UK Home Secretary’s New Plan May Hit Overseas Students Hard

Nigerians and other immigrant students in the United Kingdom currently face a high-risk of deportation after completion of their studies following a row between UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman and the Department of Education.

According to The Daily Mail, Braverman is currently seeking to cut down the amount of time foreign students can stay in the UK after graduation.

Currently, immigrants who travel to Britain to study can stay behind two years after graduation.

But the Department for Education is said to be resisting Braverman’s plan to cut that to just six months, after which they have to have a skilled job that makes them eligible for a work visa or leave the UK.

The Daily Mail further stated that the development is the latest twist in a long-running row over foreign student numbers.

“Braverman has committed to cut immigration and ‘substantially reduce’ the number of unskilled foreign workers coming to Britain, from 239,000 to the ‘tens of thousands’.

“As part of that, she wants to reduce the number of international students who can apply for a graduate post-study work visa, which allows any student who has passed their degree to remain and work in the UK for at least two years.

“But education officials fear this will make the UK less attractive to foreign students, who pay far more than UK students for their courses and are a major source of income for universities”, the media house stated.

Recall that the UK is one of the choicest destinations for Nigerian students seeking to study overseas.

Recent data released by the home office of the UK revealed that the number of study visas released to Nigerians increased by 222.8 per cent, with 65,929 issued as of June 2022 as against 20,427 in the same period in 2021.

Braverman’s proposal is reportedly among several drawn up after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak asked the Home Office and the DfE to submit proposals for reducing the number of foreign students coming to the UK. Figures published last week showed there were 680,000 foreign students in the UK. The government’s 2019 Higher Education Strategy included a target of 600,000 students by 2030, which was met last year itself.

Another proposal being considered would reportedly allow foreign students to bring dependent family members with them only if they were on postgraduate research-based courses such as a PhD, or postgraduate courses that were at least two years’ long.

The UK Home Office refused to comment on the leak, but a government spokesperson said: “Our points-based system is designed to be flexible according to the UK’s needs, including attracting top-class talent from across the world to contribute to the UK’s excellent academic reputation and to help keep our universities competitive on the world stage.

Similarly, Nigerian students and their dependents in the United Kingdom we’re said to have contributed an estimated £1.9 billion to the economy of the UK, according to an analysis by SBM intelligence.

The data which covered the 2021/2022 academic session estimated that a sum of £680,620,000 were reportedly paid as school fees with a total of £54.3m paid in taxes by working spouses of the students.

Back home, Nigeria’s tertiary education sector faces challenges ranging from poor funding, dearth of research and poor welfare for academic and non-academic staff.

A Professor of Mathematics at the Federal University of Technology, Minna, Gbolahan Bolarin, notee that the government needs to dedicate more efforts to the funding of tertiary education in the country so as to prevent a total collapse of the sector.