The rating firm Moody’s said in an update that the number of Nigerians applying to study at UK universities has fallen sharply due to the naira’s steep devaluation, which made the exchange rate higher, and changes to visa policy.
Moody’s said the rise in international applicants shows the UK’s higher education brand is strong, even though it is less affordable and has a tighter visa policy.
It said Nigeria had the biggest drop in applicants of any country, which could be because of the naira’s fall or visa rules on dependents, which started in January 2024.
International students in the UK can no longer bring dependents on their student visa unless they are doing a postgraduate research program. Moody’s said data shows that Nigeria had the most dependents brought by international students as of September 2023.
Moody’s said more possible changes to the UK’s visa policy could make UK universities less attractive to overseas students. To cut net immigration, the UK government said in December 2023 it would review its graduate visa scheme, which let international students work in the UK for two years after they finished their studies.
The UK government is also thinking about raising the minimum yearly salary for sponsored skilled worker visas to £38,700 from £26,200.
Moody’s said these policy changes, if they happen, could have a bad effect on how many students enrol for fiscal 2025 and future applications.
On 15 February, the UK Universities and College Admissions Service (UCAS) released data on undergraduate student applicants for the 2024-25 academic year, which ends 31 July 2025.
The data showed a 0.7% rise in international applicants to 115,730, which Moody’s said was good for credit as it partly made up for the ongoing fall in UK applicants and helped with income generation since English universities use money from international students to help domestic undergraduate students, whose fees have been stuck at £9,250 since 2017.
The number of UK applicants fell by 1% to 479,210 from a year before, bringing down the total number of applicants to 594,940. But both UK and the overall number of applicants are still much higher than before the pandemic, when they were 452,220 and 568,330, respectively, in January 2020.
This is the third year in a row that UK applicants have gone down, while the number of non-EU applicants has gone up every year since the data began in 2006. With the high numbers of international applicants, Moody’s said it expects more international students to enrol for fiscal 2025.
Moody’s said this was good for universities because international students pay non-regulated fees (no limit), which can be about four times more than regulated English undergraduate fees, depending on the course. The limit on domestic undergraduate fees, which will go on until fiscal 2025 for English universities, has made domestic tuition income per student go down in real terms.
So, English universities rely on income from international students to make up for the net losses per domestic student, which the Russell Group says is £2,500 per year on average.
This trend will probably go on, with the sector’s regulator, the Office for Students, expecting that fees from international students (non-EU) will go up to 24% of total income in fiscal 2026 from 19% in fiscal 2022.
The University of Manchester and University College London will keep getting support from strong enrolments of international students, as they have the most income from international tuition fees. In fiscal 2022, overseas tuition fees made up 32% and 31% of total income for each, respectively.
Also, the strong market brand of these universities, shown by their low acceptance rates, suggests
