Issue 023: 669,950 students abroad, £1,230 a head

Universities UK International's transnational education conference opens at Senate House this morning, Tuesday 29 September (source). HESA's January count gives the conference its headline number. In 2024/25 there were 669,950 students on UK degrees overseas and 685,565 international students in the UK, and the gap has closed in each of the last two years (source). HESA's finance tables show the income side. On the returns that can be used, universities took about £700 million from their offshore students in 2024/25. From the international students in the UK, the sector took £12.40 billion in fees (source). The Spotlight looks at where the offshore growth went, what each kind of offshore student pays a UK university, and what that means for the strategy documents that name TNE as the next source of growth.

In other news, Vice-Chancellors asked the Home Office to explain a rise in visa refusals in August 2026, Times Higher Education reported on Wednesday 23 September, and the Home Office said the claim of a general rise is inaccurate (source). Australia's visa data for August 2026 shows grant rates of 13% for Nepalis and 24% for Bangladeshis (source). IDP Education rejected a takeover bid from Blackstone on Tuesday 22 September (source). Ireland's higher education minister, in China on Thursday 25 September, said the model of students coming to Ireland "en masse" has problems and backed teaching in China instead (source).

Takeaway: Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan are the markets the dependants rule was expected to hit. Australia is already turning those applicants away, and some of them will now apply to you.

The case for transnational education is being made in student numbers. The higher education action plan for the £40 billion export target lists TNE as one of its seven workstreams (source). Ireland's minister made the same case in China on Thursday 25 September (source), and the University of Western Australia opened in Mumbai on Friday 18 September wanting 10,000 students within ten years (source).

On headcount, they have a point. HESA counted 669,950 students on UK degrees overseas in 2024/25, up 37% since 2020/21. It counted 685,565 international students in the UK, down for a second year (source). On the current trend the lines cross this year.

The count does not show two things. The first is where the growth went. The offshore total has grown by 180,640 students since 2020/21. Of the students added, 104,445 are at a partner overseas and on the UK university's own student register, usually a franchise arrangement. Another 64,835 are on the partner's register and studying for the UK university's award, usually a validation arrangement. The UK universities' own campuses abroad added 10,720 and online study from abroad added 5,955. More than nine in every ten new offshore students are at a partner (source).

The second is what each of those students pays the university, and the answer is now recorded for the whole UK. Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish universities have long reported fee income from transnational education on one line of HESA's finance return (source). English universities began reporting a net TNE income figure to the Office for Students in 2024, and HESA published it by provider for the first time in May 2026 with a warning that some returns may be incomplete (source). Not every return can be used. Heriot-Watt's TNE line is identical to its entire non-UK fee income, so its campus income cannot be separated. The University of East London, Nottingham and Middlesex, with 52,140 offshore students between them, returned no figure on the line. Leaving those out, 112 universities reported £702 million of TNE income for 568,955 offshore students in 2024/25, £1,230 each. The devolved line is gross fee income and the English line is net of what the partner keeps, so the two are not measured the same way, but neither comes close to the onshore figure. The average international student in the UK paid £18,100 in fees on the same return, full-time and part-time together. The ratio is about fifteen to one.

The average hides big differences by mode. An owned campus comes closest to an onshore fee. Birmingham, whose 5,375 offshore students are mostly on its own campus in Dubai and at its joint institute in Guangzhou, reported £92.5 million, £17,209 each. It is the only large owned campus with a figure that can be read, because Heriot-Watt's return cannot be separated and Nottingham and Middlesex returned no figure. Edinburgh, whose offshore students are mostly online, reported £5,334 each. Partner institutions pay a few hundred pounds a student. Cardiff Metropolitan booked £5.8 million for 19,175 students, £300 each, and the other Welsh partnerships reported between £156 and £906. Even an owned campus is slow to pay. Lisa Williams of James Cook University Singapore, an Australian university's owned campus, told The PIE Live Asia Pacific in August, as The PIE reported on Monday 10 August, that TNE "is not a quick revenue generator. In the first three years, at best you break even" (source).

England's largest partner networks are in the same range. From the Open University down to London Metropolitan, every one that returned a figure reports between £222 and £663 a student, and Westminster, with 13,220 offshore students, reports £149. Liverpool's £222 is accreditation income from its joint venture in Suzhou, whose students mostly finish their degrees in Liverpool, so the line understates what the venture is worth to it. Lancaster, which runs campuses with partners in Leipzig, Ghana, Malaysia and China, reports £1,286 (source).

Source: HESA Finance Table 7 (net income relating to transnational education, providers in England, 2024/25) and Aggregate Offshore Record Table 21. HESA advises treating the English line with caution because it was collected for the first time in 2024 and may be incomplete. The total row leaves out Rambert School, whose £36 million for five students is an error, and the providers that returned no figure, among them the University of East London (20,310 offshore students), Nottingham (16,350) and Middlesex (15,480).

The income line has limits, and not all of them count against the partner model. It shows what the university received, which is less than the student paid. In most franchise contracts the partner collects the tuition and pays the university a fee per student; in some the university collects and pays the partner for the teaching. Either way the student paid more than £300. The margin on a franchise may be respectable even where the income is small, and a sixty to one gap in income is not a sixty to one gap in gross profit. A partnership also brings progression to the UK campus, research links and a licence to recruit in the market, none of which shows in the line. Even so, a university that replaced one lost international student in the UK with franchised students would need about sixty of them to match the income.

The plan's own authors already know this. TNE, mobility and research are "insufficient to offset a decline of this magnitude", and £40 billion "will require a recovery in international student numbers". Gary Davies, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of London Metropolitan, which teaches 14,310 students overseas, put the point to Times Higher Education on Friday 18 September: "you won't make that target with TNE and other things" (source). The export figures show why. On the DfE's 2024 estimates a student in the UK counts for £34,800 of exports a year, fees and living costs together, and a TNE student for about £2,400, because the student's living costs stay in the host country. The £40 billion target is £3.3 billion above the 2024 figure at 2024 prices. Closing that gap takes 96,000 more students in the UK, or 1.4 million more overseas, about twice the offshore total the UK has built in thirty years. TNE can grow the count. Growing the money takes students in the UK, or an owned campus charging something like a UK fee.

For a Head of International the practical question is which mode. A plan that presents TNE as the replacement for lost onshore income has to answer it. An owned campus can charge something close to an onshore fee, and takes years and millions of pounds to build. A franchise earns a few hundred pounds a student and needs no campus. Most UK growth has been the second kind. England's planned levy on international fees, which on the detail published so far falls on students in England and not on TNE income, pushes the sums further offshore (source). Issue 10 called TNE a real but limited release valve for the currency squeeze. The income figures show how limited. A franchise gives a university presence in a market and a route to the UK campus, and both are worth having. It does not give the income the plan needs.

Things to think about this week

An offshore student brings a UK university about £1,230 a year. A student in the UK brings £18,100, and for a franchised student the gap is nearer sixty to one in income, if not in margin. Put that number beside every TNE plan presented as the answer to falling onshore income. On the current trend the headcount lines cross this year. The money lines are not close.

The people at Senate House today know this better than anyone, and the conference's members-only day runs under the Chatham House rule. The figure that would settle the argument now exists. The Office for Students has collected net TNE income from every English university since 2024, and HESA published it in May 2026 with a warning that it may be incomplete. Three of England's largest offshore operators returned no figure, and only one large owned campus has a figure that can be read. The next step is the OfS's, and it is small: make the line complete, and split it by mode, so that an executive shown a TNE plan can see what a partner student earns before it signs.

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