This week
From 1 January 2024 most international students in the UK have been unable to bring family members with them. On Thursday 17 September Australia's Minister for Home Affairs, Tony Burke, announced the same rule for new students and for graduates on the Temporary Graduate visa (source). Citizens of Pacific and ASEAN countries are exempt, and so are students on certain courses; Burke gave PhDs as the example and the full list is not yet published. Families already in Australia are not affected. The UK has results from its own rule to June 2026, by nationality, and the Spotlight puts them next to Australia's figures for the same South Asian markets.
In the rest of the news last week, a US federal judge stopped the duration of status rule on Monday 14 September, the day before it was due to start (source). The universities' action plan for the £40 billion export target reached Times Higher Education on Friday 18 September. The Department for Education published what it costs to teach a home undergraduate: £12,317 a year in 2023/24, when the fee was £9,250. EC English closed all 25 of its schools and ILAC in Canada filed for bankruptcy. The University of Nottingham's union branch declared 67 days of strikes over 600 job cuts (source).
The numbers
Modelling published by The PIE News on Monday 14 September gives the Russell Group a projected visa refusal rate under 1.4%, University Alliance 7.8% and MillionPlus 6.9% (source). The sector average on the same basis is 4.5%. On the Home Office dataset it was 4.6% for the year to June 2026 (source). Nicholas Cuthbert and Dave Amor applied each nationality's current refusal rate to the nationalities each mission group recruited in 2024/25. The Russell Group takes 75% of Chinese entrants and very few from Pakistan, Bangladesh or Nigeria. Vanessa Wilson of University Alliance said post-92 universities are "being disproportionally impacted". It is a projection, not a Home Office figure. Takeaway: The projection gives every university the same refusal rate for each nationality, so it cannot see the effect of your own compliance team. If your mix of nationalities looks like University Alliance's, your compliance team is what keeps you below 7.8%.
Teaching a full-time home undergraduate in England cost £12,317 a year in 2023/24, according to a KPMG study for the Department for Education published on Thursday 17 September (source). Universities could charge £9,250 that year, so each home undergraduate cost about £3,000 more than the fee. KPMG collected cost returns from 29 universities, 22% of those in scope, and weighted the average by student numbers. Staff costs rose 14% between the 2016/17 study and this one, while RPIX, the retail prices index excluding mortgage interest, which the government uses to uplift fees, rose 41%. Takeaway: This is the first official per-student figure since the 2016/17 study for the gap that international fees fill.
Policy watch
A federal judge postponed the US duration of status rule nationwide on Monday 14 September, one day before it was due to take effect (source). Judge Saylor's order finds the rule likely unlawful on four grounds, among them that the department did not meaningfully respond to the nearly 22,000 public comments. Page seven says "the damage to the higher education system and to the economy of the United States is likely to be catastrophic". NAFSA's page, updated on 16 September, says the government can be expected to appeal; none had been reported by Monday 21 September (source). Separately, a proposed fee on Optional Practical Training cleared White House review on Friday 11 September, and no amount had been published by 21 September (source).
EC English closed all 25 of its language schools on Monday 14 September (source). About 370 students were enrolled at its four UK schools. English UK is placing them at member centres at no extra cost. On Friday 18 September ILAC, a Toronto and Vancouver language and pathway group, filed for bankruptcy, affecting at least 1,000 students (source). If a pathway or pre-sessional partner supplies your students, its accounts are worth reading before the January 2027 intake.
Canada issued 6,455 study permits to new graduate students in April to June 2026, twice the number in the same quarter of 2025 (source). Master's and doctoral students at public institutions came out of Canada's permit cap on 1 January 2026. Since then a master's applicant from India or Nigeria has had a Canadian offer with a partner's work permit attached, which the UK cannot match.
The signal
The Higher Education Sector Action Plan is the universities' part of the government's International Education Strategy. It is dated 17 September, was compiled by Universities UK International for the strategy's sector action group (source). It is a sector input, not a forecast. It says recruitment "may now be around 20-30% below the peak reached in 2023". It says £40 billion of education exports by 2030 "will require a recovery in international student numbers", because TNE, mobility and research are "insufficient to offset a decline of this magnitude". Its own measure for enrolments is to "stabilise and return to growth" from a 2024/25 baseline, with no number attached. The nearest sector number is what providers told the Office for Students in their financial returns: Issue 14 reported on 28 July that they forecast 22.5% more international students by 2028/29, projections the OfS said "continue to be overly optimistic". Gary Davies, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at London Metropolitan University, told THE there is "zero chance" of the target (source).
Public First and a UCL-led paper, published in the same week, say where a recovery would have to come from. Public First, on Wonkhe on Monday 21 September, found "almost no overlap" between the markets that are stable and the markets that can grow. It expects China to send "no more than 140,000 students per year in the long term" (source). The UCL paper, in Nature Communications on Thursday 17 September, forecasts Chinese and Hong Kong undergraduate applications falling to about 18,000 by 2030 (source). The plan depends on a recovery that the regulator doubted on 28 July and that neither model finds a market for. It does not say what happens if enrolments stay at the 2024/25 level.
Spotlight · Sector · Two years without dependants
Since the UK stopped most students bringing family, Nigerian student visas have fallen 56% and Indian student visas 42%. Australia announced the same rule in September, and its exposure is in the same countries.
Tony Burke told the National Press Club on Thursday 17 September that "we will no longer be allowing the attaching of family members for international students or for graduate visas" (source). Students already in Australia keep their families. PhD students are exempt, as are citizens of Pacific and ASEAN countries. Students may change course only to a higher level. No rules have been published and the speech gives no start date. The PIE News reports that the change will apply to future applicants (source).
The UK made the same change for courses starting on 1 January 2024, with an exemption for research degrees and government-sponsored students, and no exemptions by country (source). The Home Office publishes visas issued by nationality and by whether the holder was the student or a dependant. The table compares the year to June 2023, the last full year before the rule, with the years to June 2025 and June 2026. The year to June 2024 covers both sides of the change and is left out. The year to June 2025 shows the rule on its own. The year to June 2026 runs up to the 5% limit, in force from 1 June 2026, and the other changes of 2026. It is the year to plan from.
Nigeria, India and Nepal show the pattern. Across all nationalities, dependant visas fell 89%, from 153,987 to 17,587, and student visas fell 27%. Nigeria, which had brought more dependants than students, lost 56% of its students. India, a middling market for family at 31 dependants per 100 students, lost 42%, which is 60,000 students a year and the largest loss of any country. Nepal went the other way and tripled, in part because Australia and Canada tightened their rules in 2024 and the UK was one place that demand went. Pakistan did the same until the year to June 2026, when it fell by nearly half as refusals and CAS screening took hold. The naira's collapse and the review of the Graduate route happened in the same years, so the dependants rule does not explain the whole fall.
Canada and Australia lost students from the same markets in the same years. Canada's permits, a series that includes extensions, peaked at about 390,000 in the year to March 2024 and have fallen by about two thirds. The partner work permit limit is a small part of that. On the same day, 22 January 2024, Canada capped new study permits at 35% below the 2023 level, and it cut the cap by a further 10% for 2025; from 1 January 2024 a student also had to show CAD 20,635 (about £11,000) in funds, double the previous amount (source). Australia's grants halved from mid-2023, then fell further under its own tightening from December 2023.
Australia's Department of Home Affairs publishes every student visa granted by citizenship and by whether the holder was the student or a family member, updated to 31 July 2026 (source). In the year to June 2026 Australia granted 291,536 student visas and 45,991 family visas, 16 per 100 students. Of the family visas granted for higher education to applicants outside Australia, 72% went to citizens of Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Sri Lanka. The same tables give the share of offshore applications Australia refused by citizenship. The table puts both next to the UK's refusal rate for the same market in April to June 2026, from Issue 21.
The two rates measure different things. Australia's covers every sector, including vocational colleges, and Home Affairs does the screening at the visa stage. The UK's is university applicants after the university has screened them and issued a CAS. A market can be low in one and high in the other for that reason alone; Nepal is where the two disagree most. Nepal and Bangladesh, at 32 dependants per 100 students, are close to where the UK's India stood in 2023 and well below the UK's Nigeria. Bhutan, at 115 per 100, is the one market that looks like the UK's Nigeria, though on 4,729 visas a year it is a small one.
If each Australian market fell as the UK market with a similar dependant ratio did in its first year, Australia would lose somewhere between 18,000 and 31,000 students a year across the six markets in the table other than China, most of them Indian and Nepali. That is a rough estimate, not a forecast. The UK's falls carried the naira and the Graduate route review with them, the UK started from a peak and Australia is not, and Australia has already refused the marginal applicant. The Nepali and Pakistani students who moved to the UK in 2024 and 2025 came without family, because the UK had already banned dependants. A student who wants to bring a partner gets nothing from the UK that Australia will not also offer, except on a research degree. Some will go to New Zealand, where enrolments were up 8% in January to April 2026 (source), though New Zealand also limits partner work rights below master's level. Most will stay at home or study without family.
What reaches the UK is therefore smaller than the headline, and it arrives in a different system from 2024. When Australia and Canada tightened in 2024, the UK's limit was 10% and the sector's rate was under it. The Nepali and Pakistani students who moved to the UK that year were never tested against a refusal rate. Since 1 June 2026 the limit has been 5% of each sponsor's own applications. The largest markets Australia will lose, India and Nepal, are refused by the UK at 9.1% and 7.5%, both over the limit. The smaller ones, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, are refused at 26.5%, 34.2% and 18.2%. A sponsor at 4% on 1,200 applications has 12 refusals of headroom before it reaches 5%. Universities on Enroly's platform had already cut CAS to Pakistan, Nigeria, Ghana, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh by between 30% and 58% by September 2026 (source). Issue 20 made the point on 8 September about the diploma courses Australia had cancelled: students a competitor refuses arrive in the UK as the applications most likely to be refused here. What is new is the size, and the fact that a student who wants to bring a family has run out of countries. In 2024, when these students last moved, the UK was not refusing them. In 2026 it is.
Things to think about this week
India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan are the markets Australia's family rule will hit, and all five are markets the UK refused at more than 5% in April to June 2026. In the UK a dependant is admitted only on a postgraduate research programme. Australia exempts PhDs, so the pressure will fall on MRes, MPhil and professional doctorates such as the DBA. Is every one of your research-degree applicants interviewed and checked for funds to the taught-postgraduate standard, whatever their market? Do you track the refusal rate for those programmes separately?
How many Nepali students did you recruit in 2024 and 2025, when Australia and Canada last tightened their rules? Nepal is the market where the UK and Australian systems disagree most: Australia refuses nearly half of its Nepali applicants, most of them to vocational colleges, and the UK refuses 7.5% of its university applicants after CAS screening. If your Nepali intake tripled in two years, do you know which of those two your applicants look like?
Jobs · Who's hiring
The last word
The three largest English-speaking destinations have each restricted the student who wants to bring a partner or children. The UK bans dependants below research level from 1 January 2024. Canada removed a partner's right to work below master's level from 19 March 2024. Australia announced on 17 September 2026 that it will bar family below PhD level. The UK's own results show its Nigerian and Indian intakes falling and not recovering.
The next figures come on three dates. The Australian Home Affairs tables update monthly, so the first September figures should be public in October 2026. The Home Office publishes the UK's September applications on Thursday 8 October, which will show whether any of the demand has already moved. And the Australian rules, when they are published, will say whether the exemptions are wider than the speech. Until then the UK's figures are the only evidence of what the rule does.
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