The United Kingdom is among the world's most popular destinations for international students, regularly placing within the top three countries for hosting international students alongside the United States and Australia.[1][2] Data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency indicates that students from the three countries of China, India, and Nigeria together account for just under 48% of all international students enrolled at higher education institutions in the UK.[3]
In 2019, the UK government's International Education Strategy set a target to recruit 600,000 international students in higher education and to increase the value of higher education exports to £35 billion by 2030.[4] The recruitment target was met ten years early and in the 2021/22 academic year, there were 679,790 international students studying at UK higher education institutions, equivalent to 24% of all higher education students in the UK – ranging from 16.8% in Wales to 27.4% in Scotland. This represented a 12.3% increase in international students from the previous year (2020/21: 605,130).[3] London Economics, a policy and economics consultancy, have estimated one first-year cohort of international students in 2018/19 to deliver £25.9 billion net benefit to the British economy over the course of their study.[5] They upgraded this figure to a net benefit of £37.4 billion for the 2021/22 academic year.[6] University College London's revenue from international tuition fees alone was worth over half a billion pounds – the equivalent of a third of the annual overseas earnings of the entire UK fishing industry.[7] This figure grew by about 25% to £640 million in the 2022/23 academic year.[8]
The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) estimates that the number of international students will continue to increase with international applications to study at British universities expected to increase by 60%, from around 150,000 in 2022 to 240,000 in 2030.[9][10] As of 2023, 58 current world leaders have been educated at a higher education institution in the United Kingdom, second in the world only to the United States' 65.[11]
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