Most of the universities in the United Kingdom have been experiencing reduced admissions from international students including Nigerians over the dependent visa ban policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recall that the UK Home Office under the sacked interior secretary Suella Braverman introduced the dependent visa ban policy that restricted Nigerians and other migrants from bringing family members with them starting from January 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Richard Montgomery, while speaking on the policy in June said it was implemented to avoid overburdening the British economy\u2019s s housing infrastructure and to control the inflow of migrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recounting the repercussions of the policy, the universities and business schools said they cannot meet the admission targets for the year 2024, according to a report by 023 Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) Annual Membership Survey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn what appears to be an early signal of the impact of an important change to UK visa policy, nearly half (44%) of the country\u2019s business schools are reporting that they will miss their non-EU recruitment targets this year,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen reporting on performance against non-EU recruitment targets for the 2023\/24 academic year, nearly three in ten responding institutions (29%) said they had either significantly or moderately exceeded their goal. Another 27% said they had met their recruitment target. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut the remaining 44% said that they fell short of their recruitment goals, of which 22% reported being \u201csignificantly below\u201d their target enrollment.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe survey report adds: \u2018There is significant variation in the results by level of study for non-EU international enrollment , as at undergraduate level nearly half of the schools either significantly or moderately exceeded target compared to one-third of schools at postgraduate level.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAt postgraduate level nearly 50% of schools reported recruitment that was either significantly or moderately below target for non-EU international students, compared to 21% at undergraduate level.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It added, \u201cSurvey respondents reported that they were seeing some of the most significant increases in non-EU enrollment from India, Pakistan, and Ghana. \u201cAll these countries had more business schools seeing increases in enrollments for the new academic year than decreases,\u201d notes the report. \u201cGrowth in enrollments from Nepal and Saudi Arabia were also cited by several schools. None of the schools cited decreases in enrollments from Nepal, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Affected by the dependent visa restriction policy, the report disclosed that Nigerians and Chinese have reduced their admissions to British universities, as it said, \u201cthe most frequently cited countries for declining enrollment were China and Nigeria, which could suggest a reversal in the growth in recruitment from these key countries in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The report further said that the number of international students seeking admission to study Master in Business Administration (MBA) has reduced in number, especially from Nigerians and Chinese. It further said these foreign students have turned to Canadian and Australian universities which are now migrant-friendly destinations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In May 2023, the British government announced that international students would be prevented from bringing dependent with them as of January 2024 (unless students are in postgraduate programs with a research focus).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Home Office said at the time that almost half a million student visas were issued in 2022 while the number of dependent of overseas students has increased by 750% since 2019, to 136,000 people. The move to limit accompanying dependents was explicitly done to curb net migration, and was described by the Home Secretary as the \u201csingle biggest tightening measure a government has ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The vast majority of respondents to the CABS survey said that they expect to see negative impacts on non-EU enrollment arising from the policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the report, \u201cIt is anticipated that enrollment for MBA programs will be most affected as MBA students tend to be older and often wish to bring their family with them. Other post-experience programs, such as Executive Education programs sponsored by a company, are also expected to be more adversely impacted due to students being more likely to have children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMany [respondents] mentioned that the change has prompted them to reassess their school\u2019s strategy which includes shifting MBAs and Master\u2019s programs to online delivery if not already offered in this mode, and focusing on growing international student numbers at an undergraduate level instead. There is also a sense that the recruitment of business schools in competitor countries such as Australia and Canada is already benefiting from the UK\u2019s decision to ban visas for dependents of students.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The survey found overall that UK universities remain highly dependent on business school tuition revenue, and that, with the downward pressure on non-EU enrollment for this year in particular, the financial outlook for the year ahead is weakening.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhile 28% and 49% of respondents in 2022 stated that they expected significant and moderate increases in income respectively, these numbers have fallen to 9% and 36% in this year\u2019s edition of the survey. 30% of business schools expect a decrease in income compared to only 2% in last year\u2019s survey,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Most of the universities in the United Kingdom have been experiencing reduced admissions from international students including Nigerians over the dependent visa ban policy. UK\u2019s Dependent visa ban Recall that the UK Home Office under the sacked interior secretary Suella Braverman introduced the dependent visa ban policy that restricted Nigerians and other migrants from bringing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":12646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4,5,18,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-featured","category-international","category-lifestyle","category-naija-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.funminews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/image-294.webp?fit=643%2C446&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12647,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12645\/revisions\/12647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}