Days after international students were banned from bringing relatives, U.K. universities face ri§k of financial deficit

A lot of universities in the United Kingdom are at risk of falling into financial deficit due to a sharp decline in international students, the head of the sector’s main lobby group has warned.

Recall that UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, on January 1, 2024, announced that foreign students have been banned from bring relatives into the nation.

Vivienne Stern, the chief executive of Universities UK, which represents more than 140 universities, said the sector was facing the prospect of a “serious overcorrection” thanks to immigration policies that deterred international students from coming to study in Britain.

Speaking with Financial Times, she said: “If they want to cool things down, that’s one thing, but it seems to me that through a combination of rhetoric, which is off-putting, and policy changes . . .[they have] really turned a whole bunch of people off that would otherwise have come to the UK.

The government needs to be very careful: we could end up with, from a policy point of view, what I would consider a serious overcorrection.”