Brits are “deluded” if they think international students want to abuse the system to stay in the country after finishing their courses, according to an entrepreneur who studied here.
“London is an incredible city with so much going on. It’s a shame the rest of the UK can’t live up to it,” he said.
“When I was studying here, I found that a lot of British people convinced themselves that everyone wants to move to the UK because it’s better than everywhere else.
“We have a positive view of London, but – if we’re honest – there are much better and far cheaper places to live.”
Djordje spent £30,000 on his course in the UK, whereas his bachelor’s degree at the HEC Lausanne in Switzerland cost nothing.
“Without foreign students a lot of them would go bankrupt.”
Mr Cleverly said that while the government wanted “talented students from around the world”, it also wanted “to ensure the graduate route is not being abused. In particular, that some of the demand for study visas is not being driven more by a desire for immigration”.
University leaders have previously said that cutting or restricting the graduate visa route will lead to a drastic fall in international recruitment, and provoke a financial crisis for universities.
According to commercial data from Enroly, used to manage one in three offers to overseas students, there was a 37 per cent drop in the number of international offers for UK postgraduate courses in January 2024 compared with January last year.