There was a flutter of excitement among the Higher Education community this morning, when the education editor of the Times tweeted that David Willetts, the Universities Minister, was about to announce that overseas students would be excluded from net migration figures, and therefore from the Prime Minister’s pledge to reduce net migration to under 100,000 by the election.
Straightaway I responded that I thought this unlikely. There is a strong policy case for taking students out of the political ‘numbers game’ on immigration. Net migration figures are supposed to measure ‘long term migration’, whereas most overseas students return home fairly quickly. It is increasingly clear that having students inside the target has resulted in policies which are damaging our higher education sector – a sector which is valuable for its economic contribution and export earnings, as well as the longer term cultural and ‘soft power’ advantages it generates for Britain. In policy terms, it would be far better to focus purely on making the student visa system more rigorous and eliminating abuse, with no incentive to reduce numbers for the sake of it.
But the political motives for continuing to include students in the figures are similarly powerful.
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