50+ universities cut jobs as overseas students stay away

Higher education management is being forced to reduce less popular academic programs, with the arts and humanities bearing the brunt, as more than 50 British universities have confirmed academic job losses caused by an uncertain marketplace for recruiting international students and stalled growth in income from home students.

Forecasts for this year and the next are dire, even though the majority of universities in the UK recorded surpluses from 2022 to 2023 following three years of record-breaking international student recruitment right after and during the COVID epidemic.

Experts on student accommodation believe that because of increasing uncertainty over the future of the Graduate Route after study and government threats to limit student visas even more, foreign students are postponing their accommodation booking until the government reveals its hand.

Students are taking preventive steps

More foreign students are hedging their bets by applying for student visas in several nations and delaying their decision on where to study until later in the recruiting and admissions cycle.

Reduction in Deposits

Ilieva, in particular, urged the government to look at the Enroly data, which shows a sharp decrease in the number of Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies issued and deposits for the January intake, particularly for one-year taught postgraduate degrees, which were down by -70% for Nigeria and -33% for India compared with last year, before making the UK less attractive to international students.

Since the Graduate Route was reinstated in 2021, 175,872 graduates have been able to stay in the UK for two years to search for jobs. She and other higher education professionals fear that the government might decrease or cancel this program.

Redundancy packages

The prevailing uncertainty encourages UK university administrators to move ahead with their likely pre-existing plans to stop offering less popular courses, offer redundancy packages for affected employees, and offer early retirement incentives to staff members who have had enough of rising workloads and declining academic pay.

A live web portal monitoring job cuts and resistance claims that several thousand academic and administrative positions have been lost, or will be lost, in the coming months as colleges limit less lucrative programs.