The numbers speak for themselves. In 2024, student visas accounted for 45% of all UK entry visas issued – the single largest route for legal migration. This surge is no accident. In 2019, ministers set a target of 600,000 international students by 2030; they hit it in 2022. Universities, free to recruit as they please and charging overseas students up to triple domestic fees, have turned this route into a major pipeline for migration.
The government’s own projections estimate that half a million recent international graduates have stayed in the country after their visa has expired. If these trends continue, and nothing is done, double this number – one million international students – could remain in the country after their visa ends over the next three years.
Introducing a cap on the number of migrants allowed into the country each year is the only viable method through which control can be reasserted. Given that the three main routes through which visas are issued are Work, Family, and Student visas, these are the primary streams that must be dammed if control is to be achieved. It is imperative that we identify how each stream climbed to the level it is currently at, the ways in which it is abused and puts key sectors at risk, and how a cap can be introduced.
Migration Watch’s new report, ‘The future for student visas’, aims to do just that.
Most of these students come from China, India, Pakistan, and Nigeria, with the first three countries supplying over half of all international students. While the government likes to dress this up as “exporting world-class education”, the reality is that our higher education sector has become dangerously dependent on fragile overseas economies – a vulnerability exposed when, for example, Dundee University nearly went under due to the collapse of the Nigerian currency, because of its overreliance on Nigerian students.
Worse still, there is extensive abuse of the system. Applicants have been caught using shared bank balances to meet financial requirements, enrolling with no intention of studying, or arriving only to claim asylum. Nearly half of all asylum claims from visa holders come from former students. Meanwhile, the Graduate Visa route – allowing two years of unrestricted work after study – has become a backdoor work visa. Indians, for example, account for 22% of study visas but over 41% of graduate visas, showing how heavily this route is used to remain in the UK.
The explosion in numbers has been driven not only by students themselves, but by their dependants. Until recently, most postgraduate students could bring family members, who were then free to work full-time. In 2023, dependants’ visas hit 135,000, roughly the average net migration figure for the entire early 2000s. Only in 2024 was this restricted to PhD students, cutting the number sharply.
At the same time, universities have shifted recruitment away from elite institutions to lower-ranked ones. Since 2013, visas issued for students at such universities have more than doubled, even though only one non-Russell Group university sits in the global top 100. So much for Britain “exporting” its elite education.
The Case for a Cap
If the government is serious about reducing migration, the student route must be capped. The report proposes doing this via a system of Certificates of Sponsorship (COS): each licensed university would receive a fixed allocation, based on past visa issuance, which they could not exceed. A portion of the cap could be reserved for world-class institutions or courses of strategic value, such as Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) degrees.
Dependants should remain banned for all but PhD students, and even then could be counted against a university’s COS allocation. Visa interviews – scrapped in 2010 – should be reintroduced, with Home Office officers empowered to reject applications on credibility grounds.
Crucially, the right to work during study – currently 20 hours a week in term time and unlimited in holidays – should be removed. This rule is rarely enforced and allows individual students to shift their focus from study to work. The Graduate Visa route should be closed entirely, with graduates required to leave the UK and apply for a work visa from abroad if they wish to stay.
How the Cap Would Work
The total number of visas would be set in line with wider migration targets, divided between study, work, and family routes. The study visa share would then be allocated to institutions annually, with adjustments to account for seasonal demand around the academic year. Unused allocations could be traded between universities, encouraging efficient use. Institutions with poor compliance records would see their allocations cut.
The student visa system has morphed into a work-cum-migration route, driven by a toxic mix of inflated government targets, university greed, and lax enforcement. The result is record legal migration, imported community tensions, and a higher education sector hooked on overseas fees.
Capping student visas – facilitated through ending the Graduate route, banning most dependants, reinstating interviews, and removing in-study work rights – would be a decisive step towards restoring control.
If ministers are unwilling to take it, any talk of reducing immigration is just that: talk.