Issue 013: The UCAS record, the 30% visa fall, and what India is building at home.

UCAS published its 30 June deadline figures on Thursday. A record 148,350 international undergraduates applied to UK universities for this September, up 7.1% on last year (source). Last week's issue reported the opposite: sponsored study visa applications for January to June are down 30% on the same months of 2025, the weakest first half since the monthly series began (Issue 12). A record and a collapse, in the same market, in the same month. This week's Signal explains how one market can produce both. The same seven days also settled a policy question: the government confirmed the £925 international student levy is going ahead. And the country that connects all of it is India, our second biggest applicant market, which published its own enrolment data on Friday. India is no longer just sending students abroad; it is building university capacity at home for students from everywhere else. That is the Spotlight.

The record and the collapse do not contradict each other, because they measure different things. Start with the record, and be precise about what it is. UCAS runs the central admissions system for undergraduate degrees, and its 30 June count is the last big applicant number before results day. This year it counted 148,350 international applicants for undergraduate courses starting this autumn, the most in any cycle since the count began (source). That is what the record measures: undergraduate applications, through one admissions route.

Now the caveat, because the record covers less of the market than the headlines suggest. Most international students in the UK are postgraduates, and postgraduates apply to universities directly, not through UCAS. Some universities take undergraduate international applications directly too. The sizes make the point: UCAS accepted 74,660 international students in the whole 2025 cycle (source), while HESA counted around 404,600 new international students starting UK courses in 2024/25 (source). Fewer than one international student in five arrives through UCAS. The Home Office's visa figures cover everyone, at every level, and they are down 30%. The record is real. It just describes the smaller part of the market, and the fall covers all of it.

The two measures also describe different countries. The UCAS growth comes from China, Ireland and the US, markets that are less price sensitive and less dependent on post-study work. The visa fall is concentrated where the postgraduate boom of 2022 was built: India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Bangladesh, the markets that moved hardest in the CAS data we reported in Issue 11. HESA's first full 2024/25 numbers already show the same split: new entrants fell 12% from India and 33% from Nigeria, while China fell just 5% (source). Undergraduate demand from wealthier markets is holding up. The high-volume postgraduate demand that funded the sector's growth is what has gone, and that is a different problem needing a different plan.

This also explains the government's week. A welcome video, a record applicant headline and a confirmed levy fit together if ministers believe demand is strong enough to carry a tax. The number the government is looking at is the record. The number that decides most university budgets is the visa one. When the levy debate returns in the autumn, the 148,350 will be quoted at the sector. Have the visa figures ready to put alongside it.

Start with what India published on Friday. The AISHE survey counts 58,134 international students at Indian institutions in 2023/24, from 173 countries, up 18.9% on the 48,898 of five years earlier (source). Almost all of that growth is recent: the total sat flat, between 47,000 and 49,000, for four years, then jumped 19% in a single year. The shape of it is just as telling. It is an undergraduate market: 73.6% of these students, 42,779 of them, are undergraduates. It is a regional market: Nepal alone supplies 24.1%, and the top ten countries supply 63.8% between them (after Nepal come the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Bangladesh and Nigeria, with Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Bhutan and Sudan among the rest). One more caution: because AISHE publishes with a lag of over two years, these are 2023/24 figures, and India has kept expanding its inbound programmes since. Today's number is probably higher than any figure in this issue.

Now set it against India's own ambition. The government's Study in India programme set a target of 200,000 international students; 58,134 is 29% of it. Rahul Choudaha, who tracks this market, says closing the gap needs "faster visa processing, clearer post-study work pathways and stronger institutional reputations" (source). Those three things, visa speed, post-study work and reputation, are also what students weigh up when they choose between the UK, the US and Australia. All three countries have spent the last two years making themselves worse on each one: slower and more expensive visas, tighter post-study work rules, harder messaging. Every time a big destination raises a barrier, studying closer to home looks better. India is trying to make sure the home option is ready when that happens.

Here is the two-way street in one year's numbers. While India hosted those 58,134 students in 2023/24, 165,445 Indian students were enrolled at UK universities (source): nearly three students in Britain for every one hosted at home. The gap is now closing from both ends. Indian enrolments in the UK fell to 146,480 in 2024/25, and new Indian entrants dropped 12%, from 107,515 to 94,955 (source). Even after that fall, India is still the UK's largest source country, just ahead of China on 143,200 (source). The decline is concentrated in the postgraduate intake that made India the largest in the first place: in the spring BUILA survey, 76% of universities reported falling enrolments from India, and the CAS data in Issue 11 showed the same thing. Fewer Indians are flying out, and more capacity is being built for the ones who stay.

Price links the two directions of travel, and a report published on Friday puts precise numbers on it. DrEducation Research, run by Rahul Choudaha, the analyst quoted earlier, who until recently helped run one of these campuses himself, has counted the 13 international university campuses admitting students in India for 2026/27. Seven are British: Aberdeen, Birkbeck, Bristol, Liverpool, Queen's Belfast, Southampton and York (source). Average undergraduate tuition at these campuses is about a third of the fee at the parent campus, and about twice the fee at a leading private Indian university. So a middle option now exists that did not five years ago: a UK degree, in India, at a price between the local universities and the full cost of coming to Britain. For a family in Delhi weighing up a £40,000 commitment against a falling graduate route and rising visa fees, that middle option only needs to be good enough. Today it is small: fewer than 3,000 students are expected across all 13 campuses this year, against the 94,955 Indians who started at UK universities in Britain. The pipeline is not small: around 30 foreign campuses are expected within five years, with Coventry, Lancaster and Surrey in the next wave (source). The practical conclusion is to treat India as two markets. It is the UK's biggest source of students, and it is also becoming a place where students can take a UK degree without leaving home. The students who stay will never show up in a UK dataset; the first sign of losing them is simply a quieter September than your pipeline predicted. The question worth settling now is where your institution's offer sits against that middle option, because it is being built quickly, with or without you.

This week handed the sector a rare thing: a record. It also handed everyone who wants one a reason to stop worrying. Be careful with both. The record is real, and it covers the smaller part of the market: undergraduate applications, mostly from the countries that have held up. The fall is real too, and it covers the whole market, including the postgraduate volume that funds everything else.

The India data is the longer game. None of it changes September 2026. All of it changes how you should think about 2028, which is also the year the levy arrives. The market that built the UK's boom is building capacity of its own, at home, priced for the students the UK is making it harder to take. The right response is not alarm. It is to decide, deliberately, which side of that street you plan to work.

Twenty three days until the Home Office's July data shows whether the floor held. Until then, one question is worth writing down: is your budget built on the number that broke a record, or on the number that fell 30%? If the answer does not come straight back, that is the meeting to book this week.

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