Will the Covid crisis turn into a university crisis?

A big question hangs over British universities. With open days cancelled, visa offices and language testing centres closed, incomes dented and long-haul travel unreliable, just how many international students will enrol this September and what will vice-chancellors do to survive without them?

As students from the global south scramble home, governments in English-speaking countries, which dominate the global education industry, are waking up to the existential threat their absence poses to universities young and old.

The UK’s ability to bounce back will be gravely impaired if international students are no longer around to underpin the foundations of institutions central to our performance as a knowledge economy.

A drop in international student numbers of potentially 50 to 75 per cent will threaten the vitality of dozens of mid-sized British university towns from Chichester to Newcastle and send into reverse one of the great boom businesses of the globalised economy.

There are few sectors of the world economy in which the UK is globally competitive.