,000 between London and, say, Manchester, which it might well be, over the course of a 12‑month period; that is not going to be the deal breaker.

Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan: I am in full agreement with my colleague Lord Peston. I do not think the British press is unique in its xenophobic tendencies. I was recently in Australia, and they have a press there—that is actively backed by a Government—that makes the present lot here look almost liberal. There have been particular incidents that have been given a lot of publicity in Australia. If the argument about the UK’s treatment of foreign students has any relevance, then it ought to have relevance in Australia, where there have been some very disturbing and very highly publicised incidents of violence against foreign students. I just wonder how significant this actually is as an issue. It is probably more likely to be immigration policy, but I just want to make the point that I do not think the UK is unique in its antagonism towards foreign students.

Daniel Stevens: In terms of the press, I think the immigration debate has become very toxic—more toxic than I have seen it. Actually, you are right; there has been research to suggest that people’s thoughts and perceptions of immigration have not really changed. The polls show that people were concerned about immigration 20 or 30 years ago, and that it has been framed in the same way. I would say, in terms of the immigration debate, the issue is the fact that international students are trapped in it. The general public do not view international students as migrants if you ask them, but they are trapped in the net migration target. They are the largest component of net migration, and they are the only group of migrants that the Government can actually target and change the numbers of. That is why I think you are seeing a lot of these policies; it is a bid to drive net migration down, even though it has increased spectacularly recently, which gives me fears about the Immigration Bill and what is going to come over the next two years.

Q30   Baroness Manningham-Buller: I need to declare two interests: one, I am Chair of the Court and Council of Imperial College; secondly, I am a Governor of the Wellcome Trust. It is the Immigration Bill I want to talk about. You know it is coming through Parliament at the moment, with two or three proposals that may be relevant. One is the surcharge for access to the NHS. Another is the requirement on landlords to check the immigration status of tenants. You have all, in different ways, made it pretty clear that you think, whatever the rules, there is a problem with perspective, and in some cases rules, and in some cases bureaucracy. My question is in two parts. Briefly, if this Bill were to go through as it stands, what effect do you think this would have on our attracting the best students to the UK? Secondly, a very broad question: if you were able to write the script, what message would you wish to get across to such students? It does not matter in which order you take it. Were the Bill to go through as it stands—which is not certain at all—what effect would it have?

Philip Lockett: In terms of the NHS charge, the perception will be that we are charging a lot more for the visa application, because I understand it is going to be asked to be paid at the same time as you make the visa application. That additional charge, again, makes it a lot more unwelcoming, because it is more of a cost to apply. After you have the visa and you know you are coming, it is not a huge cost, though it is another additional cost in studying here, but asking before you apply for the visa is problematic.

In terms of landlords, the other issue you raised, the problem with landlords is that we are adding bureaucracy. It is a bit like the post-study work visa. We are making it much more difficult for them to rent to international students. I have had two thoughts, and I do not know whether either of these will turn out to the case. Either universities will be forced to put international students into halls of residence—because they will already have checked that they are there legitimately—because landlords will not want to take them, or universities will have to get more involved in the process of private accommodation because landlords will not have the expertise. Judging whether somebody is here legally is quite difficult. It is not easy; you have to understand the visa system, what it means, and what you can and cannot do. That is not straightforward. There are plenty of examples where that has been a problem. The two proposals at the moment are likely to decrease the number of international students, because they will simply add to the perception that we are not welcoming.

Baroness Manningham-Buller: As to the second part of my question, it follows from that that you would wish to transmit by different ways that we are welcoming.

Philip Lockett: I think so. Can we achieve the same objectives? Universities are set up to monitor whether students are here legally. We can make that judgment. We invest a lot of money in doing that. Landlords will not because it is too small. I would be thinking about looking at ways we can make the university deal with that. With the NHS, if we feel we want to charge for that—and I think that is open for discussion—can we do it when students are definitely coming here, not when they are applying?

Ian Bradley: My comments are similar. With the health service charge, it is just about being unwelcoming. On the comment about price sensitivity, it is when one compares to other countries. Our visas are already higher than any other country to apply to, and adding the NHS fee surcharge on to it will just make that greater. I would also hope that, if that does go forward, there is not an additional cost by us implementing it. I do not know how the NHS will then assess that when a student turns up. Will they have to have a new system that they go through that probably costs some money to implement? I think it is about the perception in terms of the health surcharge.

For landlords, similarly, I wonder how many of us in this room would be able to check someone’s immigration status, and there are some people in this room who have some experience of it. We have seen embarrassing incidents where government Ministers have not been able to know the employment status of their own staff, yet we are effectively going to ask the general public, as landlords, to assess people’s immigration status. That just does not seem to be sensible. What will happen? Students will probably be unaware of it until they arrive. When they arrive and try to find somewhere to live, we can provide halls of residence, but many of our students—particularly those with families, which is a lot of students at postgraduate level, particularly sponsored students at postgraduate research level, who arguably are going to be some of the key influencers of the future—will be discriminated against. That is not a message that we want. A landlord will say, “I only want a UK student or an EU student, because I do not have to check anything. I do not want international students”. That is not a good message that we could be bringing forward.

What can we do? Well, we can probably massage a little bit, in terms of, “Yes, cost—well, you are paying for high quality, et cetera”. I am not sure we can do anything about the landlord situation. I very strongly urge anyone around this table who has any influence to vote, at least, against that part of the legislation.

Daniel Stevens: I agree completely with Ian and Philip. We did a survey of over 3,100 international students’ perceptions of the Immigration Bill. That is where I got the figures of 51% not thinking the UK Government is welcoming, and 19.4% not recommending the UK to a friend. We asked them specifically about these proposals. 75% of non‑EU students said that the introduction of a £150 NHS levy would make it either not possible, or more difficult, to study in the UK. This was closer to 83% for PhD students, and 82% for those with dependants. If you are a PGR researcher with a wife and two kids, you would have to pay £3,000 before even stepping into the country, just on NHS charges. It is going to be more now that the cost of a visa for a dependant is going to increase by 50%. The fees for those who are researchers are going to be astronomical. Sheffield did a survey of 1,251 students. When asked about charging for healthcare, 77% said that £200 per year would be either unaffordable or very unaffordable. So we have two surveys saying the exact same thing. On landlord checks, 40% of international students said that the introduction of landlord checks would negatively impact their decision to study in the UK. It was closer to 51% for PhD students, and again, higher for those with dependants. We have hundreds of open comments from students who had difficulties finding landlords.

Q31   Baroness Manningham-Buller: Sorry, I am not wishing to stop you, but there are other people coming. Again, on behalf of the Lord Chairman, could you let us have those figures in writing? Indeed, if either of the other witnesses have statistics they want to give us, that would be welcome. Can we just sum up this session? For what your university is offering, and your dependency, where it arises, on overseas students, how do you view the future? Are you gloomy or hopeful, and do you think we can manage through this? What are your final observations on where we stand?

Daniel Stevens: In terms of your question on what script I would give, I would say that I had the best possible experience in the UK. However, from a personal experience, I had the ability to get post-study work retrospectively removed for me. I came here as an undergraduate, thinking I would have post-study work, and had it removed during my course. I have horror stories of the UKBA. I have lost sleep because of visa applications. I have had to register with the police 12 times. I have had very good friends who have left the country because the employers they were working for would not sponsor them, because they did not have the licence—people that were the only key person for a position. What script would I give? I would say, for international students, to simply be honest and talk about their experiences in the UK. That is the message many would unfortunately give. I do not think I have been unlucky in my situation.

In terms of the future, we have a Government that refuses to budge on anything when it comes to international students. As I said, we still have police registration. It baffles me why it is here today. We have no clarification on international students being able to volunteer and help local communities. We do not even have clarification on that. The future is very bleak, because international students are still trapped in this net migration target. We have the general election coming up, with immigration being the number one issue, and we have international students being the only lever to control immigration. When you are seeing change after change after change, to the detriment of the UK, there is no shining light. BIS has tried; there is the International Education Council; there is this new international education strategy. However, unfortunately, I personally think that the Home Office is really shooting the education sector in the foot. It is not just prospective students. It is the current students who are suffering. If you want, I can give hundreds of case studies. I can give hundreds of comments from international students on this.

Philip Lockett: We need to think. At the moment, treating international students as the immigrants we can manage is the wrong model. Britain is a country that needs exports. We only produce half our own food. We are going to have to work with the rest of the world, and you do that best by developing personal relationships. A very good way of doing that is educating students here. At the moment, it does look gloomy. My request would be: can we think of international students as a valued asset for the future development of the country, and not as immigrants we need to limit?

Ian Bradley: I am hopeful for the future. There are good things out there. Daniel mentioned the Brazilian Science Without Borders scheme, for example. There is a massive, growing economy in Brazil, and arguably the destination of choice for Brazilian students is the UK, which is great, and hopefully will continue for a number of years. Some of the rules that link to immigration have done good things. In the past, there have been bogus colleges, and bogus students in a sense. Many of those have stopped as a result. I think there are things that we can do, maybe in partnership with Government, to get even more international students—and good-quality international students. To echo the comments from my colleagues on the removal of students from net migration figures, the information in the press over the last couple of days has been about net migration, but when one drills down, it is Romanian and Bulgarian individuals coming to the UK. Students, whom we actually want to attract, bring in £10 billion to the economy. Obviously, we want that to grow, so that the UK can continue to recover well. So I would welcome net migration figure changes and some form of post-study work to provide opportunity, if the jobs are there, and help to make us seem more welcoming. The other thing I would just throw in as well is that it would be really helpful if, as and when legislation is introduced, it is not introduced in the middle of a student cycle. We have had various instances in the past where have had to retrofit systems part way through an academic year, which is rather challenging.

The Chairman: I thank all our witnesses very much indeed. We have reached the end of our time for this session, but you have made very helpful responses to our questions, and we would like to thank you for your time. Daniel in particular has offered to follow up some of his comments with facts and figures, so could you send those in to the Clerk? For the other two witnesses, if there is any point you would like to elaborate on, do feel free to send it in to us. It will become part of our evidence. You will in due course receive a draft transcript of this session and have an opportunity to make editorial corrections. Thank you very much indeed.