In light of Universities Minister Jo Johnson’s speech at the UUK annual conference yesterday, for all who followed the event with us on @GlobalBU, it would have be apparent that the big elephant in the room was internationalisation and international students. While tomorrow’s Weekly Focus concentrates on the conference, today our stance serves to explicitly recognise the subject and reinforce it should not have been ignored in Johnson’s speech. As the article above suggests, the opinions of the Home Secretary and policies of current Government towards international students are putting UK HE’s competitiveness at risk. The author, Edward Byrne of King’s College, calls for reflection using Australia’s similar prohibitive policies in previous years as a comparison, and urges Government to consider a more healthy approach to international students.
Related article:
The Independent, 2015. The competitiveness of UK universities is being put at risk by Teresa May’s stringent student visa laws