News
Coronavirus: ex UK minister calls for four-year post-study work visa
View(s):Introducing a four-year post-study work visa and even a path to UK citizenship for foreign students could help reduce the huge slump in international enrolments predicted for the next academic year, according to former universities minister Chris Skidmore.
With UK universities braced to lose billions of pounds of funding as a result of international students not travelling during the coronavirus crisis, Universities UK has called on the government to give “greater flexibility” on student visas as part of a £2 billion rescue package.
Mr Skidmore was speaking as part of an online discussion on the post-pandemic future of global higher education with two other former universities ministers, Jo Johnson and Lord Willetts, hosted by Times Higher Education on 23 April. He said that said he would like ministers to think about an “enticing bold offer” on student visas, particularly those studying priority subjects.
It follows the restoration of the two-year post-study work via in July 2019, seven years after the scheme was scrapped when Theresa May was home secretary.
“We might be able to revisit the two-year post-study work visa,” said Mr Skidmore, who compared the UK’s offer unfavourably with Canada and Australia, which had “longer periods for post-study work”.
“There is potentially now the case to argue for an extension of that – potentially in subjects and disciplines where we may want those individuals to stay for longer,” he said, adding that “I’d argue for a four-year post-study work visa in some disciplines and even a route towards citizenship”.
He continued: “Ultimately, we have individuals coming here who are training up and are experts in their field – why wouldn’t we want them to stay here for the rest of their careers if possible?”
“We could make that enticing bold offer to say we do want individuals to come here for the future,” Mr Skidmore added at the event, which was attended online by more than 1,200 people.
Mr Johnson called for a “cross-government effort” to ensure its international student strategy, announced in March 2019, was not neglected, saying that “all flexibilities that need to be put in place” around student visas are granted. Under those plans, overseen by Mr Skidmore in his time in office, the UK aims to grow its international student numbers to 600,000 by 2030, up from 460,000 at present.
“It is often not realised by colleagues in parliament that we don’t have many globally competitive sectors in our economy – we have finance, a bit of pharma, but higher education is genuinely one of our global strengths and it contributes a huge amount to our exports, about £20 billion a year,” Mr Johnson said.
“We are a country that is running a big current account deficit and it will be even bigger when we come out of the coronavirus crisis, so we cannot afford to get this wrong,” he added.
Mr Johnson said he hoped that the coronavirus crisis could help to “strengthen the relatively new consensus that international students add value to universities and the whole economy. We sadly only recognise value in things when they are gone – international students are in danger of going and, boy, will we miss them when they are gone.”
J. Grove – T.H.E