More immigrants than previously thought are studying in the UK
May 22 2009 by Ranjan Chakraborty
A study by the British Council has uncovered an additional 125,000 student visa holders in the UK than previously thought.
Formerly, it was thought that there were 389,570 foreign students in the UK, but the new study reveals that the figure is actually much higher at 513,570.
The new statistics show that the UK is not far behind the US in the lucrative education market, which has just 623,805 foreign students on US study visa's in its higher education system.
The British Council’s new figure is the result of changes to the data submitted to its Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). In 2007-2008, the Council included ‘nationality’ as a factor when recording information on students, in addition to ‘domicile'.
HESA explains that it will continue to publish the information in terms of ‘domicile’ as there is currently no way of telling how long the students who keep a different nationality have been living in the UK.
As part of the Prime Minister’s Initiative launched in 2006, efforts have been made to encourage young people from abroad to move to the UK to study. As a result, the number of full-fee paying student visa holders from countries such as China and India has increased, along with the number from EU countries who have their fees partly subsidised.
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