This week
A third of ICEF's agents say demand for the UK is rising. In 2025, nearly half did. The 2026 ICEF Agent Voice survey, released at ICEF Berlin, asked over 900 agents in 109 countries about demand for each destination. 31% reported more demand for the UK, down from 48% (source). On 5 November Canada set its target for new international students at 150,000 a year until 2029, and France counted 352,800 foreign students, 7% more than a year earlier. The destinations gaining from the big four's fall have a name in the press, the "Big 14": the four and ten others. The name is better known than the numbers behind it. The Spotlight puts official figures to it.
In other news, the Home Secretary set out the final shape of earned settlement on Monday 2 November: ten years to settle by default, five for higher earners, and no credit for time on a Student or Graduate visa (source). On Wednesday 4 November the Home Office gave Parliament its first answer on which universities will qualify for the two-year Graduate visa: "in due course" (source).
The numbers
Canada will admit up to 150,000 new international students a year in 2027, 2028 and 2029, under the Immigration Levels Plan published on Thursday 5 November 2026 (source). The 2025 target was 305,900 and the 2026 target is 155,000 (source). The Canadian Bureau for International Education said the country is "far from meeting" even the lower target (source). Takeaway: Canada's target is half what it was in 2025, and arrivals are below even that. The students Canada no longer takes did not stop travelling. Your agents placed them somewhere, and the Spotlight shows where.
31% of agents reported more demand for the UK in the 2026 ICEF Agent Voice survey, down from 48% in 2025 (source). Canada was the only one of the four big destinations where more agents reported rising demand than a year earlier. 73% of agents named visa problems as a concern, and two thirds said they had added new destinations to their list in the last two years. Takeaway: a third of agents say UK demand is still rising. Ask yours the same question before the end of November, by country. The ones who say it is falling are telling you where your January 2027 intake is at risk.
The default qualifying period for settlement will be ten years, and time on the Student, Graduate and High Potential Individual visas will not count towards it (source). The ten-year Long Residence route, under which study years did count, will close. Shorter paths need earnings of £50,271 a year for a five-year path or £125,141 for a three-year path, each over several years. The Home Secretary told the Commons that the new rules will go before Parliament from December (source). Most international graduates will be on the ten-year path: the Migration Advisory Committee found in May 2024 that 61% of those who moved from the Graduate route to a Skilled Worker visa earned £30,000 or less (source). Takeaway: for a master's student arriving in September 2027 on the ten-year path, settlement is about twelve and a half years away: one year of study, 18 months on the Graduate visa and ten years in work. Under the old rules it was eight. If your agents in India sell the UK as a place to stay, the offer changed on 2 November. Check what their websites say about settling in the UK before the January 2027 intake.
Policy watch
Asked which universities will qualify for the two-year Graduate visa and how many, the Home Office answered on Wednesday 4 November that "further details, including any transitional arrangements, will be announced in due course" (source). The same answer went to a question asking what transitional arrangements will apply to Graduate visa applicants between 1 January 2027 and the start of the two-year route. The Home Office has the question. It has not answered it. Until it does, nothing a January 2027 applicant is told about the Graduate visa is settled, and your offer letters should say so.
The 2026 Global Universities List for the High Potential Individual visa was published on Sunday 1 November. It names 82 universities whose graduates can work in the UK for two years without a job offer (source). The Budget of 28 October said the list will widen to the top 150 institutions, with a proportional rise in the cap of 8,000 a year (source). No UK university is on the list. If you recruit master's students from the 82, their graduates can now get two years of UK work without paying your fee.
Spotlight · Sector · Where the demand went
Student numbers have fallen in all four big destinations since 2023 and risen in ten other places. Four of the ten took the South Asian students the UK turned away. Two of those four are now turning them away too.
Issue 25 measured the fall: student visa demand since 2023 is down 28% in the UK, 45% in Australia, 63% in the United States and 76% in Canada, each on its own government's figures (source). This issue measures the other side. Between them Times Higher Education, The PIE News and NAFSA have named twelve places as the gainers: France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam (source). Ten publish official figures that can be compared with 2023. Singapore and Vietnam do not, and this issue does not estimate them. The UAE is on the chart as Dubai, because the only usable series is the Dubai regulator's, and it covers Dubai's private universities alone.
Three things to know about the chart. The ten do not measure the same thing: South Korea, Germany, France, Ireland, the Netherlands and Dubai count students enrolled, Japan counts people holding a student visa, language schools included, Hong Kong and New Zealand count visas approved, and Malaysia counts applications. Some are academic years and some calendar years, and Ireland's and Dubai's latest figures are 2024/25 where everyone else's is 2025 or 2026. Two bars are built from published growth rates, because no single count is available: the Netherlands, where Nuffic revised its base between editions, and Dubai, where the regulator publishes growth and share but not the number. Each place is compared only with itself.
Five of the ten grew on students the UK does not recruit, or on foreign campuses abroad. South Korea's growth is Vietnamese and Japan's is Nepali, most of it in language schools taught in Korean or Japanese; India accounts for 2,487 of Japan's 464,784 student visa holders (source, source). France's growth is sub-Saharan African (source). Dubai's is on foreign universities' own campuses, 37 of its 41 providers, several of them British universities enrolling students who might otherwise have come to the UK (source). Hong Kong is the exception. It recruits the UK's Chinese postgraduates, it approved 94,517 student visas in 2025 against 62,079 in 2023, and its publicly funded universities may take non-local students up to 50% of local places from 2026/27, up from 40% (source, source).
Four of the ten grew in the UK's own markets. The UK's losses since 2023 have been steepest from Nigeria and India, and the compliance limit bears hardest on applicants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria and India, whose refusal rates Issue 28 gave as 18.9%, 14.5%, 11.7% and 4.2%. In three of those four markets, these are the countries that grew:
Germany had 426,179 international students, those who qualified for university outside Germany, in the winter semester of 2025/26, up 12.2% on 2023/24. India is now the largest source with 69,076, up 17.4% in a year. Pakistan is fifth with 16,806, up 32.9%. China fell 0.5% (source).
Malaysia processed 95,522 new international student applications in 2025, up 46% on 2023. Applications from China fell 4%. Applications from Bangladesh rose 45%, from India 47% and from Pakistan 50%. In January to September 2026 Malaysia processed 81,101, which is 85% of the 2025 total in nine months (source).
Ireland's universities enrolled 44,535 students from outside Ireland in 2024/25, up 10.2%. 20.6% of them were from India (source).
New Zealand approved 93,138 student visas in the year to June 2026, up 19.6% on two years earlier. 15,592 of the approvals went to Indian students (source).
On their own counts the four added about 96,000 students or applications between 2023 and their latest year, against a UK fall of about 133,000 sponsored study applications on the Issue 25 basis. The measures differ and the figures are not the same people. Nigeria, the UK's largest percentage loss, where student visas fell 56% after the dependants rule as Issue 22 reported, is not a growth market for any of the four. What the four show is that Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi demand had somewhere to go, and that it went where study was cheaper or the right to work afterwards was longer. Most German public universities charge no tuition fee. Ireland gives a master's graduate two years of post-study work and New Zealand up to three, against the UK's 18 months from January 2027. The UK has also raised its maintenance requirement from 30 November and, on 2 November, stopped counting study years towards settlement.
The Netherlands shows what happens when a destination chooses not to grow. Dutch universities stopped active international recruitment in December 2022, a bill to limit English-taught courses has been waiting in parliament since May 2024 and has not passed, and from 2025/26 universities have been able to cap the English-language track of a course, which eleven have done. The Netherlands had 129,764 international degree students in 2025/26, 133 fewer than the year before, the first fall since Nuffic's records began in 2006/07, and new Chinese enrolments fell 27.5% (source). The new coalition said in January 2026 it would drop the bill's language test.
Two of the four are now doing what the UK did in 2024 and 2025. They are screening the students they attracted.
Ireland refused 22.4% of study visa applications in 2023, 24.5% in 2024 and 38.6% in 2025. Applications fell 16% in 2025, from 32,638 to 27,300 (source). In January to September 2026 Ireland received 7,047 applications from India and refused 3,067, which is 43.5%. From Pakistan it refused 57.6% (source). The Minister of State, Colm Brophy, told the Dáil on 16 September that there had been "no recent change to visa processing procedures, approval criteria or documentation requirements" (source). New Zealand's decline rate for Indian applicants fell for three years while its numbers grew. The rise is one quarter old: in July to September 2026 it approved 75.3% of applications decided, and 61.0% of those from India, with the rest refused or withdrawn. New Zealand puts the rise down to document fraud it has started to catch, as Issue 27 reported. Neither Germany nor Malaysia publishes study visa refusals by nationality, so this issue cannot say whether they are screening too.
The UK's refusal rate for Indian applicants in the year to June 2026 was 4.2%, after universities had withdrawn the applicants they expected to fail. Three visa systems with three sets of rules are finding the same risk in the same South Asian pool, and Ireland says it is finding it without changing a rule. The UK's compliance limit is not unusual. It is the UK's version of a screen that every destination recruiting from these markets is now applying, and it is applied by universities rather than at the border.
What is unusual is what the UK did alongside the screen. Ireland refuses more Indian applicants than the UK does and still gives a master's graduate two years of work. New Zealand refuses more and gives three. Germany charges no fee. The UK has cut its post-study visa to 18 months from January 2027, raised its maintenance requirement from 30 November 2026 and, on 2 November, stopped counting study years towards settlement. Of the five, it is the only one that tightened the screen and worsened the offer at the same time. Ireland is the sharpest comparison because it is the closest: the same language, the same one-year master's, a visa system refusing 43.5% of Indian applicants, and enrolments still up 10%. A student refused in Dublin in autumn 2026 is in the market for January 2027. The question for a UK university is why that student would now choose the UK over Ireland.
Things to think about this week
Germany charges no tuition fee and Ireland gives two years of post-study work. What is the UK's offer to an Indian master's applicant for September 2027, in one sentence, and does your marketing material say it?
Ireland refused 43.5% of Indian applicants in January to September 2026 and New Zealand turned away 39% in July to September. Does your application form ask whether an applicant has been refused a study visa elsewhere, and if it does, what does your admissions team do with the answer?
Jobs · Who's hiring
The last word
The UK spent 2024 and 2025 deciding which students it did not want. Ireland and New Zealand have just reached the same answer on the same students, and neither cut its offer to the ones it kept. Two thirds of ICEF's agents have added destinations to their lists since 2024. For the students the UK turned away, the chart shows which ones they chose.
If this was forwarded to you, subscribe to receive every Tuesday at 7am UK time.
Sources
