Facilitating international student success through the Student route visa
At a glance
The Student route is a points-based immigration option for international students, who want to study in the UK. The Home Office commissioned IFF to conduct an evaluation to support their understanding of this visa route, inform policy development and plan future research and evaluation. With particular interest in what motivates international students to come to the UK. Following policy changes designed to limit the number of student arrivals in the UK in May 2024, the design process for this wave was shaped by a new theory of change model and revised research questions. The research included over 3,000 online interviews with student visa holders, telephone interviews with HE institute sponsors, and follow up interviews with HEIs and student visa holders.
About the client
The first duty of the government is to keep citizens safe and the country secure. The Home Office is a ministerial department of the UK government which plays a fundamental role in the security and economic prosperity of the UK.
Challenges and objectives
With ongoing challenges within the sector and seeking to attract global talent, higher education institutions expressed concerns regarding the complexities of visa applications and compliance requirements. Institutions indicated difficulty understanding visa guidelines, which hindered recruitment. Meanwhile, students pointed to challenges in navigating requirements for dependant sponsorship and switching to work visas before completing studies.
Seeking to overcome these issues, the Home Office wanted insight to support a more user-friendly and efficient system to improve internal student recruitment. They also wanted to find out the impact that policy changes, such as students not being allowed to bring dependants, would have on the number of students coming from abroad to study in the UK.
Solution
The second wave of this evaluation was designed to explore the experiences of international students and their sponsors during the application process.
As part of this evaluation we conducted:
- 3,060 telephone interviews with international students
- 58 interviews with institutional sponsors
- 25 follow up interviews with international students and 20 with institutional sponsors
The data arising from the research was then analysed to understand how students make study-decisions, and, within this, how visas inform choice. Preliminary findings informed the development of research tools to use in qualitative interviews used to add detail to the survey data.
Impact
Noting that 76% of providers are seeking to increase international recruitment, and 21% are seeking to maintain it (none were seeking to reduce), it is critical that providers can recruit international students effectively.
The evaluation found that over eight-in-ten (83%) UK Student visa holders who were aware of the Graduate route said that it had at least some influence on their decision to apply for a UK Student visa. While student visa holders were unlikely to find out about the route through UK education institutions (12% did). This insight suggests that providers could do more to advertise the route to prospective international students, given its potential role as a pull factor to the UK.
Visa holders focused on the quality of UK higher education and the reputation of universities during qualitative interviews as key motivators to study in the UK. Part of this was the fact that UK HE providers offer an internationally recognised standard of education.
The findings will be used by the Home Office to help them understand the full picture of what brings students to the UK to study, and what role the visa has in attracting these people to come to the UK. The Home Office are also keen to understand more about the role of these students in local and national economic pictures, and the results from this work will help to broaden this understanding.
Related case studies
Graduate route visa evaluation: Unlocking international graduate talent for the UK’s future
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