Friday’s Times Higher Education Supplement raised fears that UK Universities will face an unexpected reduction in income from the recent expansion of the European Union.
The Higher Education statistics Agency estimates that UK Institutions will lose £27 million a year from 3,400 undergraduates, but this would in reality be a relatively small proportion of the £1 billion taken annually from overseas students by UK Universities.
In fact, the next report from the Sutton Trust is to reveal an increase of 50% in the numbers of overseas students, compared to just 15% in home students, over the last six years. This suggests that University places must increase to a level above that predicted by the 50% participation target alone, since any new home student places may need to be accompanied by a place for a student who can be charged full fees.
At present, home students pay £1,000-£1,125 per year (although in many cases this is covered in full or in part by the government), and (according to the Rector) the College receives around £6,000 per home student from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Overseas student fees at Imperial stand at £12,600 for all science and engineering subjects except Mathematics (£9,800), Chemistry (£13,400), Computing (£13,500) and Joint Mathematics and Computing (£13,500), meaning a loss to the College next year of £11,500 per Accession Countries student on most courses. However, the greatest difference between home and full fees is in the Faculty of Medicine: while pre-clinical students actually pay £1,250 less than pure biologists, overseas clinical medics pay over £20,000 a year, so the College will (for the next two years) receive £19,600 less from each such student.
Changes in 2006 will see the gap narrowing, but far less than Sir Richard may have liked, theoretically reducing the gap by nearly £2000 per student although it is possible that with the increase in fees income, some HEFCE money will be directed elsewhere.
However, this only covers overseas students following their full course at Imperial, since students on reciprocal exchange programmes are already exempt from Overseas levels of fees.
The THES article has suggested that nationally, only Cyprus is likely to represent a significant number of students. This seems to be reflected at Imperial, where the Cypriot Society currently has around 50 members. The only other accession State with official student societies at Imperial is Poland: this year, Polish Soc raised 14 members, and they estimate that only half of their members are actually overseas students, the others being second or third generation descendants of immigrants.
According to THES, of the ten newly-joined Accession Countries, only Cyprus sends more than 600 undergraduates to UK Universities in total per year. However, the possibility that more people in these countries will now take advantage of the reduced cost of studying in England cannot be overlooked, leaving College with the prospect of looking further afield to find enough full-fee-paying students to make up the shortfall in funds.
Email this Article
This discussion is 
