UK universities bracing for a further decline in international enrolments
- Early indications suggest that international commencements in the UK will decline for the 2026/27 academic year
- Study visa application volumes are down YTD April 2026 versus the same period in 2025
- The imminent implementation of new compliance standards is fuelling the trend
- In particular, a requirement that institutions have less than a 5% visa refusal rate is discouraging some universities from recruiting in emerging growth markets
- The Office for Students (OfS) is advising universities to lower their expectations for international enrolments in the next couple of years and to take action to mitigate the financial risk of these declining
Last year, the number of foreign students in UK higher education declined by -6%, according to data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). And now, government data shows that applications for study visas were down year-over-year in the last three months of 2025 and the first four months of 2026, signalling further challenges ahead for UK universities.
YTD April 2026 visa application volume is lowest in last five years
The Home Office received -33% fewer sponsored study visa applications from students (main applicants) in January–April 2026 than in the same period in 2025. This follows a -21% decline in applications in Q4 2025 versus Q4 2024.
The chart below was published by Nous Group director Nicholas Dillon in mid-May.
As the chart depicts, this year’s January–April visa application volume is the lowest in the last five years. It is -11% below the recent-year low for the same period in 2024, and in April 2026 alone, only 8,900 applications were received. This is down nearly -40% compared with April 2025.
What is driving the decline?
Visa applications from key markets dropped dramatically when the government announced in the summer of 2023 that most international students would no longer be able to bring their families with them to the UK as of January 2024.
However, demand began to pick up in 2025 as the shock wore off: in May 2025 alone, submissions from main applicants (i.e., students rather than dependants) were up +19% compared with May 2024.
This suggests that it wasn’t the Dependants Ban that prompted the Q4 2025 and Q1 2026 applications declines. Rather, many industry analysts believe they were spurred by a government announcement in May 2025 that universities would soon need to meet higher standards of compliance to continue to host (aka sponsor) international students. The three updated Basic Compliance Assessment (BCA) standards demand that institutions maintain:
- A visa refusal rate of less than 5%
- An enrolment rate of at least 95%
- A course completion rate of at least 90%
The government then elaborated in January 2026 that failure to meet even one of the three benchmarks above would land institutions in the “red” band of a “red, amber, green” (RAG) assessment structure. Falling into “red” spurs sanctions – the most extreme of which is that an institution has its licence to sponsor international students revoked.
The updated BCA thresholds (and associated RAG system) represent a much more stringent test of compliance than what it replaces. One analysis found that had it been active in 2024, more than 20 universities would have failed at least one threshold and about 49,000 students might have been affected.
The immediate impact on applications
Following on the heels of the May 2025 announcement of the tightened BCA thresholds, the visa approval rate for international students dropped to 85% in Q4 2025, down from 91% in Q4 2024. Universities were fully aware that the 85% approval rate is a full 10 percentage points below the upcoming BCA threshold of 95%.
For many, the lower approval rate was the trigger for adopting a more cautious recruitment approach to high-growth markets with higher-than-average refusal rates.
As early as December 2025, some institutions hit the brakes entirely on recruiting in important emerging markets such as Bangladesh and Pakistan, countries where visa rejection rates hover between 18% and 22%. Many also adopted more a more careful approach to markets such as Nigeria, India, and Nepal, including:
- Extending fewer offers
- Checking documents more rigorously
- Holding more credibility interviews
A recent British Universities International Liaison Association (BUILA) survey found that around a third of surveyed UK universities reported curtailing recruitment in certain markets to reduce compliance risk.
The shift towards lower-risk markets continues, and the 1 June official implementation of the stricter BCA metrics will do nothing to halt this momentum.
High-risk markets are high-volume markets
Over the past couple of years, demand from the UK’s top two sources of students, India and China – as well as from the key emerging market of Nigeria (#4) – has been falling. The chart below details commencements from 2005–2025, and it highlights just how sharp the declines have been from India and Nigeria.
Increased recent demand from Nepal and Pakistan has been essential to mitigating declines from other top markets.
If the BCA compliance benchmarks continue to dampen UK universities’ confidence in recruiting in some Indian states with low approval rates as well as in Nigeria, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh, the downward pressure on overall international commencements and enrolments could be severe. Collectively, according to HESA data, those five countries accounted for 39% of international enrolments in the UK in 2024/25. Looking at the entire student population of UK universities in 2024/25, roughly 1 in 10 students were from India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Nepal, or Bangladesh.
The impact on revenue and operations
Should international commencements fall again in the 2026/27 September intake, it will be devastating for many UK universities. On 19 May, the recruitment firm ADMIT published an analysis of revenue sources across the higher education sector and found that “22 UK universities now earn more than half of all their income from overseas tuition … eight years ago, none did.”
Forecasts for coming years
The Office for Students (OfS), which is the independent regulator of higher education in England, released its 2026 report on the financial sustainability of English universities on 14 May. Key inputs for the analysis are the self-reports and projections of 279 participating UK universities.
Of those universities, more than a third (36%) reported a deficit for 2024/25. On average, providers expect a small worsening of the financial picture in 2025/26 and then a rebound in 2026/27.
The OfS is skeptical of this forecast:
“Our assessment is that this projected recovery remains based on overly optimistic assumptions, particularly in the context of continued volatility in student recruitment.”
It notes that among responding universities, “non-UK entrants fell by -7.7% [in 2024/25], which was -9% below [providers’] forecast.” Despite this decline, responding universities predict that international undergraduate numbers will increase by +24.6% and postgraduate enrolments by +26.8% between 2024/25 and 2028/29,
The OfS warns that it would be financially imprudent to operate according to such a high expectation of growth, noting that “recent published visa data from the Home Office suggests a possible renewed decline in non-UK student numbers, particularly from key markets such as India and China.” The chart below is pulled from the report, and you’ll see that beginning in the fall of 2025 – as the BCA thresholds began to affect recruitment – international visa applications began to soften.
The OfS presented three financial scenarios in the report that “could happen if recruitment changes and providers take no mitigating action.”
Scenario 1 assumes no growth in international and domestic enrolments, Scenario 2 anticipates a modest reduction, and Scenario 3 describes a larger reduction of enrolments. The OfS summarises:
“Under the ‘no growth’ scenario, which assumes flat student recruitment from 2025/26 onwards, cumulative net income losses relative to forecast could reach £2.7 billion by 2028/29. Under this scenario 163 providers, representing 58.4% of the sector, would report a deficit. In the most severe scenario modelled, cumulative income losses increase to £4.2 billion, with deficits reported by up to 196 providers (70.3% of the sector as a whole).”
The report concludes: “Variations in student recruitment in 2024/25 and 2025/26 are prominent in the financial challenges facing the sector. Further volatility in recruitment, in 2026/27 and beyond, could present further significant challenges.”
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