The report is based on survey findings from just over 67,000 prospective international students from 150 countries. The survey data was collected between October 2025 and April 2026, and Keystone has combined it, where appropriate, with actual search data from its student-facing course search websites.

The first thing that jumps out from the data is the difference between student interest (the destinations students are most interested in) and student intent (the destination where they actually go on to enrol).

For example, Keystone explains, “While the USA was our most-searched destination (19%), fewer students in our survey are selecting it as their intended study destination, a trend that has persisted for the second year running.”

In other words, there is currently a significant gap between students’ initial interest in the Big Four study destinations and their actual enrolment. While students may want to enrol in a preferred destination, they then weigh practical considerations such as their chance of obtaining a study visa and also compare the relative safety and affordability of various options.

“Basically, the Big Four has a huge amount of interest and high appeal,” adds Dr Bennett. “But when we move on to actual intent, we move on to practical factors. That’s where the gap is.”

The Keystone data shows that student interest continues to fragment across a wider field of study destinations, especially those in Europe and Asia. What’s more, more students are now wanting to choose a destination before progressing to considering programmes or institutions.

Intended programme of study remains the most important factor (40%) for students making decisions about study abroad, but it has lost some ground since 2025. By contrast, country choice has risen from a sample-wide average of 20% in 2025 to 28% in 2026 – an average pulled up by certain regional trends. Keystone explains, “For South Asian respondents specifically, country (35%) now outranks programme (31%). This is the only regional audience where we see this happen, and the one most exposed to recent visa and policy changes. This suggests that students are ensuring their chosen destinations are accessible to them before they can consider institutions or courses.”

As for their biggest concerns, cost and eligibility were the top worries for students in this year’s survey, echoing responses from last year. But “political uncertainty” is the fastest-rising concern in 2026 (rated third by students after only cost and eligibility), which points to a significant level of anxiety attached to study abroad decision-making. Students are well-aware of visa barriers and rejection rates, and they are naturally worried that government policies affecting their study/work plans could change before or during their programme.

“Confidence is declining,” says Keystone. “Students worry less about their ability to succeed than their opportunity to do so.”

How do students rate destinations in that larger set?

“The Big 4 still compete on appeal, especially when considering academic reputation and subject offering,” says Keystone. “But they don’t have a commanding lead. And they’re falling behind on the practical considerations that make studying abroad possible for many.”

The chart below shows relative ratings given by students, for various decision factors, across the Big Four, selected destinations in Europe (Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, France), and a sample of Asian destinations (Japan, China, South Korea).

Dr Bennett points out that what this data is telling us is that “Prospective students don’t think the gap between destinations is as big as we perhaps do.”

Use versus trust

The survey findings also paint an interesting picture of the sources and channels that students use in their search for information about study abroad. As we see in the chart below, AI use, for example, is comparable to the percentage that say they look for information on university websites. But the trust students extend to those institutional websites considerably outstrips their confidence in the information they get via AIs.

Keystone offers this summary of the findings in this area: “The takeaway here is reassuring for institutions: even as AI and social media reshape how students search, they haven’t reshaped who students believe. University websites remain the anchor of credibility, the one channel audiences approach with conviction rather than uncertainty.”

“Generative and broad-search tools may dominate the discovery phase, but trust still flows to curated, human-crafted sources. The implication is clear: investing in owned channels and curated partnerships isn’t just defensible, it’s where decisions actually get made.”

For additional background, please see:

• “New IDP research shows link between visa uncertainty and the perceived ROI of study abroad“
• “UNESCO confirms growing trend of intra-regional student mobility“
• “UK: Sponsored study visa issuances down, rejection rates up, and more“
• “From the Big Four to the Big Fourteen“
• “What students want: The top decision factors for study abroad“

The post Survey of 67,000 prospective students highlights gaps between interest and enrolment for study abroad appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

The new rule will replace the current “Duration of Status” (D/S) admissions mechanism with fixed end dates, require students and exchange visitors to file formal extension applications with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), shorten grace periods, and prevent programme changes.

We have written extensively on the rule change and so won’t unpack it in great detail again here. Suffice to say it has the potential to be extremely disruptive for current and prospective international students in the US, and is therefore of great concern to international educators and stakeholders.

The main issues are:

• The time limits imposed by the new rule are impractical for many students. Because most students will need to extend their stay beyond the four-year limit imposed by the rule, this opens the door to processing delays and, most significantly, uncertainty in the student’s academic pathway.

• The extension decision will rest with USCIS as opposed to the student’s institution as it does under the D/S system. This exposes the student, as one conference presenter put it, to “hard vetting opportunities” that could disrupt the student’s programme or prevent them from progressing to further study or to Optional Practical Training (OPT).

Because of the rule’s significance, the response from US educators and stakeholders has been considerable. The proposed rule was published in the Federal Register on 28 August 2025 with a tight 30-day public comment period that closed on 29 September 2025. Even within that short window, the filing attracted more than 15,700 comments, the overwhelming majority of which were in opposition.

In its comment, for example, NAFSA said the proposed rule “would replace a proven, flexible policy that has served the nation, international students, and exchange visitors for decades with a policy that is duplicative, burdensome and creates uncertainty.”

The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration said that it “objects to this rule in full,” asserting that, “Implementing the rule would have significantly greater economic effects than estimated by [Department of Homeland Security] on US higher education institutions, including from the loss of the international student population and economic costs to local communities.”

Even so, on 5 May 2026, the Department of Homeland Security submitted the final rule to the Office of Management and Budget for review, which is the last procedural step before the final rule will be published in the Federal Register.

The general expectation within the sector is the rule will proceed. As NAFSA explains: “We expect OMB’s review to be expeditious and for the rule to be published in the Federal Register in the not too distant future. The final rule will go into effect 60 days after publication.”

A bipartisan appeal

Against all of that administrative process and critique, a notable, late-breaking development comes in the form of , with two Republican signatories and two Democrats.

The rare bipartisan appeal expresses the group’s concern about the proposed rule, and asks the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of Management and Budget “to preserve Duration of Status and ensure efficient visa processing policies that support a stable environment for international students and scholars.”

Reflecting some of the key points from the critical commentary filed during the 30-day period in September 2025, the letter sets out that, “Replacing D/S with a capped admission period of four years would require many students to seek repeated extensions, creating unnecessary administrative burdens, processing delays, and disruptions to academic continuity. These changes would undermine America’s ability to attract and retain top global talent at a time when competitor nations continue expanding efforts to recruit international students, researchers, and high-skilled STEM workers. Recent surveys found that nearly half of international graduate students and postdoctoral researchers would not have chosen to study in the United States if it had a fixed admission period.”

The congressional representatives also describe some of the local and national impacts of falling international enrolments: “Maintaining D/S is also vital in our efforts to strengthen domestic talent pipelines and local economies. Because international students are generally ineligible for federal financial aid and often pay full tuition, they help sustain academic programs, expand institutional capacity, and support educational opportunities for American students. In fact, for every international student enrolled at a US public university, two additional American students are able to attend…If the United States experiences even a one-third decline in foreign STEM graduates, the country could lose 6 to 11 percent of its high-skilled STEM workforce. Economic research estimates that such a decline could reduce the U.S. GDP by $240 to $481 billion annually within a decade – creating fewer new businesses and jobs, reducing global competitiveness, and shrinking tax revenues that support public services and infrastructure.”

For additional background, please see:

• “US to end ‘Duration of Status’ for F, J, and I visas and limit the time international students can study in the US“
• “US immigration officials allege OPT is being widely abused and say ‘more actions are forthcoming’“

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As of 1 June 2026, universities will be judged according to that demand:

• A sponsored study visa refusal rate of less than 5%;
• An enrolment rate of at least 95%;
• A course completion rate of at least 85% (rising to 95% in 2027).

Only if an institution is rated green will it not be sanctioned or penalised in some way by the Home Office. The red rating band allows for sanctions as severe as the revocation of a university’s license to sponsor (aka recruit) international students. Importantly, the RAG rating is not an aggregate across the three BCA metrics; rather, the university’s rating is based on its lowest score on any one of those compliance requirements.

The introduction of this strict compliance regime underscores the importance of a new British Council report, “.” The report says it is urgent for UK universities to consider expanding recruitment beyond the predominant form of attracting students from source countries. An underused enrolment pipeline, says the report, is international students who are already enrolled in some kind of UK education, whether onshore (e.g., in a bachelor’s programme) or offshore (e.g., via transnational education programming, such as a branch campus or through a foreign partnership).

The dangers of overreliance on direct overseas recruitment

About three-quarters (72%) of current foreign students in UK universities were recruited directly from their home countries, primarily through educational agents, student fairs, institutional outreach, and digital channels. Direct overseas recruitment is the norm – but it is also highly vulnerable to external events.

For example, foreign currency fluctuations, policy shifts, geo-political tensions, and affordability crises often dramatically affect international enrolments, and they are doing so right now. Non-EU commencements in the UK have been falling over the past couple of years, especially for postgraduate programmes, where most international students are enrolled. Immigration policies (including the dependant’s ban in 2024) sparked the trend. The updated BCA thresholds and associated Red-Amber-Green (RAG) system will ingrain it further.

The RAG effect on direct recruitment

The RAG system makes it much riskier to directly recruit students from several key non-EU markets. The study visa refusal rate threshold, in particular, is a game changer: it coincides with massive spikes in visa refusals for students from key growth markets, as shown in the chart below.

Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Bangladesh are important growth markets for many UK universities – but the surging rejection rates observed for each this year now increases the risk of a red RAG rating.

Among other penalties, a first red rating results in an institution having its sponsored study visa allocation (CAS) reduced by a minimum of 10% and a “final warning” that compels it to stay out of red for the next five annual BCA assessments. A subsequent red rating (after the final warning) is worse still: it constitutes a “serious breach of sponsorship duties” and allows the Home Office to remove a university’s right to sponsor international students.

Secondary routes are more resilient to external shocks

The rapid decline in the number of sponsored study visa applications and issuances over the past few months is largely due to UK universities and students from high-risk markets anticipating – and reacting to – the impact of the RAG system. Even before the new regime came into effect this week, some universities simply stopped recruiting in countries that were perceived as high risk in terms of visa refusals, and many students have withdrawn their applications to avoid any chance of having a visa refusal attached to their student profile.

Universities that can best withstand the effects of the new compliance standards are either elite institutions (less reliant on high-risk markets) or those that have contingency plans in place, such as the ability to recruit students already enrolled in these two ways:

• Offshore in transnational education (TNE);
• Onshore in K-12 schools, foundational, and degree programmes.

In both those cases, students are already invested in obtaining a UK qualification. They are already enrolled somewhere in the system – which means they don’t have to be recruited directly once more from their home countries.

As the report suggests, the opportunity here is to encourage existing onshore and offshore students to “convert” again, perhaps most crucially into a postgraduate programme. Those programmes attract 70% of onshore international students, and they are also the most affected by recent policies.

The potential of pathway recruitment

The following table shows that secondary entry routes for postgraduate studies at UK universities are growing, while direct recruitment is falling. For example, between 2022/23 and 2023/24:

• TNE (as an entry route to postgraduate studies in the UK) grew by +129%;
• Pre-sessional English (e.g., English-language courses for students to gain proficiency before entering degree programmes) was up +7.5%;
• Prior UK study (e.g., undergraduate to postgraduate or postgraduate to another advanced degree) was up +39%.

By contrast, direct recruitment was down -13.5%.

The crucial role of the undergraduate pipeline

When international bachelor’s enrolments fall, there are downstream effects. A significant number of international undergraduates progress to postgraduate studies (29,900 in 2023/24). The report notes:

“This makes UG2PG [i.e., undergraduate to postgraduate progression] a pivotal mechanism for institutional resilience: it captures the extent to which providers can convert prior UK study into master’s enrolments, rather than relying predominantly on new international recruitment at the point of entry.”

This point is especially important when looking at the markets where negative pressures on demand are the strongest. Though students from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ghana, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, and Kenya are primarily enrolled in postgraduate programmes, anywhere from 20%–40% (depending on market) are in bachelor’s programmes. Collectively, this is a lot of students who can be recruited from within the UK.

Students with prior UK study experience and a history of compliance with immigration rules generally have a stronger chance of being approved for a second sponsored study visa (e.g., for postgraduate studies) than applicants from high-risk markets. They have demonstrated that they are genuine students whose primary reason for being in the UK is to study rather than to access work or immigration routes through the back door.

In turn, secondary pathways into undergraduate programmes deserve more attention, says the report:

“Universities’ foundation and [private pathway programmes] imply a sizeable “hidden” feeder pipeline into undergraduate degrees. This matters because these entrants often represent students with a higher level of commitment to a UK degree, and they can provide a stabilising buffer when direct recruitment is disrupted.”

Recommendations

The British Council advises:

“Institutions should treat students with prior engagement with UK education … as part of their resilience strategy [and] scale outreach work with UK schools, TNE, and international partnerships routes where feasible (including progression agreements and joint delivery).”

And continues: “All institutions, including highly ranked institutions, should therefore proactively develop and formalise progression pipelines … to sustain their future onshore conversion base.”

Another important recommendation concerns data. The report proves that the sector, and government, needs to capture and track pipeline progressions for a true understanding of risk. For example, rather than simply consider Pakistan a high-risk market, looking at the entry routes and progressions of Pakistani students could show which routes are more likely to contain genuine students who will succeed in their programmes and be compliant.

The report asserts: “To move from recruitment analytics to sustainability and quality, entry routes should be linked to continuation, completion, progression and employment outcomes.”

The report is broadly relevant across destinations

The report offers food for thought for universities across the Big Four because they share a common need right now: strategies to mitigate risk in the face of tightened immigration policies and heightened regulatory requirements.

For additional background, please see:

• “Narrowing bands of compliance: How the UK’s new RAG system will impact international student recruitment”
• “UK: Sponsored study visa issuances down, rejection rates up, and more”
• “UK universities bracing for a further decline in international enrolments”
• “UK: 7 in 10 universities report declining international postgraduate enrolments; visa rejections are part of the story”

The post Report: International students already studying in the UK or offshore through TNE represent an increasingly important recruitment opportunity appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

This has always been true to some extent, with the costs of study and living abroad a particularly frustrating barrier for many students. However, the list of barriers is growing, and visa rejections occupy an increasingly prominent position on this list – including for students applying to the UK.

The UK’s sponsored study visa approval rate used to be higher than in Australia, and much higher than in Canada and the US. But in the six months up to the end of March 2026, the refusal rate for students from many of the UK’s fastest-growing student source markets has doubled, tripled, or increased even more drastically compared with the same period in 2024/25. In the case of Pakistan, the rejection rate has increased nearly six-fold from just under 6% to 41%.

Higher visa refusal rates are conveniently dovetailing with the UK government’s overall immigration goals. The narrowing of study, work, and immigration opportunities is happening against a background of quietly coordinated and complementary visa processes and policies.

This interplay is the main story behind the Home Office issuing -32% fewer sponsored study visas to international students in Q1 2026 than in Q1 2025.

Massive rises in visa rejections for some markets

In the six-month stretch of Q4 2025 and Q1 2026, sponsored study visa refusals skyrocketed compared with the same period in 2024/25 for Pakistani (41% refusal rate), Bangladeshi (26%), Ghanaian (26%), Sri Lankan (22%), and Nigerian students (20%). The following chart, created by the Nous Group, shows the dramatic contrasts between this recent period and the same period in 2024/25.

The chart also shows that American and Chinese students, who have always benefitted from high approval rates, have become even more likely to be approved.

Why are Chinese and American students so much more likely to be approved?

More than 99% of Chinese and American sponsored study applications were approved by UK immigration officials in the year ending March 2026.

The growing discrepancy between this rate and those in emerging markets such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria, is greatly influenced by the immigration climate in the UK.

The ruling Labour government is plummeting in popularity, not least because of among a sizeable segment of voters that immigration levels are not lower.

Rachel Wolf, writing in , predicts that to attempt to remain in power, Labour will employ a range of right-aligned tactics including “[cutting] immigration and [going] after easy wins (such as international students).”

Some international students are better targets than others in this regard. Chinese and American students do not increase net migration levels because the vast majority of them leave the UK after completing their studies.

In contrast, students from countries experiencing dramatic jumps in visa rejection rates are also the most likely to want to remain in the UK to work and immigrate.

The following chart from the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford depicts striking differences in “stay rates” across four nationalities (as measured by proportions that still had a valid sponsored study visa in 2024 after first arriving in 2019).

Some institutions more affected than others

The composition of a British university’s international student body is now a major determinant of how well that university can tolerate the clampdown on student flows from some countries.

For example, Higher Education Statistics Agency () data shows that Chinese students – who have a 99% approval rate – accounted for more than 40% of all international students at elite Russell Group universities in 2024/25.

Around 105,000 Chinese students were enrolled at these institutions that academic year – which is nearly three-quarters of all Chinese students in the UK.

Heavy reliance on Chinese enrolments may be risky in the long term, but for now, it buffers elite institutions against the system-wide trend of students in high-growth emerging markets being either rejected for a visa or withdrawing their application.

The rest of the country’s universities tend to be more diversified across nationalities and rely more on enrolments from emerging markets. Ironically, though this diversification was encouraged by the UK government’s 2019 International Education Strategy (and 2021 update), it now exacerbates the many are experiencing.

Nous Group director Nicholas Dillon notes that lower-ranked universities that continue efforts to recruit in high-risk markets face escalating costs of acquisition per student (e.g., through increased documentation checks, interviewing, and other activities aimed removing visa rejection risk). As Mr Dillon says: “This matters, as margins are already tighter at many lower-ranked providers.”

The massive impact of visa rejections and delays in processing

Students in the regions most affected by visa rejection rates are also the most likely to be experiencing delays in visa processing. Wonkhe’s associate editor, Jim Dickinson, reports:

“At some providers, reports suggested up to half of a winter cohort was still awaiting a decision despite a Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies (CAS) issued before Christmas – petitions described students stuck on “SLA not met” notifications weeks after submitting biometrics. The delays were reported to fall hardest on applicants from Pakistan, South Asia, and parts of Africa.”

(Editor’s note: “SLA not met” stands for “Service Level Agreement not met” and indicates that UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) has failed to make a decision on the file within their standard processing timeframe.)

Higher rates of visa refusals and visa processing delays are prompting two related trends:

• Students from high-risk markets are increasingly withdrawing their applications so that their student profile is not marred by evidence of a rejection.

• Many universities are scaling back – or even stopping – student recruitment in those markets to avoid being sanctioned under new, stiffer Basic Compliance Assessment (BCA) rules. Among other benchmark requirements, institutions must stay within a 5% refusal rate range or risk penalisation including, at the extreme end, the removal of their license to enrol international students.

Death by a thousand cuts?

Mr Dickinson explains that dynamics such as visa rejections and processing delays for students from some countries are reinforcing the deterrent effect of more restrictive government policies:

“The contraction [of student flows] is being administered through the plumbing of the system – a delay here, a withdrawn application there, a compliance threshold that does the deciding, a salary floor that quietly closes a route.”

“Each lever is individually deniable. The aggregate is a bust delivered by stealth, with no single author and accountability that sits nowhere.”

Students pay a steep price, says Mr Dickinson:

“There is a bleak logic to it all. A withdrawn application doesn’t count as a refusal in the compliance metrics. So in a system that punishes refusals, the withdrawal route protects the institution’s number while the student absorbs the loss – the non-refundable flights, the priority fee that was never honoured, the place that evaporated. The delay creates the pressure – the withdrawal discharges it without leaving a mark on anyone’s record.”

Amidst these conditions, an increasing number of students from high-risk markets are realising that the doorway to study in the UK is narrowing.

For additional background, please see:

• “UK universities bracing for a further decline in international enrolments”
• “Universities urged to focus on factors they can control as policy settings continue to depress international student enrolments in the Big Four”

The post UK: Sponsored study visa issuances down, rejection rates up, and more appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

I started modestly, with two LinkedIn posts exploring aspects of student support in TNE. What surprised me was not only the level of engagement, but also the quality of the conversations these posts sparked behind the scenes and across the sector. Those discussions made one thing very clear to me: While TNE continues to expand globally, there remains a growing appetite to talk more openly and practically about the student experience within international partnerships.

That interest has inspired me to develop a short mini-series focusing on student support in TNE. At about the same time, ���Ϲ��� Monitor invited me to create a series of slightly more detailed reflections and articles, so here I am!

TNE as a core pillar of internationalisation

The timing of the series feels particularly relevant. Earlier this year, the UK government published a revised International Education Strategy (IES), reaffirming TNE as a central pillar of the UK’s global education ambitions. TNE is no longer viewed as a complementary activity sitting alongside international student recruitment; rather, it is increasingly recognised as a strategic mechanism for extending educational access, strengthening international partnerships, supporting skills development, and building long-term global influence across different levels and subsectors of education.

For me personally, this evolution has been especially interesting to observe. I was fortunate to be involved in several revisions and iterations of the IES following its original publication in 2019, during my time with the UK Department for Business and Trade. Over the years, it has been fascinating to see how the conversation around TNE has matured, from something often discussed primarily in commercial terms, to a much broader recognition of its role in diplomacy, skills development, capacity building, research collaboration, and student opportunity.

The scale of global international education continues to grow at pace. UNESCO estimates that globally mobile students now number more than 7.3 million worldwide, up from around 2 million in 2000, with demand .

Alongside this mobility growth, TNE itself has expanded dramatically. According to the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), in 2024/25 there were 669,950 students studying for UK qualifications through TNE programmes overseas, an +8% increase on the previous year and . Given the drop in direct student recruitment, this figure is expected to exceed the number of international students physically studying in the UK at many institutions.

Key markets for UK TNE continue to include China, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Egypt, Hong Kong, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, and increasingly countries across Sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia. We are also seeing growing interest and expansion in regions where demographic growth, skills demand, and pressure on domestic higher education systems are creating significant opportunities for international partnerships.

Competition intensifying

At the same time, competition is becoming far more diverse and sophisticated. While the traditional Big Four destinations (Australia, Canada, the UK, and US) remain highly influential, countries such as Germany, France, the Netherlands, Ireland, the UAE, China, Malaysia, Singapore, and even emerging regional education hubs in Central Asia and the wider Gulf are investing heavily in internationalisation and TNE capacity. In many ways, TNE is becoming one of the defining features of global higher education internationalisation.

Multifaceted potential

Institutions engage in TNE for many different reasons, and while financial sustainability undoubtedly remains important, I like to think that the motivations today are often considerably broader and more strategic.

For universities, TNE can:

• Create a springboard for multilevel strategic engagement in priority markets;
• Extend institutional reach and global visibility;
• Support international research and innovation partnerships;
• Diversify student pipelines and international engagement;
• Strengthen alumni networks in strategic regions;
• Enhance institutional resilience against geopolitical or recruitment volatility;
• Contribute to civic and diplomatic objectives;
• Create opportunities for curriculum innovation, intercultural learning, and employability.

As such, for many institutions, successful TNE partnerships are now viewed as long-term strategic relationships rather than purely recruitment channels.

Equally important are the reasons that host governments, local providers, employers, students, and families choose to engage with TNE.

Host nations increasingly view TNE as an important strategic tool for supporting national development ambitions and expanding access to high-quality higher education opportunities. In many countries, growing youth populations and rising demand for tertiary education are placing significant pressure on domestic education systems. TNE partnerships can help address this challenge by increasing capacity, broadening programme availability and enabling students to access internationally recognised qualifications without necessarily needing to leave their home country.

At the same time, governments often see TNE as a mechanism for supporting national workforce development and skills priorities, particularly in sectors linked to economic transformation, innovation, healthcare, technology, engineering and business. TNE can also help reduce outbound brain drain and the associated economic leakage that occurs when large numbers of students study overseas. By retaining students domestically, countries are often able to keep talent, investment and graduate outcomes within local economies while still benefiting from international expertise and academic collaboration. Beyond student access, many host nations and local institutions value TNE partnerships for the opportunities they create around knowledge exchange, curriculum development, staff training, research collaboration and the strengthening of local higher education capacity. In this sense, well-designed TNE partnerships are increasingly seen not simply as education delivery models, but as long-term contributors to economic development, institutional enhancement and international collaboration.

Local institutional partners may benefit through curriculum enhancement, staff development, quality assurance practices, research collaboration and international reputation. Employers frequently value TNE graduates because they bring internationally benchmarked qualifications alongside local cultural and market understanding. Students and parents may gain access to globally recognised degrees at a significantly lower cost than studying overseas, while avoiding visa, travel and living expenses. At a macro-economic level, well-designed TNE ecosystems can support productivity, innovation, human capital development, and regional competitiveness. In short, the value proposition of TNE is increasingly multi-dimensional.

But what about student supports?

Yet as TNE partnerships continue to grow globally, institutions are increasingly asking an important question: how can we ensure students studying in different locations feel equally supported, connected, and able to succeed? This question sits at the heart of many conversations I have had over recent years.

We have spent considerable time across the sector discussing quality assurance frameworks, regulatory structures, market entry strategies, and partnership models. All of these are relevant. But sometimes, the lived student experience, particularly in distributed or partnership-delivery models, receives less attention than it deserves.

The reality is that students studying through TNE may face very different challenges depending on geography, language, local infrastructure, cultural context, digital access, teaching models, and expectations around support. A student enrolled on the same UK degree in different countries may experience that programme in very different ways. And while many partnerships deliver exceptional student support, others continue to wrestle with questions around consistency, communication, ownership, and integration.

As we pilot this series of articles over the next few editions, I plan to reflect on and explore practical considerations around several areas of student support in TNE, including:

• Academic support and learning resources
• Language and communication
• Well-being and pastoral care
• Administrative clarity
• Student voice and engagement
• Employability and career development
• Partnership working in student support

Rather than to present definitive answers, my aim is to encourage discussion, share observations from across the sector, and highlight examples of thoughtful practice. TNE is now firmly embedded within the future of international higher education. But if partnerships are to remain sustainable, credible, and genuinely student-centred, the student experience must remain central to how we design, manage, and evaluate international provision.

I hope these musings spark further conversation and exchange of practice across the sector. If you are currently working in TNE, or thinking about developing provision, I would .

– Dr Suzanna Tomassi is Executive Director of External Affairs at NCUK, a leading UK pathway provider, and Founder of CoachEd Global, a consultancy specialising in executive coaching and global education advisory.

She is a highly experienced strategic leader and board member with over 20 years’ expertise across UK Government and higher education. Her work focuses on internationalisation, governance, risk oversight, commercial growth, and organisational transformation. Suzanna’s career spans the UK Department for Business and Trade and four major UK universities, where she has shaped national policy, strengthened regulatory and quality frameworks, and led large-scale international expansion initiatives.

An expert in transnational education and global operations, Suzanna has driven multi-country growth strategies, co-authored accreditation guidelines, and facilitated major international investments in UK higher education.

The post Beyond borders: Why student support matters more than ever in transnational education appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

Those policies were introduced to limit the number of new international students coming into the country after years of double-digit growth. But they overshot their target: far fewer students have come to Canada since 2024 than the government predicted. The confusing rollout of each new rule reduced international students’ confidence in the benefits of applying to Canadian institutions.

However, a significant policy reversal in November 2025 appears to have (1) sparked new interest in Canada, and (2) improved Canadian institutions’ potential to recruit international students in the current immigration context.

Dramatic increase in search interest

Keystone Education Group says that in December 2025, there was a +55% year-over-year increase in international student searches for Canada on its platform – a major change after two years of decline.

The turning point for the rebound was the government’s 6 November 2025 announcement that master’s and doctoral-level students would be removed from the 2026 cap on new international enrolments.

Incoming postgraduate students no longer need a Provincial Attestation Letter (PAL) for a study permit, and they are now permitted to bring their families with them. Canadian immigration (IRCC) processes those students and families’ applications together, eliminating any uncertainty about whether partners/dependent children will have to wait longer than students for a visa decision.

Keystone’s data also shows an uptick in master’s-level interest. In October 2025, searches for this level were down by -6% compared with October 2024. Then in November, they grew by +28%. Following that, there were sustained, monthly increases:

• +55% in December 2025
• +50% in January 2026
• +21% in February 2026
• +45% in March 2026

Keystone says this pattern suggests “a structural shift in student interest, not a momentary spike.”
Mark Bennett, VP of Research and Insight at Keystone, says:

“Prospective students react clearly and often very consistently to policy changes, and our search data is a great way of tracking that. What’s important here is that it’s the relative calm and clarity that seems to be having a positive effect on Canadian interest. Audiences who may have been struggling to understand Canada’s position on international education are responding to a clearer signal here.”

More evidence of an upturn

Findings from IDP’s most recent Emerging Futures survey, EF9, also show that Canada is regaining popularity. As the following chart illustrates, Australia (+10%), Canada (+7%), and “other” destinations (+9%) gained significant traction this year as destinations students are considering. This is in contrast to lower interest for the UK (-3%) and especially the US (-9%). The comparison is the data from EF9 (conducted in March and April 2026) versus data from EF7 (February 2025).

Will Canada’s momentum continue?

International students’ growing interest in Canada this year comes amidst a more beneficial external and internal environment than in 2024 and 2025.

External factors include:

• Significantly lower interest in the US given the second Trump administration’s immigration policy direction;
  
• More cautious recruitment on the part of UK universities given strict new compliance thresholds (including a requirement that institutions maintain a visa refusal rate of less than 5% to avoid sanctions).

Internal factors include:

• The postgraduate exemption from the cap;
  
• The ability of postgraduates to bring their families;
  
• Greater policy stability, which leads to (1) more confidence among international prospects, and (2) improved ability of institutions and agents to advise students given less confusion and volatility;
  
• More clarity on which programmes are eligible for the Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP);
  
• Higher visa approval rates for university programmes: according to IRCC data, undergraduate approvals rose from a 22% share of all approvals in 2024 to 35% in 2025, and at the postgraduate level, the jump was from 18.5% in 2024 to 30% in 2025;
  
• Last but not least – more targeted recruitment strategies by Canadian institutions.

The question of whether or not Canada can regain its footing as a preferred leading destination depends especially on the internal factors above – including policy stability.

For additional background, please see:

• “New international student permit approvals for Canada fell below COVID levels in 2025“
• “Canada: Government audit finds impact of international student cap far greater than expected“
• “Canada’s foreign enrolment has fallen by nearly 300,000 students over the last two years“
• “Canada announces international student cap numbers for 2026 and updated programme guidance“

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Lowest volume of visa applications in the past five years

The Home Office received -33% fewer sponsored study visa applications from students (main applicants) in January–April 2026 than in the same period in 2025. This follows a -21% decline in applications in Q4 2025 versus Q4 2024.

The chart below was published by Nous Group director in mid-May.

As the chart depicts, this year’s January–April visa application volume is the lowest in the past five years. It is -11% below the recent-year low for the same period in 2024, and in April 2026 alone, only 8,900 applications were received. This is down nearly -40% compared with April 2025.

What is driving the decline?

Visa applications from key markets dropped dramatically when the government announced in the summer of 2023 that most international students would no longer be able to bring their families with them to the UK as of January 2024.

However, demand began to pick up in 2025 as the shock wore off: in May 2025 alone, submissions from main applicants (i.e., students rather than dependants) were up +19% compared with May 2024.

This suggests that it wasn’t the dependants ban that prompted the past seven months of applications declines. Rather, many industry analysts believe the drop was spurred by a government announcement in May 2025 that universities would soon need to meet higher standards of compliance in order to continue to host (aka sponsor) international students. The three updated Basic Compliance Assessment (BCA) standards demand that institutions maintain:

1. A visa refusal rate of less than 5%
2. An enrolment rate of at least 95%
3. A course completion rate of at least 90%

The government then elaborated in January 2026 that failure to meet even one of the three benchmarks above would land institutions in the “red” or “amber” bands of a “red, amber, green” (RAG) assessment structure. Falling into “red” (e.g., exceeding 5% in visa rejections) can lead to a range of sanctions – the most extreme of which is that an institution has its licence to sponsor international students revoked.

The updated BCA thresholds (and associated RAG system) represent a much more stringent test of compliance than what they replace. found that had the updated benchmarks been in place in 2024, more than 20 universities would have failed at least one threshold and about 49,000 students might have been affected.

The immediate impact on applications

Following on the heels of the May 2025 announcement of the tightened BCA thresholds, the average visa approval rate for international students dropped to 85% in Q4 2025, down from 91% in Q4 2024. Universities were fully aware that the 85% approval rate is a full 10 percentage points below the upcoming BCA threshold of 95%.

For many, the lower average approval rate was the trigger for adopting a more cautious recruitment approach to high-growth markets with higher-than-average refusal rates.

As early as December 2025, some institutions hit the brakes entirely on recruiting in important emerging markets such as Bangladesh and Pakistan, countries where visa rejection rates hover between 18% and 22%. Many also adopted more a more careful approach to markets such as Nigeria, India, and Nepal, including:

• Extending fewer offers
• Checking documents more rigorously
• Holding more credibility interviews

A recent British Universities International Liaison Association (BUILA) survey found that around a third of surveyed UK universities reported curtailing recruitment in certain markets to reduce compliance risk.

The shift towards lower-risk markets continues, and the 1 June official implementation of the stricter BCA metrics will do nothing to halt this momentum.

High-risk markets are high-volume markets

Over the past couple of years, demand from the UK’s top two sources of students, India and China – as well as from the key emerging market of Nigeria (#4) – has been falling. The chart below details commencements from 2005–2025, and it highlights just how sharp the declines have been from India and Nigeria.

Strong demand from Nepal and Pakistan has been essential to mitigating declines from other top markets.

If the BCA compliance benchmarks continue to dampen UK universities’ confidence in recruiting in some Indian states with as well as in Nigeria, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh, the downward pressure on overall international commencements and enrolments could be severe. Collectively, according to HESA data, those five countries accounted for 39% of international enrolments in the UK in 2024/25. Looking at the entire student population (domestic and international), roughly 1 in 10 students were from India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Nepal, or Bangladesh in that academic year.

The impact on revenue and operations

Should international commencements fall again in the 2026/27 September intake, it will be devastating for many UK universities. On 19 May, the recruitment firm published an analysis of revenue sources across the higher education sector and found that “22 universities now earn more than half of all their income from overseas tuition … eight years ago, none did.”

Forecasts for coming years

The Office for Students (OfS), which is the independent regulator of higher education in England, released its on 14 May. Key inputs for the analysis are the self-reports and projections of 279 participating UK universities.

Of those universities, more than a third (36%) reported an operating deficit for 2024/25. On average, providers expect a small worsening of the financial picture in 2025/26 and then a rebound in 2026/27.

The OfS is skeptical of this forecast:

“Our assessment is that this projected recovery remains based on overly optimistic assumptions, particularly in the context of continued volatility in student recruitment.”

It notes that among responding universities, “non-UK entrants fell by -7.7% [in 2024/25], which was -9% below [providers’] forecast.”

Despite this decline, responding universities reported to the OfS that their forecast is for international undergraduate numbers to increase by +24.6% and postgraduate enrolments by +26.8% between 2024/25 and 2028/29.

The OfS warns that it would be financially imprudent to operate according to such an expectation, noting that “recent published visa data from the Home Office suggests a possible renewed decline in non-UK student numbers, particularly from key markets such as India and China.” The chart below is pulled from the report, and you’ll see that beginning in the fall of 2025 – as the BCA thresholds began to affect recruitment – international visa applications began to soften.

The OfS presented three financial scenarios in the report that “could happen if recruitment changes and providers take no mitigating action.”

Scenario 1 assumes no growth in international and domestic enrolments, Scenario 2 anticipates a modest reduction, and Scenario 3 describes a larger reduction of enrolments. The OfS summarises:

“Under the ‘no growth’ scenario, which assumes flat student recruitment from 2025/26 onwards, cumulative net income losses relative to forecast could reach £2.7 billion by 2028/29. Under this scenario 163 providers, representing 58.4% of the sector, would report a deficit. In the most severe scenario modelled, cumulative income losses increase to £4.2 billion, with deficits reported by up to 196 providers (70.3% of the sector as a whole).”

The report concludes: “Variations in student recruitment in 2024/25 and 2025/26 are prominent in the financial challenges facing the sector. Further volatility in recruitment, in 2026/27 and beyond, could present further significant challenges.”

For additional background, please see:

• “Foreign enrolments in UK higher education dipped again in fall 2025”
• “Narrowing bands of compliance: How the UK’s new RAG system will impact international student recruitment”
• “UK’s stiffening compliance regime already having an impact on international student recruitment”

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On 12 May, Todd M. Lyons, ICE’s acting director, called to announce that ICE has found more than 10,000 cases of fraud in the system on the part of dodgy employers and students.

Mr Lyons said that OPT has “become a magnet for fraud.”

He continued:

“When OPT was created under the Bush administration and expanded under the Obama administration, DHS had anticipated only a few thousand foreign students would receive training approval before returning home. Instead, OPT ballooned into an uncontrolled guest worker pipeline with hundreds of thousands of foreign students working in the United States. As the programme size has exploded, so has the fraud.”

Mr Lyons, and acting executive associate director for Homeland Security Operations (HSI) John Con, detailed the results of multiple investigations across the country, which include cases of “empty buildings with locked doors at addresses where hundreds of foreign students are allegedly employed … residential addresses listed as work sites for hundreds of foreign students – yet no employees were present.” Mr Lyons said:

“We are discovering evidence of organised fraud that spans national and international borders. This is not accidental. It is deliberate, coordinated, and criminal.”

Closing out the press conference, Mr Lyons concluded: “We will not tolerate abuse of our programmes, and more actions are forthcoming.”

In 2024/25, close to 300,000 international graduates participated in either OPT (one year) or STEM OPT (one year plus a two-year extension for STEM programme graduates).

A step toward restricting the OPT programme?

Many international education analysts believe the press conference is laying the groundwork for much stricter government oversight – or even the elimination – of the OPT programme.

There is strong political support for this direction within the governing Republican party, and as we reported last week, the director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Joseph Edlow, has indicated that he wants a regulatory system that can “remove the ability for employment authorisations for F-1 students beyond the time that they are in school.”

It’s possible that a cumulative and coordinated administration strategy that gradually reduces the attractiveness of OPT – and more broadly, the opportunities for international students to work in the US after graduating – could be in play. Following are four measures whose inter-dynamics suggest this may already be the case.

1: Pause in visa processing. In January 2026, the government expanded its 39-country travel ban so it could impact not just students coming into the US, but also those already studying there. It announced that while current students from those countries could still apply for OPT, the processing of their applications would be paused. This “pause” remains active. OPT applicants cannot work in the US until their application is approved, leaving them in limbo and without any sense of when processing will resume.
Strategic negative impact on OPT? Yes. It becomes harder and less attractive for international students from travel ban countries to participate in OPT.

2: USCIS to decide how long international students can stay in the US. The Duration of Status (D/S) system, which allows many students to stay in the US past their programme end date if their Designated School Official decides they have a valid reason for needing more time, is expected to be terminated in September 2026. It will be replaced by a fixed-admission structure under which students will be allowed no more than four years of admission unless they get an extension. US Citizenship and Immigration Services officials will decide whether to approve the extension. Officials will be permitted to “use discretion,” which means they can make independent judgments and choices when reviewing requests from students. They will never have met those students, relying rather on a paper or electronic submission for their decision. Most F-1 students will need the extension to be eligible for OPT given that they would exhaust the four-year admission period just by completing their degree.
Strategic negative impact on OPT? Yes. To enter OPT, students will need permission from immigration officials to stay in the US for longer than four years.

3: The framing of the OPT system as a “magnet for fraud” this week. In this week’s press conference, ICE may have been creating a context in which limiting OPT access would be justified. Mr Lyons characterised the incidences of fraud as “not victimless … [but] a blatant attack on the goodwill of the American people who generously allow foreign national access to our education system.”
Strategic negative impact on OPT? Yes. OPT is being positioned as a backdoor immigration pathway.

4: New rules for US employers hiring H-1B workers. In the March 2026 registration cycle for the H-1B lottery, a December 2025 “” was applied for the first time. This rule makes it more difficult for US employers to hire entry-level, highly skilled foreign workers and students.

It does so because petitions to sponsor entry-level or lower-salaried foreign workers and students receive fewer chances to “win” the lottery. There are now four salary levels in the selection process for H-1B recipients: #4 (the highest salary) gives four chances; #3 gives three chances; #2 gives two; and #1, the lowest, provides just one chance. Young international students in OPT, who represent a popular pool of H-1B prospects for employers, will be disadvantaged given their lower likelihood of being offered senior-level positions.
Strategic negative impact on OPT? Yes, indirectly. Receiving an H-1B is the primary route for highly skilled foreigners to work in the US for a considerable amount of time (three years with extensions possible to six years or even longer). It is also a dual-intent visa that allows employers to sponsor permanent residency for their H-1B workers.

By limiting the chances of international students to get an H-1B, the government also makes it less likely for them to eventually get a Green Card. The degree > OPT > H-1B > permanent residency pathway – while certainly not guaranteed – is the dream of many international students who choose the US for study abroad. Disrupting the OPT > H-1B pathway will jeopardise American universities and employers’ chances to attract some of the world’s top students.

Is OPT really so nefarious?

Many prominent companies, universities, and firms figure among the top employers of OPT participants. The table below is based on from 2024.

Apple CEO Tim Cook held a staff meeting in February in which he voiced his strong opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration approach. Mr Cook told employees: “For as long as I can remember, we have been a smarter, wiser, more innovative company because we’ve attracted the best and brightest from all corners of the world. I am going to continue to lobby lawmakers on this issue.”

Speaking of innovation

In 2022, a report from the found that one quarter of US billion-dollar companies were founded by international graduates of US universities.

More broadly, the latest instalment of the ’s long-running “New American Fortune 500” research programme found that in 2025, nearly half (46%) of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. Further, the American Immigration Council found that “of the 14 companies that made the Fortune 500 list in 2025 for the first time, 10 were founded by immigrants or their children.”

A 2022 of American Community data found that “every additional 100 foreign-born workers with an advanced degree working in a STEM occupation creates roughly 86 jobs for U.S. workers.”

Nothing final yet

With the press conference this week, the Trump administration continues to signal that OPT is in its sights. Miriam Feldblum, president and CEO of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, told in April:

“This current administration has been signaling very clearly that they’re seeking to end postgraduate Optional Practical Training. The former secretary of homeland security, the current secretary of homeland security, Republican senators have all been kind of waving the specter that there will be a proposed rule to end OPT.”

For additional background, please see:

• “US to end ‘Duration of Status’ for F, J, and I visas and limit the time international students can study in the US”
• “What international students need to know about study and work visas in the United States”
• “US: Student visa issuances fell by -36% in summer 2025; OPT uncertainty among factors affecting international student demand”

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