Over 30,000 fewer Nigerians were granted visas to study in the United Kingdom in the past year as new Home Office data shows a 46 percent drop in study visa approvals from the West African country from May 2023 to June 2024.
Data released on Wednesday shows that acceptances fell to about 31,700 after an initial increase during the same period last year when 58,680 Nigerians were let into the UK to study.
Applications declined after the former UK government set new rules for visa rights including a ban on international students, except post-graduates, bringing dependants into the country.
“Policy changes are one of a number of factors that may have impacted visa application volumes,” the Home Office suggests.
Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union (UCU), who spoke to i, says “The previous Government made international students and staff feel very unwelcome, and many were forced to leave family members behind to even come to study or work here.”
In the year to June 2023, the UK saw over 500,366 visa applications from international students, over 59,000 of which were from Nigeria. That number has now dropped to 443,932 as of June 2024. In this period, 432,225 sponsored study visas were granted to main applicants, 13 percent fewer than in the previous year, but 61 percent higher than in 2019, Home Office says.
This decline has cost UK universities a lot of valuable money.
£1.2bn slips away
Universities in the United Kingdom that rely on international course fees missed out on over £1.2bn in tuition fee income over the past year due to falling numbers of international students, according to analysis by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, BusinessDay reported last week.
International students who received visas in 12 months to March 2024 paid an estimated £26.9bn in fees, a decline from £28.1bn in the previous year, the research consultancy discovered.
These declining applications have led to an unstable funding crisis that could force some of the country’s higher institutions to close, cut or merge.
Some universities that cannot take the heat have already released “risk of redundancy” letters to their staff with an option to voluntarily resign or apply for a limited number of roles. In February, The University of Kent proposed shaving off 58 jobs along with nine courses to tackle financial challenges.
“It will be necessary to await the peak in student applications for the next academic year (which usually comes in August/September) before we can see the full effect of policy changes and any
Nigeria, home to the largest population in Africa, has been a big driver of a rise in international students in the UK in recent years. The youthfully populated country was the third biggest non-EU contributor of international students after India and China. The country has now dropped below Pakistan, which claimed the third spot after the recent outcomes.
The fluctuations in the Nigerian naira could also be a contributing factor to the recent economic shifts, Grady suggests. As the Naira continues to experience volatility, more Nigerians find it difficult to pay their overseas tuition fees.
“There’s been obviously clear problems that we’ve seen where the amount of students applying from any one country can be completely dependent on what the currency in their home nation is. We’ve seen this recently with Nigeria,” said Grady.
Dependant numbers down
In the year ending June 2024, there were 94,253 visas issued to student dependants, 39 percent fewer than the previous year but almost six times higher than in 2019.
“The decrease in dependants of students followed a policy change for courses starting on or after 1 January 2024, whereby only researched-based postgraduate students are now allowed to bring dependants (partners and children) to the UK.”
In the first 6 months trailing the announcement of the reform, the number of sponsored study-dependent visas granted fell by 81 percent to 11,675 compared to the same period in 2023.
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