UK: growth in int’l student numbers, jump in new enrolments from India

There is good news for the UK sector with HESA’s first release of data for the 2018/19 academic year: international student numbers are up by 5.9% on the previous period – with a notable 42% hike in new student enrolments from India. Despite concerns over the impact of Brexit, the number of first-year students from other EU countries also increased.
And while China sent more students to the UK than any other country, it was Indian students which made the most significant change to the statistics concerning new starts. This is for the entry year during which the UK government announced that it would be offering post-study work rights – widely anticipated by education agencies in southeast Asia to herald a further regional shift to the UK for higher education.
Non-EU first-year student numbers grew by 18,475 to reach a total of 342,620, with the majority of the increase occurring at postgraduate taught level. And despite concerns over the impact of Brexit, the number of first-year students from other EU countries also increased on 2017/18 figures, up from 139,150 to 143,025 in the most recent cycle. More than a third (35%) of all non-EU students came from China in 2018/19, with numbers having increased from 89,540 to 120,385 in the five years since 2014.
India was the second top sending country, with numbers up from 18,325 in 2014/15 to 26,685 in 2018/19. This included 17,760 new student enrolments, marking an impressive jump of 42% on 2017/18 figures for new starts. The US (20,120), Hong Kong (16,135) and Malaysia (13,835) rounded out the top five sending countries to the UK in 2018/19.
Nigeria, in ninth position, was the only other non-EU sending country to have made the top 10 with 10,645 students – but overall this marked a 41% decline in numbers over the five year period. In terms of EU numbers, Italy, Germany and France each had more than 13,000 students studying in the UK in 2018/19, with Greece rounding out the top 10 sending countries with just shy of 10,000 (9,920) students.