LONDON — The Trump administration's proposals to tighten entry visa restrictions for international students could significantly reduce their numbers at U.S. universities in the years ahead. But several education experts say the consequences may also be felt by some students and schools in Britain, as elite U.K. institutions prepare for a potential influx of international applicants redirected from the U.S.
More than a million international students — including thousands from the United Kingdom — are currently enrolled in American colleges, according to the State Department, contributing around $50 billion to the country's economy each year. However, higher education application portals show the number of prospective students searching for U.S. universities has declined sharply since January, with one provider predicting demand among foreign students could fall significantly within a year.
"There's been a dramatic shift in relation to interest in studying in the United States," says professor Simon Marginson of Oxford University, who specializes in international higher education. "The internet data we have on search by prospective students and their families shows that there's been a drop of about 50% in the volume of search for study in the U.S. between Jan. 5 and April 30 this year."
Uncertainty drives students to consider alternatives
Education consultants who guide British students through the U.S. application process are witnessing this uncertainty firsthand.
David Hawkins, founder of education consultancy The University Guys, helps dozens of British students apply for U.S. universities each year. He's advising his clients to delve into the policy details but is not surprised by their current concerns.
"It's those people who have options, who are looking at the U.S. with quite big question marks right now," Hawkins explains. "The nervousness that the students we're working with in future years have is what I term the 'floating voters' — like they could go to the U.S., but if they got into a Canadian university they perceive as better, they might go there. If they get into Oxford or Cambridge, they would probably go there."
Sam Cox, director of client services for A-List Education, a London-based consultancy that supports students applying to top U.S. colleges, echoes these sentiments.
"I do want to make it clear that I think there is still a real strong appeal to, particularly, an Ivy League education," Cox says. "But some of the conversations that I've been having over the last few weeks are really aimed at, 'What's a plan B? What's a viable plan B that we can put together?' "
Cox notes that many of his clients are actively considering alternatives. "'If we're committed to seeking opportunities to study outside of the U.K., what does that look like in terms of a destination? What other countries can we look at if the situation does not resolve itself?'" he says families are asking themselves. "I think increasingly, a lot of the clients that we work with are actively considering alternatives at the moment."
Financial implications for U.K. universities
Nick Hillman, director of the Oxford-based think tank The Higher Education Policy Institute, explains the financial dynamics for British institutions: "International students are literally keeping our universities going. They pay far more in fees than British students do — there are hundreds of thousands of them," Hillman says. "Teaching British students loses money, and conducting research loses money, and it's the financial surplus from those international students that subsidizes everything else that our universities do.
This financial reality means that U.K. universities may see a short-term benefit from U.S. visa restrictions. "In the short term, the U.K. will undoubtedly benefit," Hillman acknowledges. But he cautions that "in the long term, the cause of global research may very well suffer" as academic collaboration becomes more difficult.
Impact on access and diversity
More than 10,000 British students are currently enrolled in the U.S., but if in the future those British students choose to stay and study in the U.K., the long-term effects of any U.S. policy changes may be just as profound for the British institutions. Add to that the potential influx of international students to U.K. universities, and it raises questions about access for domestic students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Kalwant Bhopal, a professor of education and social justice at Birmingham University who has previously taught at the University of Madison-Wisconsin and Harvard, sees potential challenges ahead.
"If there is this ban on international students in the U.S., because these international students do tend to disproportionately come from wealthier backgrounds, I think you will see a shift to them coming to the U.K. and going to those elite universities," Bhopal says, referring to the likes of Oxford, Cambridge and the London School of Economics. International recruiters at those three institutions did not respond to requests for comment.
Her research on both sides of the Atlantic has focused on education access among minority groups, and she says those with less privileged backgrounds could find it even harder to win spots at top U.K. universities.
"Higher education actually has become a capitalist enterprise," Bhopal says. "So if you have an international student who's paying 20,000 pounds [over $27,000] a year fees compared to a home student who's from a disadvantaged background, universities, I would argue, are more likely to take the international student because of the financial impact it has on universities."
The effects of uncertainty
Education experts emphasize that the current situation is as much about perception as reality. "What we're seeing is that difference between perception and actually the underlying reality," Hawkins notes. "People are seeing these headlines that seem to be coming quickly, and it's definitely having cut through. But the reality is much more nuanced than that."
He advises his client — and others — to look a little deeper, though. "What is happening between the U.S. administration and Harvard doesn't necessarily mean every U.S. university is affected."
But Nicholas Barr, a professor of public economics at the London School of Economics, points out that the uncertainty created by U.S. policies may have a lasting impact regardless of their actual implementation. "The effect of the U.S. policies is not only the policy today, but the fact that it creates uncertainty about what future policy might be," Barr explains. "You could well imagine a young person thinking of applying to Harvard or Yale or MIT or Princeton, and their parents being very worried about it."
Long-term consequences for global research
While U.K. universities may see short-term gains in international student recruitment, many academics are concerned about the broader implications for global research collaboration.
"Graduate Research is extremely important in the U.S.," says Marginson, the Oxford professor in higher education. "International education has sustained the STEM areas — physics and chemistry and engineering and maths and so on." He says more than half of the graduate research carried out at America's top research universities — in disciplines like engineering or chemistry or computing — is conducted by students from China and India.
Hillman agrees that the long-term consequences could be negative for everyone: "Most long-standing universities want to think of there being as low and as few borders as possible in the interchange of ideas and people, certainly the brightest and best people in the world. So in the long run, even somewhere like Oxford won't be rubbing their hands with glee if life is harder for Harvard — because Oxford and Harvard do projects together."
The situation also raises concerns about the future of soft power.
"We do an annual survey of how many current world leaders were educated abroad — and where were they educated abroad," Hillman notes. "Every year we find the U.S. has more current serving world leaders in their own countries who had some of their own higher education in the U.S. If you educate the world leaders of other countries, the soft power benefits of that are huge, and that's what the U.S. stands to lose."
As the situation continues to evolve, British universities, students and policymakers are watching closely, aware that what begins as a U.S. policy shift could reshape higher education landscapes across the globe.
Copyright 2025 NPR