higher education policy decision

How will the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling affect college admissions?

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, katharine meyer and katharine meyer fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy @katharinemeyer adrianna pita adrianna pita office of communications.

June 30, 2023

The Supreme Court’s decision ending race-based admissions policies at colleges and universities leaves in place other forms of affirmative action like legacy preferences and early admissions — affirmative action policies that disproportionately benefit white students, says Katharine Meyer. Meyer looks at how underrepresented student enrollment dropped in states that previously banned race-based affirmative action, and how some have tried to increase student diversity through race-neutral methods.

Related material: 

• The end of race-conscious admissions
• The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action means that HBCU investment is more important than ever
• We know what will happen if the Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action
• California banned affirmative action in 1996. Inside the UC struggle for diversity
• Affirmative action and the future of college admissions

Thanks to audio engineer Gaston Reboredo.

PITA: On Thursday, the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action policies at the University of North Carolina and Harvard University, effectively ending the consideration of race as a factor admitting students to higher education. Here with us today to discuss the cases and the effect of this decision on higher education is Katharine Meyer, a fellow with the Brown Center on Education Policy here at Brookings. Katharine, thanks for talking to us today.

MEYER: Thanks for having me.

PITA: So, prior to today, previous Supreme Court cases have generally upheld the consideration of race as one of many factors in college enrollment. How did the current court justify their reversal? How did we get here?

MEYER: That’s right. The Supreme Court has been considering questions about the consideration of race in college admissions for decades. The most seminal case was the Bakke decision in 1978 in the University of California system. And that’s where we got this longstanding precedent that the court has upheld colleges can consider race in college admissions when they are advancing what has been been referred to as a compelling interest in diversity. And that’s a really important precedent because that ended up playing a huge role in today’s decision. And so historically it has been that colleges can argue it’s important for them to build a racially diverse class to achieve their institutional mission. And there’s this term of sort of institutional deference that the court has given to colleges and universities to set those goals and as long as their consideration of race is in advancement of those goals, then the court has decreed it’s a permissible consideration of race.

PITA: So, what did today’s decision then cite as why schools shouldn’t be considering race?

MEYER: Right, so today’s decision. did find, the majority opinion said that colleges were in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment because their advancement in consideration of race did not meet the strict scrutiny around compelling interest. And so in the majority opinion, we saw Chief Justice Roberts say that while historically there has been deference to institutions to set diversity goals, the Harvard and the UNC cases did not present very clear goals. To him, in that majority opinion, it was saying there were there was no way to measure whether or not colleges had attained their goals. And so, for example, when Harvard and UNC were talking about what their goals were, they were talking about the need to educate future leaders or to inspire diverse dialogue. And the chief justice argued that because it was nigh-on impossible to measure that, that it was an insufficient goal to then base the consideration of race on. I think what’s notable about that is that he didn’t say that a compelling interest in diversity could never be justification for considering race, but that to this point, the arguments colleges have put forward haven’t met the measurable standard.

PITA: Alright. We’ve seen a handful of other states previously ban affirmative action at their state level, California being one of the largest. What does their example show about what happens to racial diversity when systematic, race-conscious admissions aren’t permitted?

MEYER: That’s right. California is certainly the largest state to have banned the consideration of race in college admissions, but up to nine states at various points have had affirmative action bans regarding race to this point. So we have a good body of empirical evidence about what happens to underrepresented student enrollment. And in specific cases like California, but also pooling across all of these states, we see that the enrollment of Black, Hispanic, and Native students drops significantly, immediately. In California it was around a 30 to a 40 percent drop in Black and Hispanic enrollment after the selective institutions were no longer able to consider race.

I think something that’s important to know from this literature is that the effects are a little bit different depending on if you’re looking at colleges as a whole versus highly selective colleges. But it’s important that the policy of considering race and admissions is really only implemented at the most selective institutions and so it’s really the impacts there that we should care about. And so that’s where we tend to see these large 30-40% drops. One analysis sort of extrapolated from that, putting aside the fact that many states have already banned affirmative action, if when this gets applied to the rest of the states, we would expect a nationwide, about a 10% drop in Black and Hispanic enrollment in the coming years.

PITA: The president and all of the chancellors of the University of California system filed an amicus brief in support of affirmative action to the Supreme Court. They were describing how the University of California system has spent the last 30 years experimenting with all sorts of alternate race-neutral measures to still try and either maintain or continue increasing their racial diversity in their campuses. What were some of the tools that they tried to use and how did they or didn’t they work in achieving those goals?

MEYER: There are a lot of policies, both in California and in other states, that these sort of laboratories of experimentation have been able to look at, to think about how they can still achieve these institutional goals of diversity, even when they can’t consider race. In California, they really engaged in expanded outreach. That included sort of expanding the set of high schools that they were visiting, the types of students that they were reaching out to, just trying to build up a bigger application pool of students. In California and then in Texas when there was a ban there, and in Florida there have also been efforts to establish these top X-percent plans, where they say we’re going to admit the most qualified percent of students from all of the public high schools, with the idea there being that will achieve racial diversity because you’re pulling from the racial diversity of multiple high schools. And we’re already seeing that crop up as a solution. Just this week the Wisconsin legislature introduced a bill that would require the UW system to admit the top 5% of students from Wisconsin high schools. So, legislatures are already sort of learning from that approach. And we did see some positive effects of that; when states implemented those programs that did increase the racial diversity of the incoming class, just nowhere near the magnitude that race-conscious admissions did.

PITA: One of the statistics that’s been being cited today in a lot of stories around this is from a 2019 study of Harvard students that found that 43% of the white student body there were either legacy admissions, recruited specifically for athletics, or that they were the relatives of staff or donors. And I was struck, Michelle Obama put out a very powerful statement today. And in it she said, “so often we just accept that money, power, and privilege are perfectly justifiable forms of affirmative action.” What are we seeing in terms of any of these more selective schools thinking about rolling back some of these preferential policies like legacies and how effective would that be at helping to more balance the levels there?

MEYER: I think it’s such an important point that Michelle Obama made, that affirmative action is an umbrella term that can be used to describe any number of admissions policies. That today the Supreme Court didn’t ban affirmative action, they banned race-based affirmative action and race-conscious admissions. And things like legacy preference or targeted athletic recruitment or engaging in early admissions policies are forms of affirmative action, they’re just forms of affirmative action that disproportionately benefit white students. And so I think we can expect to see a number of highly selective colleges in the coming weeks announce that they are going to eliminate legacy preferences. It has always been a dubious argument for why some students should get a tip in the admissions decision, but I imagine there’s been such a groundswell of advocacy around this, particularly from student groups at highly selective institutions pushing the institutions to eliminate this practice. I can’t imagine it being very common come this fall.

PITA: Looking forward, what kind of response have we seen yet so far from the Biden administration, the Department of Education? Basically, what comes next after this?

MEYER: The Biden administration has already put out a fact sheet and President Biden had a press conference today where he talked about obviously how personally disappointed he was in the decision of the Supreme Court and reaffirming the Department of Education’s commitment to support colleges in achieving their goals of racial diversity. One thing that’s really notable in the fact sheet that they put out is that they’re encouraging colleges to make sure that they are not over-restricting their admissions policies in light of the decision. It’s important to note that the decision did not say that race could never be part of the conversation in admissions decisions. And in fact, the chief justice said nothing in the opinion should be construed as saying that students shouldn’t feel free to talk about their race, talk about their experiences of racial discrimination, or how race has been an advantage to them. They could write an admissions essay and colleges could take that into consideration as long as it is factoring into the individual circumstance of the student.

So I think we’re in this place where colleges need to make sure that they are complying with the decision but not beyond the limits of the decision. There’s still a lot of gray area that I think gives colleges a chance to think about how they can achieve diversity on campus even if they’re not thinking about specific racial goals. Then again, that gray area does open up a lot of room for legal challenges, so I don’t think today is the last we’re going to hear on the consideration of race at the Supreme Court.

PITA: All right, Katharine, thank you very much for being with us today and talking about this.

MEYER: Thank you for having me.

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• Published: 13 October 2017

Rethinking higher education and its relationship with social inequalities: past knowledge, present state and future potential

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The purposes and impact of higher education on the economy and the broader society have been transformed through time in various ways. Higher education institutional and policy dynamics differ across time, but also between countries and political regimes and therefore context cannot be neglected. This article reviews the purpose of higher education and its institutional characteristics juxtaposing two, allegedly rival, conceptual frameworks; the instrumental and the intrinsic one. Various pedagogical traditions are critically reviewed and used as examples, which can potentially inform today’s policy making. Since, higher education cannot be seen as detached from all other lower levels of education appropriate conceptual links are offered throughout this article. Its significance lies on the organic synthesis of literature across social science, suggesting ways of going forward based on the traditions that already exist but seem underutilized so far because of overdependence in market-driven practices. This offers a new insight on how theories can inform policy making, through conceptual “bridging” and reconciliation. The debate on the purpose of higher education is placed under the context of the most recent developments of increasing social inequalities in the western world and its relation to the mass model of higher education and the relevant policy decisions for a continuous increase in participation. This article suggests that the current policy focus on labor market driven policies in higher education have led to an ever growing competition transforming this social institution to an ordinary market-place, where attainment and degrees are seen as a currency that can be converted to a labour market value. Education has become an instrument for economic progress moving away from its original role to provide context for human development. As a result, higher education becomes very expensive and even if policies are directed towards openness, in practice, just a few have the money to afford it. A shift toward a hybrid model, where the intrinsic purpose of higher education is equally acknowledged along with its instrumental purpose should be seen by policy makers as the way forward to create educational systems that are more inclusive and societies that are more knowledgeable and just.

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Introduction.

The mainstream view in the western world, as informed by the human capital theory sees education, as an ordinary investment and the main reason why someone consumes time and money to undertake higher levels of education, is the high returns expected from the corresponding wage premium, when enters the labour market (Becker, 1964 , 1993 ). Nevertheless, things in practice are more complicated and this sequence of events is unlikely to be sustained, especially in recession periods like the one we currently live in. On the contrary, one notion of education, related somewhat to the American liberal arts tradition, is the intrinsic notion, which interprets that the purpose of education is to ‘equip people to make their own free, autonomous choices about the life they will lead’ (Bridges, 1992 : 92). There might be an economic basis underpinning this individual choice, but the intrinsic notion permits more subjective motivations, which are not necessarily affected by economic circumstances.

Robinson and Aronica ( 2009 ) argue that education, have become an impersonal linear process, a type of assembly line, similar to a factory production. They challenge this view and call for a less standardised pedagogy; more personalised to students needs as well as talents. Education is not similar to a manufacturing production-line, since students are highly concerned about the quality of education they receive as opposed to motor cars, which are indifferent to the process by which they are manufactured. Along these lines, Waters ( 2012 ), following Weber’s ( 1947 , 1968 ) rationale on the role of bureaucracy in modern societies, adds that this manufacturing process is achieved through rigid, rationalised and productively efficient but totally impersonal bureaucracy, operated in a way that sees children as raw materials for the creation of adults, which is the final product properly equipped to reproduce “itself” by being a parent to a new born “raw material” and so forth. Durkheim ( 1956 , 2006 ) sees this as a mechanism where adults exercise their influence over the younger in order to maintain the status quo they desire. However, since education entails ontological as well as epistemological implications, primary focus should be given to learning in such a way that educative and social functions could be amalgamated, rather than solely focusing on the delivery of existing knowledge per se, which becomes a reiterated process and an unchallenged absolute truth (Freire, 1970 ; Heidegger, 1988 ; Dall’ Alba and Barnacle, 2007 ).

This article focus on higher education; since it is the last stage before somebody enters the labour market and thus the instrumental view becomes more dominant over the intrinsic view, compared to the lower levels of education. Higher education, is being traditionally offered by universities. The first established university in Europe is the University of Bologna, where the term “academic freedom” was introduced as the kernel of its culture (Newman, 1996 ). Graham ( 2013 ) distinguishes between three different models of higher education. These are: the university college, the research and the technical university. He provides a historical review of the origins of these three models. The university college is the oldest one, where Christian values were the core values. Later on, when scientific knowledge questioned the universal theological truth, another type of university has been established, where research was the ultimate goal of the scholarship. This type of university has subsequently transformed by the introduction of the liberal arts tradition, flourished in the US. The research university model, originated circa 16 th century in Cambridge and established in Berlin by the introduction of the Humboldian University, shared a common aim: the pursuit of knowledge and its dissemination to the greater society. The third model of university is the technical one. It has been established in an industrial revolution context in Scotland and particularly in Glasgow in the premises of what is currently known as the University of Strathclyde. While the introduction of capitalism changed radically the structure and the format of labour relations, the technical model was based on the idea that industrial skills had to be acquired by formal education and somehow verified institutionally in order to be applied to the broader society. This is the first time where the up to then distinct fields of education and industry, started to be conceived as inextricably tight in a rather linear way.

These different models of higher education cultures and traditions still exist, but in reality, Universities worldwide follow a hybrid approach, where all traditions collaborate with each other. However, there are some universities that still carry the reputation and tradition of a specific model and to some extent this tradition differentiates them from all others. It is not the scope of this research to analyse this in detail, as the main aim is to offer an institutional and policy narrative, exploring the purpose of higher education and its relationship with social inequalities, focusing primarily on the western world.

Nowadays, in a rapidly changing word, the major debate is placed under the forms of institutional transformation of higher education. Brennan ( 2004 ), based on Trow ( 1979 , 2000 ), allocates three forms of higher education. The first one is the elite form, which main aim is to prepare and shape the mind-set of students originated from the most dominant class. The second is the mass form of higher education, which transmits the knowledge and skills acquired in higher education into the technical and economic roles students subsequently perform in the labour market. Lastly, the third is the universal form, which main purpose is to adapt students and the general population to the rapid social and technological changes.

This article reviews the contemporary trends in higher education and its widespread diffusion as interacted with the evolutions in western economies and societies, where social inequalities persist and even become wider (Dorling and Dorling, 2015 ). The narrative used in this article is more suitable to conceptualise higher education in a western world context, though we acknowledge that via globalisation, the way education and particularly higher education is delivered in the rest of the world seems to follow similar to the Western worlds paths, despite the apparent differences in culture, social and economic systems as well as writing systems. Footnote 1

An interdisciplinary and critical synthesis of the relevant literature is conducted, presenting two stances that are largely considered as rival: The instrumental one that treats higher education as an ordinary investment with particular financial yields in the labour market and the more intrinsic one which sees higher education as mainly detached from the logic of economic costs and benefits. The theoretical rivalry is apparent since in the former approach higher education is an inevitable property of labour market and thus an indispensable part of the mainstream economic neoliberal regime, whereas the latter sees no logical link between higher education and labour market purposes and therefore the content and substance of learning and knowledge acquisition in education and specifically in higher education should not be market-driven or aligned to the functions of specific economic regimes. However, this article argues that educational systems, and particularly their higher levels, are amalgamated parts of contemporary societies and therefore theories and practices need to move away from rather futile binary rationales.

The remainder of this paper explains why both the intrinsic and instrumental approaches are doomed to fail in practice when used in isolation. In a rapidly diverging and polarised world, where social inequalities rise within as well as between countries, common sense dictates social theories and practices to move towards reconciliation rather than stubborn rivalry. In that spirit, this paper argues that the intrinsic and instrumental approach are in fact complementary to each other. Such view can inform policy making towards building more inclusive educational systems; organically tight with the broader society. The narrative this article uses departs and expands on the rationale of eminent critical pedagogists such as Freire, Bronfenbrenner, Bourdieu and Kozol in order to challenge the current instrumental world-view of education, at least as this is apparent in the western world. Then the article moves into offering a reasoning for an organic synthesis of existing knowledge in order the two rival theories to be actualised in practice as a unified and reconciled pedagogical strategy. This reasoning builds on the research conducted by Durst’s ( 1999 ), Payne ( 1999 ) and Lu and Horner ( 2009 ). Durst ( 1999 ) suggests a “reflective instrumentalism”, where student’s pragmatic view that education is just a way of finding a well-paid job, operated in tandem with critical pedagogical canons, is indeed possible. Payne ( 1999 ) proposes a similar approach, where students are equipped with the necessary tools to find a job in the labour market; however educators should engage students with this knowledge in a critical way in order to be able to produce something new. Likewise Lu and Horner ( 2009 ) note that educators and students need to work together in such a way that perceptions of both are amenable to change and career choices are critically discussed in a constantly changing social context.

The purpose of higher education in western societies

Mokyr ( 2002 ) suggests that education should be integrated by both inculcation and emancipation in order to serve individual intellectual development as well as social progression. Shapiro ( 2005 ) emphasizes the need for the higher education institutions to serve a public purpose moving beyond narrow self-serving concerns, as well as to enforce social change in order to reflect the nature of a society that its members desire. More recently, in philosophical terms Barnett ( 2017 , p 10) calls for a wider conceptual landscape in higher education where “The task of an adequate philosophy of higher education…is not merely to understand the university or even to defend it but to change it”. )

The purpose of education and its meaning in the contemporary western societies has been also criticised by Bo ( 2009 ), suggesting that education has become a contradictory notion that leaves no space for emancipation since it gives no opportunity for improvisation to students. Thus, the students feel encaged within the system instead of being liberated. Bo agrees with Mokyr, who highlighted the need for recalling the basic notions of education from ancient philosophies: that education should be integrated by both inculcation and emancipation in order to serve individual intellectual development as well as social progression (Mokyr, 2002 ; Bo, 2009 ).

Not all individuals and societies agree on the purposes and roles of higher education in the modern world. However, in any case, it is a place where teaching and research can be accommodated in an organised fashion for the promotion of various types of knowledge, applied and non-applied. It is a place where money and moral values compete and collaborate simultaneously, where the development of labour market skills and competences coexist with the identification and utilisations of people’s skills and talents as well as the pursuit of employment, morality and citizenship.

The post-WWII era has been characterised by the mass model of higher education. Before this, higher education was for those belonging to higher social classes (Brennan, 2004 ). This model became the kernel of educational policies in Europe and generally, in the western world (Shapiro, 2005 ). Such policies have been boosted by the advent of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which enhance commercial and non-commercial bonds between countries and higher education institutions, transforming the role of higher education even further, making it rather universal (Jongbloed et al., 2008 ). Higher education’s boundaries have become vague and the predefined “social contract” between its institutions and those participated in them, is more complicated to be defined in absolute terms. Higher education institutions are now characterised by economic competition in a strict global market environment, where governments are not the key players anymore (Brennan, 2004 ).

Moreover, student demographics in higher education are constantly changing. Higher education is now an industry operating in a global market. Competition to attract talents from around the world is growing rapidly as an increasing number of countries offer additional graduate and post graduate positions to non-nationals, usually at a higher cost compared to nationals (Barber et al., 2013 ). Countries such as China or Singapore that are growing economically very rapidly are investing huge amounts of money to develop their higher education system and make it more friendly to talented people from around the world. The advent of new technologies have changed the traditional model of higher education, where physical presence is not a necessary requirement anymore (Yuan et al., 2013 ). Studying while working is much easier and therefore more mature students have now the opportunity to study towards a graduate or post-graduate degree. All these developments have increased the potential for profit; however it also requires huge amount of money to be invested in new technologies and all kinds of infrastructures and resources. The need for diversification in funding sources is simply essential and therefore all other industries become inevitably more engaged (Kaiser et al., 2014 ). On top of all these, climate change, the rise of terrorism, the prolonged economic uncertainty and the automazation of labour will likely increase cross-national and intraoccupational mobility and therefore the demand for higher education, especially in the recipient countries of the economically developed western world will inevitably rise. Summing up, higher education institutions operate under a very fluid and unpredictable environment and therefore approaches that are informed by adaptability and flexibility are absolutely crucial. The hybrid approach we propose where instrumental and intrinsic values are reconciled is along these lines.

Modern views of higher education place its function under a digital knowledge-based society, where economy dominates. Labour markets demand for skills such as technological competence and complex problem-solving by critical thinking and multitasking, which increases competition and in turn, accelerates the pace of the working day (Westerheijden et al., 2007 ). Haigh and Clifford ( 2011 ) argue that high competency, in both hard and soft skills, is not enough, as higher education needs to go deeper into changing attitudes and behaviours becoming the core of a globalised knowledge-based-economy. However, the trends of transferring knowledge and skills by universities, which “increasingly instrumentalize, professionalize, vocationalize, corporatize, and ultimately technologize education” (Thomson, 2001 : 244), have been extensively criticised in epistemological as well as in ontological terms (Bourdieu, 1998 ; Dall’ Alba and Barnacle, 2007 ). Livingstone ( 2009 ) argues that education and labour market have different philosophical departures and institutional principles to fulfill and therefore conceptualising them as concomitant economic events, with strong causal conjunctions, leads to logical fallacies. Livingstone sees the intrinsic purposes of education and contemporary labour market as rather contradictory than complimentary and any attempt to see them as the latter, leads to arbitrary and ambiguous outcomes, which in turn mislead rather than inform policy making. The current article, building on the arguments of Durst’s ( 1999 ), Payne ( 1999 ) and Lu and Horner ( 2009 ) challenges this view introducing a “bridging” rationale between the two theories, which can be also actualized in practice and inform policy making.

When education, and especially higher education, is considered as a public social right that everyone should have access to, human capital, as solely informed by the investment approach, cannot be seen as the most appropriate tool to explain the benefits an individual and society can gain from education. Citizenship can be regarded as one of these tools and perhaps concepts, such as the social and c ultural capital or habitus , which contrary to human capital acknowledge that students are not engaged with education just to succeed high returns in the labour market but apart from the economic capital, should be of equal importance when we try to offer a better explanation of the individuals’ drivers to undertake higher education. (Bourdieu, 1986 ; Coleman, 1988 ). Footnote 2 For example, Bourdieu ( 1984 ) thinks that certificates and diplomas are neither indications of academic or applied to the labour market knowledge, nor signals of competences but rather take the form of tacit criteria set by the ruling class to identify people from a particular social origin. Yet, Bourdieu does not disregard the human capital theory as invalid; however he remains very sceptical on its narrow social meaning as it becomes a property of ruling class and used as a mechanism to maintain their power and tacitly reproduce social inequalities.

Higher education attainment cannot be examined irrespectively of someone’s capabilities, as its conceptual framework presupposes a social construction of interacting and competing individuals, fulfilling a certain and, sometimes common to all, task each time. Capabilities, certainly, exist in and out of this context, as it includes both innate traits and acquired skills in a dynamic social environment. Sen ( 1993 : 30) defines capability as “a person’s ability to do valuable acts or reach valuable states of being; [it] represents the alternative combinations of things a person is able to do or be”. Moreover, Sen argues that capabilities should not be seen only as a means for succeeding a certain goal, but rather as an end itself (Sen, 1985 ; Saito, 2003 ; Walker and Unterhalter, 2007 ).

Capabilities are a prerequisite of well-being and therefore, social institutions should direct people into fulfilling this aim in order to feel satisfied with their lives. However, since satisfaction is commonly understood as a subjective concept, it cannot be implied that equal levels of life satisfaction, as these perceived by people of different demographic and socio-economic characteristics, mean social and economic equality. Usually, the sense of life satisfaction is relative to future expectations, aspirations and past empirical experiences, informed by the socio-economic circumstances people live in (Saito, 2003 ).

According to the capability approach, assessing the educational attainment of individuals or the quality of teachers and curriculum are not such useful tasks, if not complemented by the capacity of a learner to convert resources into capabilities. Sen’s ( 1985 , 1993 ) capability approach, challenges the human capital theory, which sees education as an ordinary investment undertaken by individuals. It also remains sceptical towards structuralist and post-structruralist approaches, which support the dominance of institutional settings and power over the individual acts. According to Sen ( 1985 , 1993 ), educational outcomes, as these are measured by student enrolments, their performance on tests or their expected future income, are very poor indicators for evaluating the overall purpose of education, related to human well-being. Moreover, the capability approach does not imply that education can only enhance peoples’ capabilities. It also implies that education, can be detrimental, imposing severe life-long disadvantages to individuals and societies, if delivered poorly (Unterhalter, 2003 , 2005 ).

From Sen’s writings, it is not clear whether the capability approach imply a distinction between instrumental and intrinsic values. Even if someone attempts an interpretation of the capability approach by arguing that it is only means that have an instrumental value, whereas ends only an intrinsic one, it is still unclear how can we draw a line between means and ends in a rather objective way. Escaping from this rather dualistic interpretation, a common-sense argument seems apparent: Capabilities have both intrinsic and instrumental value. Material resources can be obtained through people’s innate talents and acquired skills; however through the same resources transformed into capabilities a person who does not see this as an end but rather as a means, can also become a trusted member of the community and a good citizen, given that some kind of freedom of choice exists. Thus, resources apart from their instrumental value can also have an intrinsic one, with the caveat that the person chooses to conceive them as means towards a socially responsible end.

The American tradition in student development goes back to the liberal arts tradition, which main aim is to build a free person as an active member of a civic society. The essence of this tradition can be found in Nussbaum ( 1998 : 8)

“When we ask about the relationship of a liberal education to citizenship, we are asking a question with a long history in the Western philosophical tradition. We are drawing on Socrates’ concept of ‘the examined life,’ on Aristotle’s notions of reflective citizenship, and above all on Greek and Roman Stoic notions of an education that is ‘liberal’ in that it liberates the mind from bondage of habit and custom, producing people who can function with sensitivity and alertness as citizens of the whole world.”

Nowadays, liberal arts tradition is regarded as the delivery of interdisciplinary education across the social sciences but also beyond that, aiming to prepare students for the challenges they are facing both as professionals and as members of civic society. However, as Kozol notes in reality things are quite different (Kozol, 2005 , 2012 ). Kozol devoted much of his work examining the social context of schools in the US by focusing on the interrelationships that exist, maintained or transformed between students, teachers and parents. He points out that segregation and local disparities in the US schools are continuously increasing. The US schools and especially urban schools are seen as distinctive examples of institutions where social discrimination propagates while the US educational system currently functions as a mechanism of reproducing social inequality. Kozol is very critical on the instrumental purpose of market-driven education as this places businesses and commerce as the “key players”, since they shape the purpose, content and curriculum of education. At the same time, students, their parents as well as teachers, whose roles should have been essential, are displaced into some kind of token participants.

Hess ( 2004 ) might agree that US schools have become vehicles of increasing social inequalities but he suggest a very different to Kozol’s approach. Since schools are social institutions that operate and constantly interact with the rest of economy they have to become accountable in the way that ordinary business are, at least when it comes to basic knowledge delivery. Hess insists that all schools across the US should be able to deliver high quality basic knowledge and literacy. Such knowledge can be easily standardised and a national curriculum, equal and identical to all US school can be designed. By this, all schools are able to deliver high quality basic knowledge and all pupils, irrespective of their social background, would be able to receive it. Then, each school, teacher and pupil are held accountable for their performance and failure to meet the national standards should result in schools closed down, teachers laid off and pupils change school environment or even lose their chance to graduate. Hess distinguishes between two types of reformers; the status quo reformers who do not challenge the state control education and the common-sense reformers who are in favour of a non-bureaucratic educational system, governed by market competition, subjected to accountability measures similar to those used in the ordinary business world.

While Hess presents evidence that the problem in higher education is not underfunding but efficiency in spending, the argument he makes that schools can only reformed and flourish through the laws of market competition is not adequately backed up as there are plenty of examples in many industrial sectors, where the actual implementation of market competition instead of opening up opportunities for the more disadvantaged, has finally generated huge multinationals corporations, which operate in a rather monopolistic or at best oligopolistic environment, satisfying their own interests on the expense of the most deprived and disadvantaged members of the society. The ever growing increasing competition in the financial, pharmaceutical or IT software and hardware (Apple Microsoft, IOS and Android software etc.) sectors have not really helped the disadvantaged or the sector itself but rather created powerful “too big to fail” corporations that dominate the market if not own it.

Hess indeed believes that the US educational system apart from preparing students for the labour market has a social role to fulfil. When the purpose of higher education is solely labour market-oriented teaching and learning become inadequate to respond to the social needs of a well-functioned civic democracy, which requires active learners and critical thinkers who, apart from having a job and a profession, are able “ to frame and express their thoughts and participate in their local and national communities”(p. 4) . Creating rigorous standards for basic knowledge in all US schools is a goal that is sound and rather achievable. However, when such goals are based on a Darwinian like competition and coercion where only the fittest can survive they become rather inapplicable for satisfying the needs of human development, equity and sustainable social progress.

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory ( 1979 , 2005 , 2009 ) (subsequently named from Bronfenbrenner himself as bioecological systems theory) is also an example of schools as organic ingredients of a single concentric system that includes four sub systems; the micro, the meso, the exo and the macro as well as the chronosystem that refers to the change of the other four through time. The Micro system involves activities and roles that are experienced through interpersonal relationships such as the family, schools, religious or social institutions or any interactions with peers. The meso system includes the relationships developed between the various microsystem components, such as the relationship between school and workplace or family and schools. The exosystem comprises various interactions between systems that the person who is in the process of development does not directly participates but influence the way microsystems function and impact on the person. Some examples of exosystems are the relationships between family and peers of the developing person, family and schools, etc. The macrosystem incorporates all these things that can be considered as cultural environment and social context in which the developing person lives. Finally, the chronosystem introduces a time dimension, which encompasses all other sub-systems, subjecting them to the changes occurred through time. All these systems constantly interact, shaping a dynamic, complex but also natural ecological environment, in which a person develops its understanding of the world. In practical terms, this theory has found application in Finland, gradually transforming the Finish educational system to such a degree that is now considered the best all over the world (Määttä and Uusiautti, 2014 ; Takala et al., 2015 ). Finally, Bronfenbrenner is also an advocate that poverty and social inequalities are developed not because of differences in individual characteristics and capabilities but because of institutional constraints that are insurmountable to those from a lower socio-economic background.

Freire ( 1970 , 2009 ) criticizes the way schooling is delivered in contemporary societies. The term he uses to describe the current state of education is “banking education”, where teachers and students have very discrete roles with the former to be perceived as depositors of knowledge and the latter as depositories. This approach sees the knowledge acquired within the institutional premises of formal education as an absolute truth, where reality is perceived as something static aiming to preserve the status quo in education and in turn in society and satisfy the interests of the elite. This actual power play means that those who hold knowledge and accept its acquiring procedure as static, become the oppressors whereas those who either lack knowledge or even hold it but challenge it in order to transform it, the oppressed. From the one side the oppressors achieve to maintain their dominance over the oppressed and on the other side the oppressed accept their inferior role as an unchallenged normality where their destiny is predetermined and can never be transformed. Therefore, through this distinction of social roles, social inequalities are maintained and even intensified through time. Freire sees the “banking education” approach as a historical hubris since social reality is a process of constant transformation and hence, it is by definition dynamic and non-static. What we actually know today cannot determine our future social roles, neither can prohibit individuals from challenging and transforming it into something new (Freire, 1970 ; Giroux, 1983 ; Darder, 2003 ).

The banking education approach resembles very much the ethos of the human capital theory, where individuals utilise educational attainment as an investment instrument for succeeding higher wages in the future and also climb the levels of social hierarchy. The assumption of linearity between past individual actions and future economic and social outcomes is at the core of banking education and thus human capital theory. However, this assumption introduces a serious logical fallacy that surprisingly policy makers seem to value very little nowadays, at least in the Western societies. Freire ( 2009 ) apart from criticizing the current state of education argues that a pedagogical approach that “demythologize” and unveils reality by promoting dialogue between teachers and students create critical thinkers, who are engaged in inquiry in order to create social reality by constantly transforming it. This is the process of problem-posing education , which aligns its meaning with the intrinsic view of education that regards human development as mainly detached from the acquisition of material objects and accumulation of wealth through increased levels of educational attainment.

Originated in Germany, the term Bildung —at least as this was interpreted from 18 th century onwards, after Middle Ages era where everything was explained in the prism of a strict and theocratic society- shaped the philosophy by which the German educational system has been functioning even until nowadays (Waters, 2016 ). Bildung aims to provide the individual education with the appropriate context, through which can reach high levels of professional development as well as citizenship. It is a term strongly associated with the liberation of mind from superstition and social stereotypes. Education is assumed to have philosophical underpinnings but it needs, as philosophy itself as a whole does too, to be of some practical use and therefore some context needs to be provided Footnote 3 (Herder, 2002 ).

For Goethe ( 2006 ) Bildung , is a self-realisation process that the individual undertakes under a specific context, which aims to inculcate altruism where individual actions are consider benevolent only if they are able to serve the general society. Although Bildung tradition, from the one hand, assumes that educational process should be contextualised, it approach context as something fluid that is constantly changing. Therefore, it sees education as an interactive and dynamic process, where roles are predetermined; however at the same time they are also amenable to constant transformation (Hegel, 1977 ). Consequently, this means that Bildung tradition is more closely to what Freire calls problem-posing education and therefore to the intrinsic notion of education. Weber ( 1968 ), looked on the Bildung tradition as a means to educate scientists to be involved in policy making and overcome the problems of ineffective bureaucracy. Waters ( 2016 ) based on his experiences with teaching in German higher education argue that the Bildung tradition is still apparent today in the educational system in Germany.

However, higher education, as an institution, involves students, teachers, administrators, policy makers, workers, businessmen, marketers and generally, individuals with various social roles, different demographic characteristics and even different socio-economic backgrounds. It comes natural that their interests can be conflicting and thus, they perceive the purpose of higher education differently.

Higher education expansion and social inequalities: contemporary trends

Higher education enrolment rates have been continuously rising for the last 30 years. In Europe, and especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, policies are directed towards widening the access to higher education to a broader population (Bowl, 2012 ). However, it is very difficult for policy-makers to design a framework towards openness in higher education, mainly due to the heterogeneity of the population the policies are targeted upon. Such population includes individuals from various socio-economic, demographic, ethnic, innate ability, talent orientation or disability groups, as well as people with very different social commitments and therefore the vested interests of each group contradict each other, rendering policy-making an extremely complicated task (CFE and Edge Hill University, 2013 ).

A collection of essays, edited by Giroux and Myrsiades ( 2001 ), provided valuable insights to the humanities and social sciences literature regarding the notion of corporate university and its implications to society’s structure. As Williams ( 2001 : 18) notes in one of this essays:

“Universities are now being conscripted directly as training grounds for the corporate workforce…university work has been more directly construed to serve not only corporate-profit agendas via its grant-supplicant status, but universities have become franchises in their own right, reconfigured to corporate management, labor, and consumer models and delivering a name-brand product”.

Chang et al. ( 2013 ) argues that institutional purposes do not always coincide with the expectations students have from their studies. In most cases, students hold a more pragmatic and instrumental understanding towards the purpose of higher education, primarily aiming for a better-paid and high quality jobs.

Arum and Roksa ( 2011 ) claim that students during their studies in higher education make no real progress in critical thinking and complex problem-solving. Nonetheless, it is notable that those who state that they seek some “deeper meaning” in higher education, looking at a broader picture of things, tend to perform better than those who see university through instrumental lenses (Entwistle and Peterson, 2004 ). These findings question the validity of the instrumental view in higher education as it seems that those that are intrinsically motivated to attend higher education, end up performing much better in higher education and also later on in the labour market. Therefore, in practice, the theoretical rivalry between the intrinsic and instrumental approach operate in a rather dialectic manner, where interactions between social actors move towards a convergence, despite the focus given by policy makers on the instrumental view.

Bourdieu ( 1984 , 1986 , 1998 , 2000 ) based on his radical democratic politics, argued that education inequalities are just a transformation of social inequalities and a way of reproduction of social status quo. Aronowitz ( 2004 ) acknowledged that the main function of public education in the US is to prepare students to meet the changes, occurred in contemporary workplaces. Even if this instrumental model involves the broad expansion of educational attainment, it also fails to alleviate class-based inequalities. He is in line with Bourdieu’s argument that social class relations are reproduced through schooling, as schools reinforce, rather than reduce, class-based inequalities. More recently, similar findings from various countries are very common in the literature (Chapman et al., 2011 ; Stephens et al., 2015 )

Apple ( 2001 ) argues that despite neoliberalism’s claims that privatisation, marketization, harmonisation and generally the globalisation of educational systems increase the quality of education, there are considerable findings in numerous studies that show that the expansion of higher education happens in tandem with the increase of income inequality and the aggravation of racial, gender and class differences. Gouthro ( 2002 ) argues that there has been a misrepresentation of the basic notions that characterise the purpose of education, such as critical thinking, justice and equity. Ganding and Apple ( 2002 ) went one step further by suggesting an alternative solution, which lies on the decentralisation of educational systems, using the “Citizen School” as an example of an educational institution, which prioritises quality in education and its provision to impoverished people. Finally, they call for a radical structural reform on educational systems worldwide, where the relationship between various social communities and the state is based on social justice and not on power.

Brown and Lauder ( 2006 ) investigated the impact of the fundamental changes on education, as related to the influence that various socio-economic and cultural factors have on policy making. Remaining sceptical against the empirical validity of human capital theory, they conclude that it cannot be guaranteed that graduates will secure employment and higher wages. Contrary to Card and Lemieux’s ( 2001 ) findings, the authors argue that when the wage-premium is not measured by averages, but is split in deciles within graduates, it is only the high-earning graduates that have experienced an increasing wage-gap during this period. Increasing incidences of over-education, due to an ever-increasing supply of graduates compared to the relatively modest growth rates of high-skilled jobs, have also been observed. Any differences in pay, between graduates and non-graduates, can be ascribed more to the stagnation of non-graduates' pay, rather than to graduates’ additional pay, because of their higher educational attainment. More recently, Mettler ( 2014 ) argues that the focus on corporate interests in policy making in the US has transformed higher education into a caste system that reproduces and also intensifies social inequalities.

There are evidence, which illustrate that families play a distinctive role in encouraging children’s abilities and traits through a warm and friendly family environment. As higher education requires a significant amount of money to be invested, families with high-income have more chances and means to promote their children’s abilities and traits as well as their career prospects, when compared with the low-income ones. Certainly, there are other factors, which can affect children’s prospects, but the advantage in favour of high-income families is relatively apparent in the empirical literature (Solon, 1999 ).

Livingstone and Stowe ( 2007 ), based on the General Social Survey (GSS), conducted an empirical study on the school completion rates partitioning individuals into family and class origin, residential area as well as race and gender. They focused on the relatively low completion rates of low-class individuals, from the inner city and rural areas of the US. Their findings reveal that working-class children are being discriminated on their school completion rates, compared with the mid- and high-class children. Race and gender discrimination has been detected in rural areas but not in inner cities and suburb areas, where the completion rates are more balanced.

Stone ( 2013 ), finally sees things from a very different perspective, where inequalities exist mainly because of simply bad luck. He argues in favour of lots, when a university has to decide whether to accept an applicant or not. Even if, an argument like this seems highly controversial, it consists of something that has been implemented in many countries, several times in the past (Hyland, 2011 ). The argument that an individual deserves a place in university just because he/she scored higher marks in a standardised sorting examination test does not prove that he/she will perform better in his/her subsequent academic tasks. Likewise, if an individual, who failed to secure a place in university due to low marks, was given a chance to enter university through a different procedure, he/she might have performed exceptionally well. Yet, human society cannot solely depend on lotteries and computer random algorithms, but sometimes, up to a certain point and in the name of fairness and transparency, there is a strong case for also looking on the merits for using one (Stone, 2013 ).

Furthermore, Lowe ( 2000 ) argued that the widening of higher education participation can create a hyper-inflation of credentials, causing their serious devaluation in the labour market. This relates to the concept of diploma disease, where labour markets create a false impression that a higher degree is a prerequisite for a job and therefore, induce individuals to undertake them only for the sake of getting a job (Dore, 1976 ; Collins, 1979 ). This situation can create a highly competitive credential market, and even if there are indications of higher education expansion, individuals from lower social class do not have equal opportunities to get a degree, which can lead them to a more prestigious occupational category. This is, in turn, very similar to the Weberian theory of educational credentialism, where credentials determine social stratum (Brown, 2003 ; Karabel, 2006 ; Douthat, 2005 ; Waters, 2012 ).

The concept of credential inflation has been extensively debated from many scholars, who question the role of formal education and the usefulness of the acquisition of skills within universities (Dore 1997 ; Collins, 1979 ; Walters, 2004 ; Hayes and Wynard, 2006 ). Evans et al. ( 2004 ) focuses on the tacit skills, which cannot be acquired by formal learning, mainly obtained by work and life experience as well as informal learning. These skills are competences related to the way a complex situation could be best approached or resemble to personal traits, which can be used for handling unforeseen situations.

Policy implications

Higher educational attainment that leads to a specific academic degree is a dynamic procedure, but with a pre-defined end. This renders the knowledge acquired there, as obsolete. Policies, such as Bologna Declaration supports an agenda, where graduates should be further encouraged to engage with on-the-job training and life-long education programmes (Coffield, 1999 ). Other scholars argue that institutions should have a broader role, acknowledging the benefits that higher educational attainment bring to societies as a whole by the simultaneous promotion of productivity, innovation and democratisation as well as the mitigation of social inequalities (Harvey, 2000 ; Hayward and James, 2004 ). Boosting employability for graduates is crucial and many international organisations are working towards the establishment of a framework, which can ensure that higher education satisfies this aim (Diamond et al., 2011 ). Yet, this can have negative side-effects making the employability gap between high- and low-skilled even wider, since there is no any policy framework specifically designed for low-skilled non-graduates on a similar to Bologna Declaration, supranational context. Heinze and Knill ( 2008 ) argue that convergence in higher education policy-making, as a result of the Bologna Process, depends on a combination of cultural, institutional and socio-economic national characteristics. Even if, it can be assumed that more equal countries, in terms of these characteristics, can converge much easier, it is still questionable if and how much national policy developments have been affected by the Bologna Declaration.

However, the political narrative of equal opportunities in terms of higher education participation rates does not seem very convincing (Brown and Hesketh, 2004 ; The Milburn Commission, 2009 ). It appears that a consensus has been reached in the relevant literature that there is a bias towards graduates from the higher social classes, but it has been gradually decreasing since 1960 (Bekhradnia, 2003 ; Tight, 2012 ). Nonetheless, despite the fact that, during the last few decades, there has been an improvement in the participation rates for the most vulnerable groups, such as women and ethnic minorities, the inequality is still obvious in some occasions (Greenbank and Hepworth, 2008 ). Machin and Van Reenen ( 1998 ) trace the causes of the under-participation in an intergenerational context, arguing that the positive relationship between parental income and participation rates is apparent even from the secondary school. Likewise, Gorard ( 2008 ) identifies underrepresentation on the previous poor school performance, which leads to early drop-outs in the secondary education, or into poor grades, which do not allow for a place in higher education. Other researchers argue that paradoxically, educational inequality persists even nowadays, albeit the policy orientation worldwide towards the widening of higher education participation across all social classes (Burke, 2012 ; Bathmaker et al., 2013 ).

There are different aspects on the purpose of higher education, which particularly, under the context of the ongoing economic uncertainty, gain some recognition and greater respect from academics and policy-makers. Lorenz ( 2006 ) notes that the employability agenda, which is constantly promoted within higher education institutions lately, cannot stand as a sustainable rationale in a diverse global environment. This harmonisation and standardisation of higher education creates permanent winners and losers, centralising all the gains, monetary and non-monetary, towards the most dominant countries, particularly towards Anglo-phone countries and specific industries and therefore social inequalities increase between as well as within countries. Some scholars call this phenomenon as Englishization (Coleman, 2006 ; Phillipson, 2009 ).

Tomusk ( 2002 , 2004 ) positioned education within the general framework of the recent institutional changes and the rapid rise of the short-term profits of the financial global capital. Specifically, the author sees World Bank as a transnational organisation. Given this, any loan agreement planned from the World Bank regarding higher education reforms in developing countries, has the same ultimate, but tacit, goal, which is the continuous rise of the national debt and in turn, the vitiation of national fiscal and monetary policies, in order the human resources of the so called “recipient countries”, to be redistributed in favour of a transnational dominant class.

Hunter ( 2013 ) places the debate under a broader political framework, juxtaposing neo-liberalism with the trends formulated by the OECD. She concludes that OECD is a very complex and multi-vocal organisation and when it comes to higher education policy suggestions, there is not any clear trend, especially towards neo-liberalism. This does not mean that economic thinking is not dominant within the OECD. This is, in fact, OECD’s main concern and it is clear to all. Hunter ( 2013 : 15–16) accordingly states that:

“Some may feel offended by the vocational and economic foci in OECD discourse. Many would like to see HE held up for “higher” ideals. However, it is fair for OECD to be concerned with economics. They do not deny that they are primarily an organization concerned with economics. It is up to us, the readers, politicians, scholars, voters, teachers, administrators, and policy makers, to be aware that this is an economic organization and be careful of from whom we get our assumptions”.

Hyslop-Margison ( 2000 ) investigated how the market economy affects higher education in Canada, when international organisations and Canadian business interfere in higher education policy making, under the support of government agencies. He argues that such economy-oriented policies deteriorate curriculum theory and development.

Letizia ( 2013 ) criticises market-oriented reforms, enacted by The Virginia Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2011, placing them within the context of market-driven policies informed by neoliberalism, where social institutions, such as higher education, should be governed by the law of free market. According to Letizia, this will have very negative implications to the humanistic character of education, affecting people’s intellectual and critical thinking, while perpetuating social inequalities.

The term Mcdonaldisation has been also used recently to capture functional similarities and trends in common, between higher education and ordinary commercial businesses. Thus, efficiency, calculability, predictability and maximisation are high priorities in the American and British educational systems and because of their global influence, these characteristics are being expanding worldwide (Hayes and Wynard, 2006 ; Garland, 2008 ; Ritzer, 2010 ).

The notion of Mcdonaldisation is very well explained by Garland ( 2008 , no pagination):

“Mcdonaldisation can be seen as the tendency toward hyper-rationalisation of these same processes, in which each and every task is broken down into its most finite part, and over which the individual performing it has little or no control becoming all by interchangeable. It may be argued that the labour processes involved in advanced technological capitalism increasingly depend on either the handling and processing of information, or provision of services requiring instrumentalised forms of communication and interaction, just as the same “professional” roles frequently consist of largely mechanized, functional tasks requiring a minimum of individual input or initiative, let alone creative or critical thought, a process illustrated in blackly comic by the 1999 film Office Space”.

Realistically, higher education cannot be solely conceptualised by the human capital approach and similar quantitative interpretations, as it has cultural, psychological, idiosyncratic and social implications. Additionally, Hoxby ( 1996 ) argued that policy environment and systems of governance in higher education play a significant role to an individuals’ decision-making process to obtain further education and unfortunately, policy makers regard this aspect as static that can never be transformed.

Lepori and Bonaccorsi ( 2013 ), following Latour and Woolgar’s ( 1979 ) rationale of the high importance of vested interest in scientific endeavours, argue that higher education trends are too complex to be reduced and captured adequately, by the use of economic indicators as related to the labour market. However, the market and money value of higher education should not be neglected, especially in developing countries, as there is evidence that it can help people escape the vicious cycle of poverty and therefore it has a practical and more pragmatic purpose to fulfil (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos, 2004 ). According to World Bank ( 2013 ), education can contribute to a significant decrease of the number of poor people globally and increase social mobility when it manages to provides greater opportunities for children coming from poor families. There are also other studies that do not only focus to strict economic factors, but also to the contribution of educational attainment to fertility and mortality rates as well as to the level of health and the creation of more responsible and participative citizens, bolstering democracy and social justice (Council of Europe, 2004 ; Osler and Starkey, 2006 ; Cogan and Derricott, 2014 ).

Mountford-Zimdars and Sabbagh ( 2013 ), analysing the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey, offer a plausible explanation on why the widening of participation in higher education is not that easy to be implemented politically, in the contemporary western democracies. The majority of the people, who have benefited from higher educational attainment in monetary and non-monetary terms, are reluctant to support the openness of higher education to a broader population. On the contrary, those that did not succeed or never tried to secure a place in a higher education institute, are very supportive of this idea. This clash of interests creates a political perplexity, making the process of policy-making rather dubious. Therefore, the apparent paradox of the increase in higher educational attainment, along with a stable rate in educational inequalities, does not seem that strange when vested interests of certain groups are taken into account.

Moreover, the decision for someone to undertake higher education is not solely influenced by its added value in the labour market. Since an individual is exposed to different experiences and influences, strategic decisions can easily change, especially when these are taken from adolescents or individuals in their early stages of their adulthood. Given this, perceptions and preferences do change with ageing and this is why there are some individuals who drop out from university, others who choose radical shifts in their career or others who return to education after having worked in the labour market for many years and in different types of jobs.

Higher education has expanded rapidly after WWII. The advent of new technologies dictates the enhancement of people’s talents and skills and the creation of a knowledge-based-economy, which in turn, demands for even more high-skilled workers. Policy aims for higher education in the western world is undoubtedly focusing on its diffusion to a broader population. This expansion is seen as a policy instrument to alleviate social and income inequalities. However, the implementation of such policies has been proved extremely difficult in practise, mainly because of existent conflicted interests between groups of people, but also because of its institutional incapacity to target the most vulnerable. Nonetheless, it has been observed a constant marketization process in higher education, making it less accessible to people from poor economic background. Concerns on the persistence of policy-makers to focus primarily on the economic values of higher education have been increasingly expressed, as strict economic reasoning in higher education contradicts with political claims for its continuing expansion.

On the other hand, there are studies arguing that the instrumental model can make the transition of graduates into the labour market smoother. Such studies are placed under the mainstream economics framework and are also informed by policy decisions implemented by the Bologna Process, where competitiveness, harmonisation and employability are the main policy axes. The Bologna Process and various other institutions (e.g., the EU, World Bank, OECD) have provided a framework under which higher education can be seen as inextricably linked with labour market dynamics; however, the intrinsic notion of higher education is treated more as a nuisance and less as a vital component on this framework. Nevertheless, this makes the job competition between graduates much more intense and also creates very negative implications for those that remain with low qualifications as they effectively become socially and economically marginalised.

The purpose of higher education and its role in modern societies remains a heated philosophical debate, with strong practical and policy implications. This article sheds more light to this debate by presenting a synthetic narrative of the relevant literature, which can be used as a basis for future theoretical and empirical research in understanding contemporary trends in higher education as interwoven with the evolutions in the broader socio-economic sphere. Specifically, two conflicting theoretical stances have been discussed. The mainstream view primarily aims to assist individuals to increase their income and their relative position in the labour market. On the other hand, the intrinsic notion focus on understanding its purpose under ontological and epistemological considerations. Under this conceptual framework, the enhancement of individual creativity and emancipation are in conflict with the contemporary institutional settings related to power, dominance and economic reasoning. This conflict can influence people’s perceptions on the purpose of higher education, which can in turn perpetuate or otherwise revolutionise social relations and roles.

However, even if the two theoretical stances presented are regarded as contradictory, this article argues that, in practical terms, they can be better seen as complementing each other. From one hand, using an instrumental perspective, an increase in higher education participation, focusing particularly on the most vulnerable and deprived members of society, can alleviate problems of income and social inequalities. The instrumental view of education has a very important role to play if focused on lower-income social classes, as it can become the mechanism towards the alleviation of income inequalities. On the other hand, apart from the pecuniary, there are also other non-pecuniary benefits associated with this, such as the improvement in the fertility and mortality and general health level rates or the boost of active democracy and citizenship even within workplaces and therefore a shift of higher education towards its intrinsic purposes is also needed. (Bowles and Gintis, 2002 ; Council of Europe, 2004 ; Brennan, 2004 ; Brown and Lauder, 2006 ; Wolff and Barsamian, 2012 ).

Summing up, education is not a simply just another market process. It is not just an institution that supply graduates as products that have some predetermined value in the labour market. Consequently, acquired knowledge in education verified by college degrees is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the labour market to create appropriate jobs, where graduates utilise and expand this knowledge. In fact, the increasing costs of higher education, mostly due to its internationalisation, and the rising levels of job mismatch create a rather gloomy picture of the current economic environment, which seems to preserve the well-paid jobs mostly to those from a certain socio-economic class background. At the same time, poor students are vastly disadvantaged to more wealthy ones, considering the huge differences in terms of higher as well as their past education, their parent’s education and also certain elitist traditions that work towards perpetuating power relations in favour of the dominant class.

As Castoriadis ( 1997 ) notes, it is impossible to separate education from its social context. We, as human beings, acquire knowledge, in the sense of what Castoriadis calls paideia , from the day we born until the day we die. We are being constantly developed and transformed along with the social transformations that happen around us. The transformation on the individual is in constant interaction with social transformations, where no cause and effect exists. Formal schooling has become nowadays an apathetic task where no real engagement with learning happens, while its major components such as educators, families and students are largely disconnected with each other. Educators, cynically execute the teaching task that a curriculum dictates each time, families’ main concern is to attach a market value to their children educational attainment, “labelling” them with a credential that the labour market allegedly desires, while students pay attention to anything else apart from the knowledge they get per se and therefore they care too little for its quality and also its practical use.

To tackle the ever-growing social inequalities due to the narrow economic policy making in education, we need a radical shift towards policies that are informed from Freire’s problem-posing education and Sen’s capabilities approach, get insights in terms of structure from Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory, while giving context according to the Bildung tradition also acknowledging that education, apart from instrument, is a vehicle towards liberation, cultural realisation as well as social transformation. In practical terms, real-world examples from Finland or Germany can be used, which policy makers from around the world should start paying more attention to, moving away from narrow and sterile instrumentalism that has spectacularly failed to tackle social inequalities.

In the context of a modern world where monetary costs and benefits are the basis of policy arguments, a massification and broader diffusion of higher education to a much broader population implies marketisation and commercialisation of its purpose and in turn its inclusion on an economy-oriented model where knowledge, skills, curriculum and academic credentials inevitably presuppose a money-value and have a financial purpose to fulfil. The policy trends towards an economy-based-knowledge, through a strict instrumental reasoning, rather than the alleged knowledge-based-economy seems to persist and prevail, albeit its poor performance on alleviating income and social inequalities. Yet, in a global context of a prolonged economic stagnation and a continuous deterioration of society’s democratic reflexes, a shift towards a model, where knowledge is not subdued to economic reasoning, can inform a new societal paradigm of a genuine knowledge-based-economy, where economy would become a means rather than an ultimate goal for human development and social progress.

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For example, Confucian tradition is very rich, when it comes to education and human development. It is indeed very interesting to see how the basic principles of Confucian education, such as humanism, harmony and hierarchy, has been transformed through time and especially after the change in China’s economic model by Den Xiaoping’s reforms towards a more open economic system and along this a more business-oriented and globalised educational system. Perhaps the Chinese tradition in education, which mainly regards education as a route to social status and material success based on merit and constant examination can explain why the human capital theory is more applicable. On the other hand, additional notions in the Confucian tradition that education should be open to all, irrespective of the social class each person belongs to (apart perhaps from women and servants that were rather considered as human beings with limited social rights), its focus on ethics and its purpose to prepare efficient and loyal practitioners for the government introduces an apparent paradox with human capital theory but not necessarily with the instrumental view of education. This contradiction deserves to be appropriately and thoroughly examined in a separate analysis before it is contrasted to the Western tradition. For this reason the current research focuses only on the Western world leaving the comparison analysis with educational traditions found around the world, among them the Confucian tradition, as a task that will be conducted in the near future.

The use of capital in Bourdieu is criticised by a stream of social science scholars as rather promiscuous and unfortunate (Goldthorpe, 2007 ). They argue that a paradox here is apparent as in English linguistic etymological terms, the word capital implies, if not presupposes market activity. The same time Bourdieu criticises Becker’s human capital tradition as solely market-driven and a tacit way where the ruling class maintain their power through universities and other institutions. Waters ( 2012 ) argue that the use of the term “capital” in both Becker’s and Bourdieu’s writings is unfortunate, while both use the term to mean different things. Bourdieu’s understanding on the nature of “habitus” is a much more applicable term to explain the social role of education systems. Habitus is not capital, even if there is constant interaction between the two. Becker on the other hand, seem to neglect social and cultural capital as well as Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, which in turn is about the reproduction of society and power relations by universities and other institutions.

Some might have valid ontological objections on this, in terms of the purpose of philosophy as a whole; however the concept of Bildung has given education a role within society that moves away from individualism and the constant pursuit of material objects as ultimate means of well-being.

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Why the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action matters

Elissa Nadworny

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected race-conscious admissions in higher education at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, overturning more than 40 years of legal precedent .

The ruling in the two cases hands opponents of affirmative action a major victory. The opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, found that the admissions programs at both universities violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

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Roberts also wrote that schools could still consider an applicant's discussion of how race affected his or her life, "be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise." But not, he wrote, through a specific application essay or other means.

"This is a very strident curtailing of the ability to use race-conscious admissions policies," says Dominique Baker, a professor of education policy at Southern Methodist University. "This is bad. But it's important to pay attention to the details, because those details are how we think about what institutions can do right now at the moment as they're gearing up to start working on admissions for the next year."

In the Harvard case, the court considered whether the school discriminated against Asian American students in the admissions process. With UNC, the court considered whether the school was using race-conscious admissions in an appropriately limited manner. The conservative activist group Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) was behind both the Harvard and the UNC cases.

The ruling mainly affects a select number of colleges

There are nearly 4,000 colleges and universities in the U.S., and only a small portion — slightly more than 200 — have highly selective admissions, where fewer than 50% of applicants get in. That's just over 200 schools where the ruling on a race-conscious admissions process could make a significant difference.

And yet, despite how few students these policies would actually affect, what happens at these elite institutions matters.

They remain a key gatekeeper to access at high levels of government and industry. As just one example, currently eight of the nine Supreme Court justices attended law school at Harvard or Yale.

Can race play a role in college admissions? The Supreme Court hears the arguments

Recently, researchers from Georgetown University ran simulations to see what would happen if race was removed from college admissions. They found that a national ban would decrease the ethnic diversity of students at selective colleges, unless there was "a fundamental redesign of the college admissions system," which would include eliminating legacy and athletic recruitment, among other things.

In the simulations, removing race and relying on different combinations of high school grades, test scores, or social-economic indicators did not yield more ethnically diverse classes.

Zack Mabel, a professor of education and economics at Georgetown and an author on the research, explained the findings like this:

"It boils down to: The more information that you are able to consider about the educational opportunities and disadvantages that an individual has had in their life, the better you as an admissions officer are going to be at understanding who is going to be a qualified applicant."

Mabel says current admissions criteria reinforce disparities in educational opportunity that exist in the K-12 system, and that research has shown that at highly selective colleges, "students admitted with lower grades and scores are just as likely to succeed as the rest of their classmates."

This echoes previous research conducted in several states that have banned race-conscious admissions from ballot measures. Those statewide bans include Michigan since 2006 , California since 1996 (and reaffirmed in 2020), and Washington since 1998 ( and reaffirmed in 2019 ).

Broader implications throughout higher education

Experts say the court's new decision could have implications beyond just admissions.

"We have to think beyond just the who-gets-in and who-gets-to-enroll piece," says Baker, at Southern Methodist University. The ruling could affect financial aid decisions, including targeted scholarships and efforts by campuses to create communities of students from diverse backgrounds.

She wonders, for example, whether a program designed to increase the number of Black doctors — with support to complete the pre-med curriculum and get into medical school — will now be challenged.

Throughline

Affirmative action.

Mitchell Chang, who studies diversity in education at UCLA, says that after the statewide bans went into effect in Michigan, California and Washington, modifications to what was once more targeted "race-conscious scholarships, race-conscious programming, race-conscious recruitment" followed.

Today's ruling, he says, "may have a much broader sweep, in fact, than just with admissions."

OiYan Poon, a visiting education professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, points to early court filings from the plaintiffs in the Harvard case, arguing to end "any use of race or ethnicity in the educational setting" — not just in admissions.

But Liliana Garces, a professor of education at the University of Texas at Austin, maintains that Thursday's opinion is limited to race in college admissions — and nothing else. "The only legal issue that was before the court was the consideration of race in admissions."

She says it's now up to universities to implement the ruling in their practices and policies. But she believes this decision does not explicitly prohibit race-conscious decisions in other areas, such as financial aid. "It'll be important for institutions to hold their ground and be able to engage in those other practices that are absolutely foundational to their mission."

Baker agrees: "We want to make sure that we don't overstate what the legal contours are, because that might create a chilling effect where institutions restrict themselves further than the legal limits." She's especially interested in the line in Justice Roberts' majority opinion about how schools can still consider the way race impacted an applicant's life.

"That tells me that there are some pathways forward," Baker says. "But are those pathways forward the most effective ways of trying to achieve more racial equity within college admissions? No."

Colleges have used other ways to diversify student bodies — but they aren't always as effective

The Coronavirus Crisis

Colleges are backing off sat, act scores — but the exams will be hard to shake.

Using race in admissions isn't the only way states and colleges have tried to diversify their incoming classes.

After California banned race-conscious admissions in 1996, the proportions of Black and Latino students at UCLA, one of the most highly selective schools in the state's system, fell drastically. By 2006, a decade later, only 96 Black students enrolled in a freshman class of nearly 5,000. They became known as the " Infamous 96 ."

The University of California responded to those numbers by recrafting its admissions policies to take a more "holistic" approach, considering several factors including whether students were the first in their family to go to college, what high school they went to, and their family's income. The university has spent more than 20 years, and hundreds of millions of dollars in new programs and scholarships, in efforts to restore that level of diversity.

Other ideas for promoting campus diversity include admitting a percentage of the state's high school students, like the University of Texas at Austin, which automatically admits Texas students in the top 6% of their high school graduating class . Lotteries have also been proposed, where eligible students with high qualifications would be randomly selected for acceptance.

How the Supreme Court has ruled in the past about affirmative action

But so far, researchers say, none of the alternatives has been as effective as considering race.

"Nothing is as good at helping to enroll a more racially equitable class than using race. Nothing comes close to it," says Baker. "There are other tools; other ideas. But if race is not taken into consideration, those different types of techniques and tools do not replicate what race-conscious admissions policies do."

What happens next

This opinion comes less than a decade since the last time the high court ruled on affirmative action. In Fisher v. University of Texas in 2016, the court ruled that colleges could consider race in admissions.

The two cases the court ruled on Thursday are Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admission v. University of North Carolina .

While very similar, the cases represent two very different admissions environments: UNC is a state school that highly favors in-state students ( it's only allowed to admit 18% of first-year students from out of state ), while Harvard is a highly selective private school that admits fewer than 5% of all applicants (that's just under 2,000 students this fall ).

In amicus briefs filed with the Supreme Court ahead of the arguments in these two cases, the University of Michigan and the University of California, Berkeley both admitted that their efforts to meet their diversity goals, without using race, were falling short .

But not every school says it is struggling to achieve diversity without race-conscious admissions.

The attorney general of Oklahoma filed a brief on behalf of several states in support of the plaintiffs in the two cases: "The University of Oklahoma, for example, remains just as diverse today (if not more so) than it was when Oklahoma banned affirmative action in 2012." The university's main campus in Norman currently has a U.S. undergraduate student population that is about 60% white and 5% Black .

In the absence of race in the admissions process, Kelly Slay, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who studies affirmative action, expects to see colleges increase targeted recruitment, expand financial aid including free-college programs, and go test-optional, in an effort to maintain their ethnic and racial diversity.

But, she says, "we don't have anything that works as effectively at producing and enhancing racial diversity as race-conscious affirmative action. We have over 20 years of data and research on that."

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More From Forbes

Recasting higher education as a national strategic asset.

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A new national council is working not simply on the future of U.S. higher education but on its ... [+] future as a strategic asset to our nation's democracy, economy, society, national security, and global stature.

Something important is happening. A select group of university leaders, business leaders, government and military leaders is working to position higher education in a new light. Whether recasting higher education, reaffirming it as a strategic asset to our nation, or recommitting institutions and those who would partner with them to this critical role, this new commission is undertaking work that is both timely and critically needed. Never have the challenges to our nation been greater. And never has the public perception of higher education been as low.

A recent article by Henry Stoever, AGB ’s former President & CEO, in Trusteeship magazine, a publication whose readership includes university presidents and members of their governing boards, asserted that American democracy and our country’s role as a world leader are in jeopardy. Stoever’s article laid out specific concerns and challenges that lay before us at the intersection of higher education, our democracy, our economy, and our society and called for higher education institution governing boards to work closely with their CEO’s, administrators, and faculty to overcome these challenges. This call to action received overwhelming interest and support inspiring a vision for creating a national strategic response, not just a collection of responses from individual institutions. A clear need was identified for a unified national strategy to address some of the most pressing outcomes-related issues in higher education – those that have both held institutions back (inhibited change and evolution) and led to perceptions of being out-of-touch, of marginal value, or even irrelevant – but also one that leverages what higher educational institutions can do well, and uniquely well, to “grow the talent needed to fuel our economy, address gaps across student groups and between the academy and industry, and achieve internationally competitive levels of learning for our students compared to their global peers” ( On My Agenda : Elevating Higher Education as a Strategic Asset, by Henry Stoever , AGB Trusteeship magazine, May/June 2023.) This led to vision, shared by multiple associations and organizations, for a national council not simply on the future of U.S. higher education but on its future as a strategic asset to the nation – its democracy, economy, society, national security, and global stature.

National councils and commissions on higher education reforms to meet emerging and future needs are not new. Neither are challenges to higher education, nor calls for reform or innovation, from U.S. presidents, members of Congress, higher education coordinating boards, industry or university leaders. In response, AGB’s former President & CEO Henry Stoever formed the Council on Higher Education as a Strategic Asset ( HESA ) with the goal of developing specific and actionable recommendations to federal and state legislators and agencies, business and industry leaders, higher education boards, presidents and chancellors, and chief executive officers.

The council (38 commissioners and 12 strategic advisors ) comprises business, government, higher education, and military leaders with a shared goal to develop an urgent higher education strategy to raise the global competitive position of the United States. Specifically, the council is charged with developing high-impact recommendations to leverage the strengths of our higher education institutions to “drive global competitiveness, keep our nation secure, sustain our democracy, and propel economic and social prosperity” – bold goals at a challenging time for higher education and our nation.

The intention of the policy recommendations is to build a national agenda for targeted support (intentionality and resources) to effectively position higher education as a strategic asset. The HESA recommendations are expected to be released in early 2025. Those working in, alongside, or near higher education, are unlikely to be surprised by any of the council’s recommendations that will, almost certainly, focus on access and affordability, adaptability and flexibility, innovations and partnerships, clearer ties to economic development and workforce development, demonstrated return-on-investment, and increased focus on social mobility. But we may also see specific recommendations that speak to strengthening our democracy through civics education and co-curricular opportunities, breaking down barrier across institutions well as states within a region, creating greater flow between and among institutions through more robust articulation agreements and shared resources, and launching new university-industry partnerships such as those being modeled by Amazon, Walmart, Starbucks, and others.

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The HESA council will need to strike a careful balance in setting bold goals and making specific ... [+] recommendations. Each must be informed, actionable, and achievable. They must inspire support and compel action.

There have been several reports of presidential commissions on education published in the last century, including the Truman Report, “Higher Education for American Democracy” (1947), President Eisenhower’s “Committee on Education Beyond High School” (1956), President Kennedy’s Task Force on Education (1960), and President Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education (1983). The latter commission produced the well-known and oft cited report, A Nation at Risk. President Bush’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, also known as the Spellings Commission as it was led by U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, issued its report, A Test of Leadership , in 2006.

Unlike previous commissions and councils , HESA was not the result of a presidential charge or a Congressional edict. Rather, HESA has had a more organic and more representative genesis. While the original concept and early planning came from the Association of Governing Boards (AGB), it quickly (and by design) evolved into a council jointly administered and driven by multiple organizations and institutions from both the public and private sector. The HESA council is chaired by Michael Crow , president of Arizona State University, Linda Gooden , board chair of the University System of Maryland, and Robert J. King , the former assistant secretary for postsecondary education in the U.S. Department of Education. HESA also is backed by many affiliated organizations and associations. It is broadly inclusive, its commissioners and strategic advisors all have held senior executive positions in their organizations, and its ambitious agenda is one that is truly shared.

The HESA council will need to strike a careful balance in setting bold goals and making specific recommendations. Each must be informed, actionable, and achievable. They must inspire support and compel action. Such commissions and councils seem to only come around every decade or two . Some reasonable questions and reflections on past efforts include: How often are their recommendations enacted? How often are they enduring? How often are recommendations carried forward to the next generation and the next national commission’s work? How often are the same recommendations made (perhaps with updated language)? Where have past commissions succeeded and where have they fallen short? The answers to these questions have no doubt informed and continue to motivate the HESA commissioners and advisors.

The work of the Council on Higher Education as a Strategic Asset (HESA) will not close all remaining gaps or address all of the challenges issued by previous commissions. But their work will serve to deepen and broaden the discussions around higher education as a strategic asset and an engine for growth, security, inclusion, and democracy.

HESA’s recommendations, as with those from past commissions , will be met with criticism. They will fuel debate and may even be seen by some as controversial. Historians and scholars, years from now, will find flaws in the commissioners’ logic, question their social or moral compasses, and point to holes in their plans. They will describe their recommendations as being “of their time” and “ahead of their time,” things that are ascribed to all previous national higher education commissions and councils. One thing they all have in common is that the commissioners and advisors endeavor to speak to both the issues of their day and the anticipated issues of tomorrow, the latter being seen through their present-day eyes with all of the present-day biases, assumptions, social norms, and ignorance.

Will they get it all right? No. Responses may be incomplete, unsustainable, or socially irrelevant (or even offensive) in future years. They may miss the mark entirely, anticipating a technological or societal advance that is not realized, or failing to anticipate a system shock they had never imagined. But their recommendations to the White House, members of congress, state officials, and both business leaders and Higher Ed leaders will form the basis for priorities, commitments, and a framework for change. A more robust conversation about the role of higher education as a societal driver and a strategic asset for the nation will emerge. New models, new partnerships, and new ways of linking investments to outcomes will surely be recommended. Higher educational leaders, faculty, and boards will be challenged to be more flexible, more adaptable, more forward-looking, and more collaborative across institutions and industry sectors.

Higher Ed often is called upon to solve (what seems at times to be) “all that ails us.” It is also accused of being rigid, reticent, and resistant to change – steeped in tradition and clinging to centuries-old values and processes – stubborn and stagnant. In the face and wake of economic challenges, pandemics and global health challenges, resource challenges and inequities (whether food, financial, natural resources, or other), challenges to our social systems, and even challenges to democracy itself, Higher Ed must once again step up and deliver.

HESA’s forthcoming recommendations can help to shape and drive that response. It can also help to forge new and stronger partnerships and drive new investments. HESA’s goal is to inspire action, from within higher education and outside of it, that will position U.S. higher education as a public good, an engine for social change and democracy, a strategic asset, and a global leader in the decades ahead.

David V. Rosowsky, Ph.D . is an award-winning author who has written extensively on challenges and opportunities facing higher education (in particular, public research universities) in the post-pandemic era. A former university provost and senior vice president, he currently serves as vice president for research at Kansas State University and is a strategic advisor to the Council on Higher Education as a Strategic Asset (HESA).

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Higher Education Isn’t the Enemy

Those who threaten academic freedom, from outside or inside campus, are threatening higher education itself—to America’s peril.

I ’ve spent more than five decades making difficult decisions in finance, government, business, and politics. Looking back, what most prepared me for the life I’ve led was the open exchange of ideas that I experienced in college and law school, supported by a society-wide understanding that universities and their faculty should be allowed to pursue areas of study as they see fit, without undue political or financial pressure. More broadly, throughout my career, I have seen firsthand the way America’s higher-education system strengthens our nation.

I cannot recall a time when the country’s colleges and universities, and the wide range of benefits they bring, have faced such numerous or serious threats. Protests over Gaza, Israel, Hamas, and anti-Semitism—and the attempt by certain elected officials and donors to capitalize on these protests and push a broader anti-higher-education agenda—have been the stuff of daily headlines for months. But the challenges facing colleges and universities have been building for years, revealed in conflicts over everything from climate change and curriculum to ideological diversity and academic governance.

But there is a threat that is being ignored, one that goes beyond any single issue or political controversy. Transfixed by images of colleges and universities in turmoil, we risk overlooking the foundational role that higher education plays in American life. With its underlying principles of free expression and academic freedom, the university system is one of the nation’s great strengths. It is not to be taken for granted. Undermining higher education would harm all Americans, weakening our country and making us less able to confront the many challenges we face.

T he most recent upheavals on American campuses—and the threat posed to the underlying principles of higher education—have been well documented.

In some cases, individuals have been silenced or suppressed, not because they were threatening anyone’s physical safety or disrupting the functioning of the university environment, but rather, it seems, because of their opinions. The University of Southern California, for example, recently canceled its valedictorian’s speech at graduation. Although administrators cited safety concerns, many on campus, including the student herself, said they believe that the true cause lay in the speaker’s pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel views . One does not have to agree with the sentiments being expressed by a speaker in order to be troubled by the idea that they would be suppressed because of their content.

Conor Friedersdorf: Columbia University’s impossible position

In other cases, it is the demonstrators themselves who have sought to force their views on others—by breaking university policies regarding shared spaces, occupying buildings, and reportedly imposing ideological litmus tests on students seeking to enter public areas of campus. Some activists have advocated violence against those with whom they disagree. Even before the unrest of recent weeks, I had heard for many years from students and professors that they felt a chilling effect on campuses that rendered true discussion—including exchanges of ideas that might make others uncomfortable—very difficult.

Even as free speech faces serious threats from inside the campus, academic freedom is under assault from outside. To an unprecedented degree, donors have involved themselves in pressure campaigns, explicitly linking financial support to views expressed on campus and the scholarship undertaken by students and faculty. At the University of Pennsylvania, one such effort pressed donors to reduce their annual contribution to $1 to protest the university’s decision to host a Palestinian literary conference. At Yale, Beverly Gage, the head of the prestigious Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy, felt compelled to resign after the program came under increasing pressure from its donors. Among other things, the donors objected to an op-ed by an instructor in the program headlined “How to Protect America From the Next Donald Trump.”

It’s not just donors. Elected officials and candidates for office are also attacking academic freedom. On a Zoom call whose content was subsequently leaked, a Republican member of Congress, Jim Banks of Indiana, characterized recent hearings with the presidents of Harvard, MIT, Penn, and Columbia—along with upcoming ones with the presidents of Rutgers, UCLA, and Northwestern—as part of a strategy to “defund these universities.” In a recent campaign video, former President Trump asserted that colleges are “turning our students into Communists and terrorists and sympathizers,” and promised to retaliate by taxing, fining, and suing private universities if he wins a second term. Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio, a close ally of Trump’s, has introduced a bill that would punish schools that don’t crack down on demonstrators. The bill would tax the endowment of such schools heavily and curb their access to federal funds.

The methods of these donors and politicians—politically motivated subpoenas and hearings, social-media pressure campaigns, campaign-trail threats—may not violate the First Amendment. They do, however, seek to produce a chilling effect on free speech. The goal of these efforts is to force universities to bow to outside pressure and curtail the range of ideas they allow—not because scholars at universities believe those ideas lack merit, but because the ideas are at odds with the political views of those bringing the pressure.

A ll of this needs to be seen against a foreboding backdrop. At a time when trust in many American institutions is at an all-time low, skepticism about higher education is on the rise. Earlier this year, a noteworthy essay by Douglas Belkin in The Wall Street Journal explored “Why Americans Have Lost Faith in the Value of College.” The New York Times wondered last fall whether college might be a “risky bet.” According to Gallup, confidence in higher education has fallen dramatically—from 57 percent in 2015 to 36 percent in 2023. The attacks on free expression and academic freedom on campus are both causes and symptoms of this declining confidence.

It is ironic that, at a moment when higher education faces unprecedented assaults, more Americans than ever have a college diploma. When I graduated from college, in 1960, only 8 percent of Americans held a four-year degree. Today, that number has increased almost fivefold, to 38 percent. Even so, I suspect that many Americans don’t realize just how exceptional the country’s university system actually is. Although the United States can claim less than 5 percent of the world’s population, it is home to 65 percent of the world’s 20 highest-ranked universities (and 28 percent of the world’s top-200 universities). Americans can get a quality education at thousands of academic institutions throughout the country.

Despite the skepticism in some quarters about whether a college degree is really worth it, the financial benefits of obtaining a degree remain clear. At 25, college graduates may earn only about 27 percent more than high-school-diploma holders. However, the college wage premium doubles over the course of their lifetime, jumping to 60 percent by the time they reach age 55. Looking solely at an individual’s financial prospects, the case for attending college remains strong.

David Deming: The college backlash is going too far

But the societal benefits we gain from higher education are far greater—and that’s the larger point. Colleges and universities don’t receive tax exemptions and public funds because of the help they give to specific individuals. We invest in higher education because there’s a broad public purpose.

Our colleges and universities are seen, rightly, as centers of learning, but they are also engines of economic growth. Higher graduation rates among our young people lead to a better-educated workforce for businesses and a larger tax base for the country as a whole. Institutions of higher education spur early-stage research of all kinds, create environments for commercializing that research, provide a base for start-up and technology hubs, and serve as a mentoring incubator for new generations of entrepreneurs and business leaders. In many communities, especially smaller towns and rural areas, campuses also create jobs that would be difficult to replace.

The importance of colleges and universities to the American economy will grow in the coming decades. As the list of industries that can be automated with AI becomes longer, the liberal-arts values and critical-thinking skills taught by colleges and universities will become only more valuable. Machine learning can aid in decision making. It cannot fully replace thoughtfulness and judgment.

Colleges and universities also help the United States maintain a geopolitical edge. We continue to attract the best and brightest from around the world to study here. Although many of these students stay and strengthen the country, many more return home, bringing with them a lifelong positive association with the United States. When I served as Treasury secretary, I found it extremely advantageous that so many of my foreign counterparts had spent their formative years in the U.S. That’s just as true today. In many instances, even the leadership class in unfriendly countries aspires to send its children to study here. In a multipolar world, this kind of soft-power advantage matters more than ever.

At home, higher education helps create the kind of citizenry that is central to a democracy’s ability to function and perhaps even to survive. This impact may be hard to quantify, but that doesn’t make it any less real.

It is not just lawmakers and executives who must make difficult decisions in the face of uncertainty. All of us—from those running civil-society groups that seek to influence policy to the voters who put elected leaders in office in the first place—are called upon to make hard choices as we live our civic lives. All of us are aware that the country is not in its best condition—this is hardly news. Imagine what that condition might be if we set out to undermine the very institutions that nurture rigorous and disciplined thinking and the free exchange of ideas.

O f course , there is much about higher education that needs fixing. Precisely because colleges and universities are so valuable to society, they should do more to engage with it. Bringing down costs can help ensure that talented, qualified young people are not denied higher education for financial reasons. Being clear about the principles and policies regarding the open expression of views—even as we recognize that applying them may require judgment calls, and that it is crucial to protect student safety and maintain an environment where learning and research can be conducted—would help blunt the criticism, not always made in good faith, that universities have an ideological agenda. Communicating more effectively with the public would help more Americans understand what is truly at stake.

But the fact that universities can do more does not change a basic fact: It is harmful to society to put constraints on open discussion or to attack universities for purposes of short-term political gain. Perhaps some of those trying to discourage the open exchange of ideas at universities believe that we can maintain their quality while attacking the culture of academic independence. I disagree. Unfettered discussion and freedom of thought and expression are the foundation upon which the greatness of our higher-education system is built. You cannot undermine the former without damaging the latter. To take one recent example: After Governor Ron DeSantis reshaped Florida’s New College along ideological lines, one-third of the faculty left within a year. This included scholars not only in fields such as gender studies, which many conservatives view with distaste, but in areas such as neuroscience as well.

We can have the world’s greatest higher-education system, with all of the benefits it brings to our country, or we can have colleges and universities in which the open exchange of views is undermined by pressure campaigns from many directions. We can’t have both.

Defining higher-ed policy for AI in teaching and learning

There is a critical need for institutions of higher education to adopt a framework to guide both ai policy and practice.

Key points:

• Students need to be prepared for a world with AI–and higher-ed must keep pace
• The link between AI fluency and the next education revolution
• Defining a path to equitable AI in higher education
• For more news on AI, visit eCN’s Teaching & Learning hub

The overall approach to the use of AI in higher ed is perhaps best described in terms of three groups: those who want to ban its use outright (often driven by concerns related to loss of employment, and fears of increased cheating and loss of ethical critical thinking abilities by students), those who are content to wait (thereby putting their students at risk of not being employable), and those who are moving forward over a continuum from individuals, and departments, to the entire university.

Given the increasing need for students to be prepared for a data- and AI-driven world, and the tremendous potential for AI to transform higher ed from a “one-size fits all” place- and time-driven archaic system to a personalized and agile knowledge enterprise enabling learning at scale, there is an increasing need for the establishment of institutional-level policies for the development, implementation, and use of AI tools/platforms for teaching and learning.

Although a number of general framework documents already exist, [1] , [2] , [3] these are largely written from the perspective of independent technology development by third parties, followed by use by institutions of higher education rather than from an integrated approach with agency remaining at the institutional level right from the outset. While the former is based on the situation largely at play currently, the latter is one that needs to be the norm following well-defined levels and steps that are learner- and learning-centered, with enhanced access, and attainment in mind. [4]

Acknowledging that the role of higher education is not just to serve individual aspirations but rather to contribute to the public good, including through the building of socio-cultural understanding and enhancement of socio-economic mobility of the learner, and thence the economic upliftment of the communities in which they reside and work, it is important that any framework for development and implementation of AI in higher education start with the basic consideration of ethics, responsibility, and equity:

• Ethical AI relates to fundamental principles and values. It provides guidelines that align the use of AI with societal values such as fairness, transparency, privacy, and security . Floridi [5] described it as beneficent, non-maleficence, autonomy, justice, and explicability. Thus, ethical AI is predictive and prescriptive in nature and emphasizes the balance between risk and potential, value and principles, resulting in a need for technical and behavioral standards for the development and application of AI tools emphasizing the tactical aspects of accountability, fairness, and explainability to ensure that real-world implications of bias, discrimination, privacy, malicious disinformation, and harmful decision making are addressed.
• Responsible AI effectively puts the philosophy and principles of ethical AI into action to assure that the technology developed, and the tools resulting thereof, are robust/reliable, fair, and trustworthy through guaranteed levels of reliability and oversight .
• Equitable AI builds on the foundations of ethics and responsibility to ensure that the true potential of AI to transform learning and the acquisition, sharing, and development of knowledge is available to all learners irrespective of position in society or station in life. It can be defined as learners having affordable access to technology and AI platforms/tools, the infrastructure needed to use them, adequate levels of training and expertise to assure adoption of tools to meet the specific mission of the institution, the resources to attain AI literacy in that context, and the agency to actively use the tools .

From a systems perspective, ethical AI provides the values, principles, and foundations; responsible AI ensures use of tactics that meet those guidelines; and equitable AI assures the implementation of strategy for the benefits of AI to accrue to all learners, both in terms of gaining access to knowledge and in enabling its use for socioeconomic mobility. Building on a foundation of these three levels, and once the purpose of AI has been determined in the context of the specific type of institution and the nuances of the learner population that is intended to be served, a framework for higher-ed policy can be developed using the four pillars of (1) governance, (2) ethics and accountability, (3) pedagogy, and (4) operations. The prioritization enables emphasis to be on the specific context of the institution through governance, as well as the nuances of mission and the local context in which the tools would operate through pedagogy.

1. Governance : This is a foundational pillar that focuses on value alignment with institutional mission, goals, and societal values and norms. It establishes rules and policies and sets bounds of risk tolerance and standards of oversight. It sets the stage for ethical standards, pedagogical implementation and integration, and operational deployment through aspects such as:

• Oversight : Clear delineation of the ultimate decision authority to override/modify AI-based processes and decisions to ensure consistent alignment (defined as the process of ensuring that the system operates as intended and is beneficial, rather than harmful, to users).
• Data Governance : Setting standards for data collection, use, and storage, as well as for the clarity in emerging areas such as IP, copyright, and AI-based course curation, where discussions are just beginning but faculty, students, and staff need transparency and clear direction, even if transitionary.
• Transparency : In terms of what is implemented through AI, its rationale, and how student learning and records are affected.
• Monitoring and Retraining : Establishing protocols and procedures for constant evaluation and improvement of AI systems and ensuring adequate levels of personnel capacity to maintain institutional control and agency.

2. Ethics and Accountability: Once governance structures are in place, a focus on ethics and accountability ensures that standards, policies, and procedures are upheld through aspects such as:

• Fairness : Prioritizing accessibility and inclusivity of use while ensuring that the tools do not perpetuate, or create new, bias.
• Transparency : Extends from the data on which the tool was trained, awareness of its origins, and whether it is authentic or synthetic, the context and history of its origins, and identification and subsequent mitigation of bias, to the ability to explain decisions made through, or by, the tool, including of criteria and factors used. This is to ensure that users know when they engage with systems incorporating AI and understand both its limitations and their rights.
• Traceability and Explainability : This focuses on the ability to trace system process from input to output and eschew black-box processes. The institution must be able to not only explain how the system is trained and what domain knowledge was used, but also how a decision is made, and the criteria and factors used. It is critical that the institution be able to verify whether the system is responding as designed and/or if bias or other non-designed facets have been introduced post-deployment.
• Responsibility and Accountability : Beyond responsibility in the regulatory context, it is important that the institution be responsible not just for deployment, but also of data used for training, output, validation, and continued verification. It is crucial that AI tools not be anthropomorphized and that there be clarity in terms of the chain of responsibility and the awareness of accountability and methods of redress.
• Privacy and Security : This extends not only to the adequate protection of data used in training and testing, but also that generated through use. In addition to traditional levels of cybersecurity, new levels will be needed to address emerging threats such as M/L attacks and confabulation. In addition, enhanced regulations and security will be needed related to address the collection and use of biometric data.
• Robustness and Reliability : The tools must operate as intended over the full range of conditions, with minimization of unintended and unexpected harm, and must be resilient against attempts to manipulate analysis and output, as well as the foundational knowledge and datasets.

3. Pedagogy: This pillar relates to the central aspect of teaching and learning and must necessarily address aspects related not just to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and abilities of critical thinking and reasoning as traditionally defined, but also on the direct implementation of AI tools to strengthen and enhance learning by students. While the emphasis must be on the curriculum through a focus on innovative teaching methods, curated and personalized content and learning plans, curricular integration, and increased emphasis on ethical reasoning and critical thinking, focus must also be on aspects such as:

• Accessibility and Affordability : Ensuring that AI tools/technologies are not only accessible to all learners, but also that these in turn enhance accessibility and affordability of higher education and its ability to enable greater socioeconomic mobility.
• Assessment and Evaluation : Employing AI tools to enable greater authentic assessment and real-time feedback at scale. In addition, continuous assessment and evaluation of the outcomes of the use of AI tools, along with feedback and improvement, are essential, as is the encouragement of innovative methodologies of teaching and research to both understand efficacy and to assess student learning behavior, outcomes, and impact. It is critical that use of AI tools should not lead to depersonalization of learning through excessive automation.
• Engagement and Interaction : Utilizing AI, including in conjunction with AR/VR/XR, to enhance interaction and “learning by doing,” in addition to increasing engagement and providing greater scaffolding and holistic support mechanisms.
• Data Security : While protection of student data is paramount, transparency regarding its use, including of all data generated through use, must be maintained.
• Faculty Development and Support : The ability to succeed will depend directly on an institution’s ability to train faculty and staff and support them–not just in the use of AI tools and platforms, but also in the development of specialized tools by including them in discussions with vendors and program developers right from the outset.
• Regulatory Modifications : Aspects such as regular and substantive interaction, interpretation, and perhaps modification of the credit hour, transferability of courses between institutions, and course accessibility across institutions must be highlighted through a student-centered focus rather than one based on an institution’s convenience or historical practice of exclusion. Whereas the use of AI has the potential to positively transform learning at scale, this will only be possible by re-envisioning processes and modalities, removing artificial barriers, and staying focused on the mission of student success.

4. Operations : While the use of AI tools can provide significant benefits across campus, the current framework focuses on teaching and learning through aspects such as:

• Robustness and Reliability : Systems should be stable and able to perform as intended under all expected conditions.
• Traceability and Explainability : Ensuring that decisions are not only explainable, but also traceable, to the originating datasets and algorithms for purposes of accountability and improvement.
• Safety and Security : Constant surveillance of security measures across the phygital systems ecosystem to protect operations from malware and attacks.

Given its transformational potential to enhance access and attainment in higher ed, as well as its increasing adoption and use in the workplace, there is a critical need for institutions of higher education to adopt a framework to guide both policy and practice, ensuring agency in shaping a future of greater access and attainability.

[1] OECD. Opportunities, guidelines, and guardrails for effective and equitable use of AI in education, 2023.

[2] Sebesta J, Davis VL. Policies & Practices. Toolkit. Dec 2023. https://wcet.wiche.edu/resources/ai-practices-and-policies-toolkit/

[3] Brandon E, Eaton L, Gauvin G, Papini A. Cross-campus approaches to building a generative AI policy. Educause Review, Dec 12, 2023. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2023/12/cross-campus-approaches-to-building-a-generative-ai-policy

[4] Karbhari VM, Defining a path to equitable AI in higher education . eCampus News , April 12, 2024.

[5] Floridi L. A unified framework of five principles for AI in society. In Ethics, Governance and Policies in Artificial Intelligence. Vol. 144, pp. 5-17, Springer International Publishing AG.

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Vistasp M. Karbhari is a Professor in the Departments of Civil Engineering, and Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he served as President from 2013-2020. He is a Fellow and Board Member of Complete College America and can be followed on Twitter at @VistaspKarbhari and on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/vistaspmkarbhari .

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Opinion: The crisis of confidence in higher education will not end with the student protests

Another day, another no-confidence vote for a university president.  

On Thursday the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University approved a no-confidence resolution of the school’s president, Nemat Shafik. It did so after concluding that her handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations and her public pledge to a congressional committee to discipline several faculty members who had espoused similar views “violated the “fundamental requirements of academic freedom and shared governance” and engaged in an “unprecedented assault on student’s rights.” 

But Shanfik is not the only university leader who has lost the confidence of significant constituencies on their campuses. On April 30, the faculty of Barnard College voted no confidence in that college’s president, Laura Rosenbury, because of the school’s response to a pro-Palestinian encampment, making it “the first no-confidence vote against a president in the college’s history.”  

Last month, New York University’s Gallatin School  passed  a motion of no-confidence in NYU’s president, Linda Mills, after police arrested students and faculty at another pro-Palestinian encampment. On May 9, faculty in Emory University’s College of Arts and Sciences voted “no confidence” in President Greg Fenves for the way he handled student protests over the war in Gaza. 

But as the academic year ends, and with it the season of campus protests, the broader crisis of confidence in higher education will not end. Colleges and universities, especially those branded “elite,” will have to work hard to win back the goodwill of many Americans who no longer trust them.  

Evidence of that loss of trust is plentiful. 

In 2019, a Pew survey found what it described as “an undercurrent of dissatisfaction – even suspicion – among the public about the role colleges play in society, the way admissions decisions are made, and the extent to which free speech is constrained on college campuses.” 

Pew noted that when asked whether the American higher education system is generally going in the right or wrong direction, most Americans (61 percent) said it’s going in the wrong direction.  

Views of higher education in the Pew survey broke down on partisan lines: “Democrats who see problems with the higher education system cite rising costs more often than other factors as a major reason for their concern.” In contrast, “Roughly eight-in-ten Republicans (79%) say professors bringing their political and social views into the classroom is a major reason why the higher education system is headed in the wrong direction (only 17% of Democrats say the same).” 

In July 2023, Gallup reported that “Americans’ confidence in higher education has fallen to 36%, sharply lower than in two prior readings in 2015 (57%) and 2018 (48%).” Gallup notes 17 percent of U.S. adults have “a great deal” and 19 percent have “quite a lot” of confidence, while 40 percent have “some” and 22 percent have “very little” confidence. 

Like the Pew survey, Gallup found that Republicans and Democrats think about higher education in different ways, with only 19 percent of self-identified Republicans expressing confidence in higher education. But other groups also register a lack of confidence; only 29 percent of people without college degrees and 31 percent of older Americans said they had confidence in what colleges and universities are doing.   

Finally, a September 2023 Chronicle of Higher Education survey found that “Most people, whether they have a four-year degree or not, would advise others to pursue one, our poll found. Yet many don’t think institutions do a great job educating their students — or that they are of great benefit to graduates.” 

The Chronicle observes that “Alternatives like trade school strike many Americans as just as good a path to a successful livelihood. And colleges’ value to communities and to society also draws skepticism.” 

Even college graduates aren’t convinced that colleges and universities are doing a good job. “Just 40 percent said colleges are excellent or very good at educating students, and nearly 20 percent said they were not so good or poor on that measure.” 

All of these surveys were taken long before what has unfolded on many college campuses since the October 7 terror attack on Israel.  

None of those polls should detract us from recognizing the many good things that go on every day in American higher education. Among them are the dedication to students shown by faculty and staff, the willingness of students to take on even the most daunting intellectual challenges, and the important research that college and university faculty do in the service of the public good.   

But if colleges and universities are to address the no-confidence vote being registered by Americans, they will have to do work on several fronts. Let me name just a few. 

First, they need to do something about the escalating cost of higher education and the increasingly uncertain return on that investment. Today, as journalist Paul Tough says , “Higher education no longer resembles a safe, reliable blue-chip investment, like buying a Treasury bill. It’s now more like going to a casino. It’s a gamble that can still sometimes produce a big windfall, but it can also bring financial disaster.”  

The growth of artificial intelligence will only compound the gamble for future college graduates. 

Second, part of the work colleges and universities need to do is to restore the priority they give to their educational mission . Colleges and universities have suffered from mission creep; today it often seems that the work of education is just one among many things that colleges and universities are trying to do.  

As they work to recenter their educational mission, colleges and universities will also have to take steps, as one commentator suggests , “to disengage from the commotion of constant political statement-making” and stop taking stands on every political issue that commands attention in this country and abroad. Taking such stands not only undermines “an institution of higher learning’s pursuit of free inquiry, but it also constantly opens the academy to external criticism. Why make a statement regarding the war in Ukraine, for example, and not one on the recently resolved Ethiopian civil war?” 

Williams College President Maude Mandel took a step in the right direction last October when she wrote, “I do not believe it is the president’s job to speak for the whole community, or even that it is possible to do so. In those moments, my job is to help ensure that the educational opportunities and personal support are in place so that we can reflect, study, and decide what we think and believe, individually and collectively.” 

Finally, nowhere has confusion about the meaning and limits of free expression been as great as it is on today’s college campuses. As the controversy around this year’s campus protests has shown, faculty, staff and college leaders need to be clear about the difference between academic freedom and free expression — and the limits of both.  

So even as student protesters take down their encampments and go home for the summer, colleges and universities are left with much work to do if they are to regain the public’s trust in higher education. I am confident they are up to the task. 

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor Jurisprudence & Political Science at Amherst College.    

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• Research article
• Open access
• Published: 24 April 2023

Artificial intelligence in higher education: the state of the field

• Helen Crompton   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1775-8219 1 , 3 &
• Diane Burke 2  

International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education volume  20 , Article number:  22 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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This systematic review provides unique findings with an up-to-date examination of artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education (HE) from 2016 to 2022. Using PRISMA principles and protocol, 138 articles were identified for a full examination. Using a priori, and grounded coding, the data from the 138 articles were extracted, analyzed, and coded. The findings of this study show that in 2021 and 2022, publications rose nearly two to three times the number of previous years. With this rapid rise in the number of AIEd HE publications, new trends have emerged. The findings show that research was conducted in six of the seven continents of the world. The trend has shifted from the US to China leading in the number of publications. Another new trend is in the researcher affiliation as prior studies showed a lack of researchers from departments of education. This has now changed to be the most dominant department. Undergraduate students were the most studied students at 72%. Similar to the findings of other studies, language learning was the most common subject domain. This included writing, reading, and vocabulary acquisition. In examination of who the AIEd was intended for 72% of the studies focused on students, 17% instructors, and 11% managers. In answering the overarching question of how AIEd was used in HE, grounded coding was used. Five usage codes emerged from the data: (1) Assessment/Evaluation, (2) Predicting, (3) AI Assistant, (4) Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS), and (5) Managing Student Learning. This systematic review revealed gaps in the literature to be used as a springboard for future researchers, including new tools, such as Chat GPT.

A systematic review examining AIEd in higher education (HE) up to the end of 2022.

Unique findings in the switch from US to China in the most studies published.

A two to threefold increase in studies published in 2021 and 2022 to prior years.

AIEd was used for: Assessment/Evaluation, Predicting, AI Assistant, Intelligent Tutoring System, and Managing Student Learning.

Introduction

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education (HE) has risen quickly in the last 5 years (Chu et al., 2022 ), with a concomitant proliferation of new AI tools available. Scholars (viz., Chen et al., 2020 ; Crompton et al., 2020 , 2021 ) report on the affordances of AI to both instructors and students in HE. These benefits include the use of AI in HE to adapt instruction to the needs of different types of learners (Verdú et al., 2017 ), in providing customized prompt feedback (Dever et al., 2020 ), in developing assessments (Baykasoğlu et al., 2018 ), and predict academic success (Çağataylı & Çelebi, 2022 ). These studies help to inform educators about how artificial intelligence in education (AIEd) can be used in higher education.

Nonetheless, a gap has been highlighted by scholars (viz., Hrastinski et al., 2019 ; Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 ) regarding an understanding of the collective affordances provided through the use of AI in HE. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine extant research from 2016 to 2022 to provide an up-to-date systematic review of how AI is being used in the HE context.

Artificial intelligence has become pervasive in the lives of twenty-first century citizens and is being proclaimed as a tool that can be used to enhance and advance all sectors of our lives (Górriz et al., 2020 ). The application of AI has attracted great interest in HE which is highly influenced by the development of information and communication technologies (Alajmi et al., 2020 ). AI is a tool used across subject disciplines, including language education (Liang et al., 2021 ), engineering education (Shukla et al., 2019 ), mathematics education (Hwang & Tu, 2021 ) and medical education (Winkler-Schwartz et al., 2019 ),

Artificial intelligence

The term artificial intelligence is not new. It was coined in 1956 by McCarthy (Cristianini, 2016 ) who followed up on the work of Turing (e.g., Turing, 1937 , 1950 ). Turing described the existence of intelligent reasoning and thinking that could go into intelligent machines. The definition of AI has grown and changed since 1956, as there has been significant advancements in AI capabilities. A current definition of AI is “computing systems that are able to engage in human-like processes such as learning, adapting, synthesizing, self-correction and the use of data for complex processing tasks” (Popenici et al., 2017 , p. 2). The interdisciplinary interest from scholars from linguistics, psychology, education, and neuroscience who connect AI to nomenclature, perceptions and knowledge in their own disciplines could create a challenge when defining AI. This has created the need to create categories of AI within specific disciplinary areas. This paper focuses on the category of AI in Education (AIEd) and how AI is specifically used in higher educational contexts.

As the field of AIEd is growing and changing rapidly, there is a need to increase the academic understanding of AIEd. Scholars (viz., Hrastinski et al., 2019 ; Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 ) have drawn attention to the need to increase the understanding of the power of AIEd in educational contexts. The following section provides a summary of the previous research regarding AIEd.

Extant systematic reviews

This growing interest in AIEd has led scholars to investigate the research on the use of artificial intelligence in education. Some scholars have conducted systematic reviews to focus on a specific subject domain. For example, Liang et. al. ( 2021 ) conducted a systematic review and bibliographic analysis the roles and research foci of AI in language education. Shukla et. al. ( 2019 ) focused their longitudinal bibliometric analysis on 30 years of using AI in Engineering. Hwang and Tu ( 2021 ) conducted a bibliometric mapping analysis on the roles and trends in the use of AI in mathematics education, and Winkler-Schwartz et. al. ( 2019 ) specifically examined the use of AI in medical education in looking for best practices in the use of machine learning to assess surgical expertise. These studies provide a specific focus on the use of AIEd in HE but do not provide an understanding of AI across HE.

On a broader view of AIEd in HE, Ouyang et. al. ( 2022 ) conducted a systematic review of AIEd in online higher education and investigated the literature regarding the use of AI from 2011 to 2020. The findings show that performance prediction, resource recommendation, automatic assessment, and improvement of learning experiences are the four main functions of AI applications in online higher education. Salas-Pilco and Yang ( 2022 ) focused on AI applications in Latin American higher education. The results revealed that the main AI applications in higher education in Latin America are: (1) predictive modeling, (2) intelligent analytics, (3) assistive technology, (4) automatic content analysis, and (5) image analytics. These studies provide valuable information for the online and Latin American context but not an overarching examination of AIEd in HE.

Studies have been conducted to examine HE. Hinojo-Lucena et. al. ( 2019 ) conducted a bibliometric study on the impact of AIEd in HE. They analyzed the scientific production of AIEd HE publications indexed in Web of Science and Scopus databases from 2007 to 2017. This study revealed that most of the published document types were proceedings papers. The United States had the highest number of publications, and the most cited articles were about implementing virtual tutoring to improve learning. Chu et. al. ( 2022 ) reviewed the top 50 most cited articles on AI in HE from 1996 to 2020, revealing that predictions of students’ learning status were most frequently discussed. AI technology was most frequently applied in engineering courses, and AI technologies most often had a role in profiling and prediction. Finally, Zawacki-Richter et. al. ( 2019 ) analyzed AIEd in HE from 2007 to 2018 to reveal four primary uses of AIEd: (1) profiling and prediction, (2) assessment and evaluation, (3) adaptive systems and personalization, and (4) intelligent tutoring systems. There do not appear to be any studies examining the last 2 years of AIEd in HE, and these authors describe the rapid speed of both AI development and the use of AIEd in HE and call for further research in this area.

Purpose of the study

The purpose of this study is in response to the appeal from scholars (viz., Chu et al., 2022 ; Hinojo-Lucena et al., 2019 ; Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 ) to research to investigate the benefits and challenges of AIEd within HE settings. As the academic knowledge of AIEd HE finished with studies examining up to 2020, this study provides the most up-to-date analysis examining research through to the end of 2022.

The overarching question for this study is: what are the trends in HE research regarding the use of AIEd? The first two questions provide contextual information, such as where the studies occurred and the disciplines AI was used in. These contextual details are important for presenting the main findings of the third question of how AI is being used in HE.

In what geographical location was the AIEd research conducted, and how has the trend in the number of publications evolved across the years?

What departments were the first authors affiliated with, and what were the academic levels and subject domains in which AIEd research was being conducted?

Who are the intended users of the AI technologies and what are the applications of AI in higher education?

A PRISMA systematic review methodology was used to answer three questions guiding this study. PRISMA principles (Page et al., 2021 ) were used throughout the study. The PRISMA extension Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis for Protocols (PRISMA-P; Moher et al., 2015 ) were utilized in this study to provide an a priori roadmap to conduct a rigorous systematic review. Furthermore, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA principles; Page et al., 2021 ) were used to search, identify, and select articles to be included in the research were used for searching, identifying, and selecting articles, then in how to read, extract, and manage the secondary data gathered from those studies (Moher et al., 2015 , PRISMA Statement, 2021 ). This systematic review approach supports an unbiased synthesis of the data in an impartial way (Hemingway & Brereton, 2009 ). Within the systematic review methodology, extracted data were aggregated and presented as whole numbers and percentages. A qualitative deductive and inductive coding methodology was also used to analyze extant data and generate new theories on the use of AI in HE (Gough et al., 2017 ).

The research begins with the search for the research articles to be included in the study. Based on the research question, the study parameters are defined including the search years, quality and types of publications to be included. Next, databases and journals are selected. A Boolean search is created and used for the search of those databases and journals. Once a set of publications are located from those searches, they are then examined against an inclusion and exclusion criteria to determine which studies will be included in the final study. The relevant data to match the research questions is then extracted from the final set of studies and coded. This method section is organized to describe each of these methods with full details to ensure transparency.

Search strategy

Only peer-reviewed journal articles were selected for examination in this systematic review. This ensured a level of confidence in the quality of the studies selected (Gough et al., 2017 ). The search parameters narrowed the search focus to include studies published in 2016 to 2022. This timeframe was selected to ensure the research was up to date, which is especially important with the rapid change in technology and AIEd.

The data retrieval protocol employed an electronic and a hand search. The electronic search included educational databases within EBSCOhost. Then an additional electronic search was conducted of Wiley Online Library, JSTOR, Science Direct, and Web of Science. Within each of these databases a full text search was conducted. Aligned to the research topic and questions, the Boolean search included terms related to AI, higher education, and learning. The Boolean search is listed in Table 1 . In the initial test search, the terms “machine learning” OR “intelligent support” OR “intelligent virtual reality” OR “chatbot” OR “automated tutor” OR “intelligent agent” OR “expert system” OR “neural network” OR “natural language processing” were used. These were removed as they were subcategories of terms found in Part 1 of the search. Furthermore, inclusion of these specific AI terms resulted in a large number of computer science courses that were focused on learning about AI and not the use of AI in learning.

Part 2 of the search ensured that articles involved formal university education. The terms higher education and tertiary were both used to recognize the different terms used in different countries. The final Boolean search was “Artificial intelligence” OR AI OR “smart technologies” OR “intelligent technologies” AND “higher education” OR tertiary OR graduate OR undergraduate. Scholars (viz., Ouyang et al., 2022 ) who conducted a systematic review on AIEd in HE up to 2020 noted that they missed relevant articles from their study, and other relevant journals should intentionally be examined. Therefore, a hand search was also conducted to include an examination of other journals relevant to AIEd that may not be included in the databases. This is important as the field of AIEd is still relatively new, and journals focused on this field may not yet be indexed in databases. The hand search included: The International Journal of Learning Analytics and Artificial Intelligence in Education, the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, and Computers & Education: Artificial Intelligence.

Electronic and hand searches resulted in 371 articles for possible inclusion. The search parameters within the electronic database search narrowed the search to articles published from 2016 to 2022, per-reviewed journal articles, and duplicates. Further screening was conducted manually, as each of the 138 articles were reviewed in full by two researchers to examine a match against the inclusion and exclusion criteria found in Table 2 .

The inter-rater reliability was calculated by percentage agreement (Belur et al., 2018 ). The researchers reached a 95% agreement for the coding. Further discussion of misaligned articles resulted in a 100% agreement. This screening process against inclusion and exclusion criteria resulted in the exclusion of 237 articles. This included the duplicates and those removed as part of the inclusion and exclusion criteria, see Fig.  1 . Leaving 138 articles for inclusion in this systematic review.

(From: Page et al., 2021 )

PRISMA flow chart of article identification and screening

The 138 articles were then coded to answer each of the research questions using deductive and inductive coding methods. Deductive coding involves examining data using a priori codes. A priori are pre-determined criteria and this process was used to code the countries, years, author affiliations, academic levels, and domains in the respective groups. Author affiliations were coded using the academic department of the first author of the study. First authors were chosen as that person is the primary researcher of the study and this follows past research practice (e.g., Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 ). Who the AI was intended for was also coded using the a priori codes of Student, Instructor, Manager or Others. The Manager code was used for those who are involved in organizational tasks, e.g., tracking enrollment. Others was used for those not fitting the other three categories.

Inductive coding was used for the overarching question of this study in examining how the AI was being used in HE. Researchers of extant systematic reviews on AIEd in HE (viz., Chu et al., 2022 ; Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 ) often used an a priori framework as researchers matched the use of AI to pre-existing frameworks. A grounded coding methodology (Strauss & Corbin, 1995 ) was selected for this study to allow findings of the trends on AIEd in HE to emerge from the data. This is important as it allows a direct understanding of how AI is being used rather than how researchers may think it is being used and fitting the data to pre-existing ideas.

Grounded coding process involved extracting how the AI was being used in HE from the articles. “In vivo” (Saldana, 2015 ) coding was also used alongside grounded coding. In vivo codes are when codes use language directly from the article to capture the primary authors’ language and ensure consistency with their findings. The grounded coding design used a constant comparative method. Researchers identified important text from articles related to the use of AI, and through an iterative process, initial codes led to axial codes with a constant comparison of uses of AI with uses of AI, then of uses of AI with codes, and codes with codes. Codes were deemed theoretically saturated when the majority of the data fit with one of the codes. For both the a priori and the grounded coding, two researchers coded and reached an inter-rater percentage agreement of 96%. After discussing misaligned articles, a 100% agreement was achieved.

Findings and discussion

The findings and discussion section are organized by the three questions guiding this study. The first two questions provide contextual information on the AIEd research, and the final question provides a rigorous investigation into how AI is being used in HE.

RQ1. In what geographical location was the AIEd research conducted, and how has the trend in the number of publications evolved across the years?

The 138 studies took place across 31 countries in six of seven continents of the world. Nonetheless, that distribution was not equal across continents. Asia had the largest number of AIEd studies in HE at 41%. Of the seven countries represented in Asia, 42 of the 58 studies were conducted in Taiwan and China. Europe, at 30%, was the second largest continent and had 15 countries ranging from one to eight studies a piece. North America, at 21% of the studies was the continent with the third largest number of studies, with the USA producing 21 of the 29 studies in that continent. The 21 studies from the USA places it second behind China. Only 1% of studies were conducted in South America and 2% in Africa. See Fig.  2 for a visual representation of study distribution across countries. Those continents with high numbers of studies are from high income countries and those with low numbers have a paucity of publications in low-income countries.

Geographical distribution of the AIEd HE studies

Data from Zawacki-Richter et. al.’s ( 2019 ) 2007–2018 systematic review examining countries found that the USA conducted the most studies across the globe at 43 out of 146, and China had the second largest at eleven of the 146 papers. Researchers have noted a rapid trend in Chinese researchers publishing more papers on AI and securing more patents than their US counterparts in a field that was originally led by the US (viz., Li et al., 2021 ). The data from this study corroborate this trend in China leading in the number of AIEd publications.

With the accelerated use of AI in society, gathering data to examine the use of AIEd in HE is useful in providing the scholarly community with specific information on that growth and if it is as prolific as anticipated by scholars (e.g., Chu et al., 2022 ). The analysis of data of the 138 studies shows that the trend towards the use of AIEd in HE has greatly increased. There is a drop in 2019, but then a great rise in 2021 and 2022; see Fig.  3 .

Chronological trend in AIEd in HE

Data on the rise in AIEd in HE is similar to the findings of Chu et. al. ( 2022 ) who noted an increase from 1996 to 2010 and 2011–2020. Nonetheless Chu’s parameters are across decades, and the rise is to be anticipated with a relatively new technology across a longitudinal review. Data from this study show a dramatic rise since 2020 with a 150% increase from the prior 2 years 2020–2019. The rise in 2021 and 2022 in HE could have been caused by the vast increase in HE faculty having to teach with technology during the pandemic lockdown. Faculty worldwide were using technologies, including AI, to explore how they could continue teaching and learning that was often face-to-face prior to lockdown. The disadvantage of this rapid adoption of technology is that there was little time to explore the possibilities of AI to transform learning, and AI may have been used to replicate past teaching practices, without considering new strategies previously inconceivable with the affordances of AI.

However, in a further examination of the research from 2021 to 2022, it appears that there are new strategies being considered. For example, Liu et. al.’s, 2022 study used AIEd to provide information on students’ interactions in an online environment and examine their cognitive effort. In Yao’s study in 2022, he examined the use of AI to determine student emotions while learning.

RQ2. What departments were the first authors affiliated with, and what were the academic levels and subject domains in which AIEd research was being conducted?

Department affiliations

Data from the AIEd HE studies show that of the first authors were most frequently from colleges of education (28%), followed by computer science (20%). Figure  4 presents the 15 academic affiliations of the authors found in the studies. The wide variety of affiliations demonstrate the variety of ways AI can be used in various educational disciplines, and how faculty in diverse areas, including tourism, music, and public affairs were interested in how AI can be used for educational purposes.

Research affiliations

In an extant AIED HE systematic review, Zawacki-Richter et. al.’s ( 2019 ) named their study Systematic review of research on artificial intelligence applications in higher education—where are the educators? In this study, the authors were keen to highlight that of the AIEd studies in HE, only six percent were written by researchers directly connected to the field of education, (i.e., from a college of education). The researchers found a great lack in pedagogical and ethical implications of implementing AI in HE and that there was a need for more educational perspectives on AI developments from educators conducting this work. It appears from our data that educators are now showing greater interest in leading these research endeavors, with the highest affiliated group belonging to education. This may again be due to the pandemic and those in the field of education needing to support faculty in other disciplines, and/or that they themselves needed to explore technologies for their own teaching during the lockdown. This may also be due to uptake in professors in education becoming familiar with AI tools also driven by a societal increased attention. As the focus of much research by education faculty is on teaching and learning, they are in an important position to be able to share their research with faculty in other disciplines regarding the potential affordances of AIEd.

Academic levels

The a priori coding of academic levels show that the majority of studies involved undergraduate students with 99 of the 138 (72%) focused on these students. This was in comparison to the 12 of 138 (9%) for graduate students. Some of the studies used AI for both academic levels: see Fig.  5

Academic level distribution by number of articles

This high percentage of studies focused on the undergraduate population was congruent with an earlier AIED HE systematic review (viz., Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 ) who also reported student academic levels. This focus on undergraduate students may be due to the variety of affordances offered by AIEd, such as predictive analytics on dropouts and academic performance. These uses of AI may be less required for graduate students who already have a record of performance from their undergraduate years. Another reason for this demographic focus can also be convenience sampling, as researchers in HE typically has a much larger and accessible undergraduate population than graduates. This disparity between undergraduates and graduate populations is a concern, as AIEd has the potential to be valuable in both settings.

Subject domains

The studies were coded into 14 areas in HE; with 13 in a subject domain and one category of AIEd used in HE management of students; See Fig.  6 . There is not a wide difference in the percentages of top subject domains, with language learning at 17%, computer science at 16%, and engineering at 12%. The management of students category appeared third on the list at 14%. Prior studies have also found AIEd often used for language learning (viz., Crompton et al., 2021 ; Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 ). These results are different, however, from Chu et. al.’s ( 2022 ) findings that show engineering dramatically leading with 20 of the 50 studies, with other subjects, such as language learning, appearing once or twice. This study appears to be an outlier that while the searches were conducted in similar databases, the studies only included 50 studies from 1996 to 2020.

Subject domains of AIEd in HE

Previous scholars primarily focusing on language learning using AI for writing, reading, and vocabulary acquisition used the affordances of natural language processing and intelligent tutoring systems (e.g., Liang et al., 2021 ). This is similar to the findings in studies with AI used for automated feedback of writing in a foreign language (Ayse et al., 2022 ), and AI translation support (Al-Tuwayrish, 2016 ). The large use of AI for managerial activities in this systematic review focused on making predictions (12 studies) and then admissions (three studies). This is positive to see this use of AI to look across multiple databases to see trends emerging from data that may not have been anticipated and cross referenced before (Crompton et al., 2022 ). For example, to examine dropouts, researchers may consider examining class attendance, and may not examine other factors that appear unrelated. AI analysis can examine all factors and may find that dropping out is due to factors beyond class attendance.

RQ3. Who are the intended users of the AI technologies and what are the applications of AI in higher education?

Intended user of AI

Of the 138 articles, the a priori coding shows that 72% of the studies focused on Students, followed by a focus on Instructors at 17%, and Managers at 11%, see Fig.  7 . The studies provided examples of AI being used to provide support to students, such as access to learning materials for inclusive learning (Gupta & Chen, 2022 ), provide immediate answers to student questions, self-testing opportunities (Yao, 2022 ), and instant personalized feedback (Mousavi et al., 2020 ).

Intended user

The data revealed a large emphasis on students in the use of AIEd in HE. This user focus is different from a recent systematic review on AIEd in K-12 that found that AIEd studies in K-12 settings prioritized teachers (Crompton et al., 2022 ). This may appear that HE uses AI to focus more on students than in K-12. However, this large number of student studies in HE may be due to the student population being more easily accessibility to HE researchers who may study their own students. The ethical review process is also typically much shorter in HE than in K-12. Therefore, the data on the intended focus should be reviewed while keeping in mind these other explanations. It was interesting that Managers were the lowest focus in K-12 and also in this study in HE. AI has great potential to collect, cross reference and examine data across large datasets that can allow data to be used for actionable insight. More focus on the use of AI by managers would tap into this potential.

How is AI used in HE

Using grounded coding, the use of AIEd from each of the 138 articles was examined and six major codes emerged from the data. These codes provide insight into how AI was used in HE. The five codes are: (1) Assessment/Evaluation, (2) Predicting, (3) AI Assistant, (4) Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS), and (5) Managing Student Learning. For each of these codes there are also axial codes, which are secondary codes as subcategories from the main category. Each code is delineated below with a figure of the codes with further descriptive information and examples.

Assessment/evaluation

Assessment and Evaluation was the most common use of AIEd in HE. Within this code there were six axial codes broken down into further codes; see Fig.  8 . Automatic assessment was most common, seen in 26 of the studies. It was interesting to see that this involved assessment of academic achievement, but also other factors, such as affect.

Codes and axial codes for assessment and evaluation

Automatic assessment was used to support a variety of learners in HE. As well as reducing the time it takes for instructors to grade (Rutner & Scott, 2022 ), automatic grading showed positive use for a variety of students with diverse needs. For example, Zhang and Xu ( 2022 ) used automatic assessment to improve academic writing skills of Uyghur ethnic minority students living in China. Writing has a variety of cultural nuances and in this study the students were shown to engage with the automatic assessment system behaviorally, cognitively, and affectively. This allowed the students to engage in self-regulated learning while improving their writing.

Feedback was a description often used in the studies, as students were given text and/or images as feedback as a formative evaluation. Mousavi et. al. ( 2020 ) developed a system to provide first year biology students with an automated personalized feedback system tailored to the students’ specific demographics, attributes, and academic status. With the unique feature of AIEd being able to analyze multiple data sets involving a variety of different students, AI was used to assess and provide feedback on students’ group work (viz., Ouatik et al., 2021 ).

AI also supports instructors in generating questions and creating multiple question tests (Yang et al., 2021 ). For example, (Lu et al., 2021 ) used natural language processing to create a system that automatically created tests. Following a Turing type test, researchers found that AI technologies can generate highly realistic short-answer questions. The ability for AI to develop multiple questions is a highly valuable affordance as tests can take a great deal of time to make. However, it would be important for instructors to always confirm questions provided by the AI to ensure they are correct and that they match the learning objectives for the class, especially in high value summative assessments.

The axial code within assessment and evaluation revealed that AI was used to review activities in the online space. This included evaluating student’s reflections, achievement goals, community identity, and higher order thinking (viz., Huang et al., 2021 ). Three studies used AIEd to evaluate educational materials. This included general resources and textbooks (viz., Koć‑Januchta et al., 2022 ). It is interesting to see the use of AI for the assessment of educational products, rather than educational artifacts developed by students. While this process may be very similar in nature, this shows researchers thinking beyond the traditional use of AI for assessment to provide other affordances.

Predicting was a common use of AIEd in HE with 21 studies focused specifically on the use of AI for forecasting trends in data. Ten axial codes emerged on the way AI was used to predict different topics, with nine focused on predictions regarding students and the other on predicting the future of higher education. See Fig.  9 .

Predicting axial codes

Extant systematic reviews on HE highlighted the use of AIEd for prediction (viz., Chu et al., 2022 ; Hinojo-Lucena et al., 2019 ; Ouyang et al., 2022 ; Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 ). Ten of the articles in this study used AI for predicting academic performance. Many of the axial codes were often overlapping, such as predicting at risk students, and predicting dropouts; however, each provided distinct affordances. An example of this is the study by Qian et. al. ( 2021 ). These researchers examined students taking a MOOC course. MOOCs can be challenging environments to determine information on individual students with the vast number of students taking the course (Krause & Lowe, 2014 ). However, Qian et al., used AIEd to predict students’ future grades by inputting 17 different learning features, including past grades, into an artificial neural network. The findings were able to predict students’ grades and highlight students at risk of dropping out of the course.

In a systematic review on AIEd within the K-12 context (viz., Crompton et al., 2022 ), prediction was less pronounced in the findings. In the K-12 setting, there was a brief mention of the use of AI in predicting student academic performance. One of the studies mentioned students at risk of dropping out, but this was immediately followed by questions about privacy concerns and describing this as “sensitive”. The use of prediction from the data in this HE systematic review cover a wide range of AI predictive affordances. students Sensitivity is still important in a HE setting, but it is positive to see the valuable insight it provides that can be used to avoid students failing in their goals.

AI assistant

The studies evaluated in this review indicated that the AI Assistant used to support learners had a variety of different names. This code included nomenclature such as, virtual assistant, virtual agent, intelligent agent, intelligent tutor, and intelligent helper. Crompton et. al. ( 2022 ), described the difference in the terms to delineate the way that the AI appeared to the user. For example, if there was an anthropomorphic presence to the AI, such as an avatar, or if the AI appeared to support via other means, such as text prompt. The findings of this systematic review align to Crompton et. al.’s ( 2022 ) descriptive differences of the AI Assistant. Furthermore, this code included studies that provide assistance to students, but may not have specifically used the word assistance. These include the use of chatbots for student outreach, answering questions, and providing other assistance. See Fig.  10 for the axial codes for AI Assistant.

AI assistant axial codes

Many of these assistants offered multiple supports to students, such as Alex , the AI described as a virtual change agent in Kim and Bennekin’s ( 2016 ) study. Alex interacted with students in a college mathematics course by asking diagnostic questions and gave support depending on student needs. Alex’s support was organized into four stages: (1) goal initiation (“Want it”), (2) goal formation (“Plan for it”), (3) action control (“Do it”), and (4) emotion control (“Finish it”). Alex provided responses depending on which of these four areas students needed help. These messages supported students with the aim of encouraging persistence in pursuing their studies and degree programs and improving performance.

The role of AI in providing assistance connects back to the seminal work of Vygotsky ( 1978 ) and the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). ZPD highlights the degree to which students can rapidly develop when assisted. Vygotsky described this assistance often in the form of a person. However, with technological advancements, the use of AI assistants in these studies are providing that support for students. The affordances of AI can also ensure that the support is timely without waiting for a person to be available. Also, assistance can consider aspects on students’ academic ability, preferences, and best strategies for supporting. These features were evident in Kim and Bennekin’s ( 2016 ) study using Alex.

Intelligent tutoring system

The use of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) was revealed in the grounded coding. ITS systems are adaptive instructional systems that involve the use of AI techniques and educational methods. An ITS system customizes educational activities and strategies based on student’s characteristics and needs (Mousavinasab et al., 2021 ). While ITS may be an anticipated finding in AIED HE systematic reviews, it was interesting that extant reviews similar to this study did not always describe their use in HE. For example, Ouyang et. al. ( 2022 ), included “intelligent tutoring system” in search terms describing it as a common technique, yet ITS was not mentioned again in the paper. Zawacki-Richter et. al. ( 2019 ) on the other hand noted that ITS was in the four overarching findings of the use of AIEd in HE. Chu et. al. ( 2022 ) then used Zawacki-Richter’s four uses of AIEd for their recent systematic review.

In this systematic review, 18 studies specifically mentioned that they were using an ITS. The ITS code did not necessitate axial codes as they were performing the same type of function in HE, namely, in providing adaptive instruction to the students. For example, de Chiusole et. al. ( 2020 ) developed Stat-Knowlab, an ITS that provides the level of competence and best learning path for each student. Thus Stat-Knowlab personalizes students’ learning and provides only educational activities that the student is ready to learn. This ITS is able to monitor the evolution of the learning process as the student interacts with the system. In another study, Khalfallah and Slama ( 2018 ) built an ITS called LabTutor for engineering students. LabTutor served as an experienced instructor in enabling students to access and perform experiments on laboratory equipment while adapting to the profile of each student.

The student population in university classes can go into the hundreds and with the advent of MOOCS, class sizes can even go into the thousands. Even in small classes of 20 students, the instructor cannot physically provide immediate unique personalize questions to each student. Instructors need time to read and check answers and then take further time to provide feedback before determining what the next question should be. Working with the instructor, AIEd can provide that immediate instruction, guidance, feedback, and following questioning without delay or becoming tired. This appears to be an effective use of AIEd, especially within the HE context.

Managing student learning

Another code that emerged in the grounded coding was focused on the use of AI for managing student learning. AI is accessed to manage student learning by the administrator or instructor to provide information, organization, and data analysis. The axial codes reveal the trends in the use of AI in managing student learning; see Fig.  11 .

Learning analytics was an a priori term often found in studies which describes “the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs” (Long & Siemens, 2011 , p. 34). The studies investigated in this systematic review were across grades and subject areas and provided administrators and instructors different types of information to guide their work. One of those studies was conducted by Mavrikis et. al. ( 2019 ) who described learning analytics as teacher assistance tools. In their study, learning analytics were used in an exploratory learning environment with targeted visualizations supporting classroom orchestration. These visualizations, displayed as screenshots in the study, provided information such as the interactions between the students, goals achievements etc. These appear similar to infographics that are brightly colored and draw the eye quickly to pertinent information. AI is also used for other tasks, such as organizing the sequence of curriculum in pacing guides for future groups of students and also designing instruction. Zhang ( 2022 ) described how designing an AI teaching system of talent cultivation and using the digital affordances to establish a quality assurance system for practical teaching, provides new mechanisms for the design of university education systems. In developing such a system, Zhang found that the stability of the instructional design, overcame the drawbacks of traditional manual subjectivity in the instructional design.

Another trend that emerged from the studies was the use of AI to manage student big data to support learning. Ullah and Hafiz ( 2022 ) lament that using traditional methods, including non-AI digital techniques, asking the instructor to pay attention to every student’s learning progress is very difficult and that big data analysis techniques are needed. The ability to look across and within large data sets to inform instruction is a valuable affordance of AIEd in HE. While the use of AIEd to manage student learning emerged from the data, this study uncovered only 19 studies in 7 years (2016–2022) that focused on the use of AIEd to manage student data. This lack of the use was also noted in a recent study in the K-12 space (Crompton et al., 2022 ). In Chu et. al.’s ( 2022 ) study examining the top 50 most cited AIEd articles, they did not report the use of AIEd for managing student data in the top uses of AIEd HE. It would appear that more research should be conducted in this area to fully explore the possibilities of AI.

Gaps and future research

From this systematic review, six gaps emerged in the data providing opportunities for future studies to investigate and provide a fuller understanding of how AIEd can used in HE. (1) The majority of the research was conducted in high income countries revealing a paucity of research in developing countries. More research should be conducted in these developing countries to expand the level of understanding about how AI can enhance learning in under-resourced communities. (2) Almost 50% of the studies were conducted in the areas of language learning, computer science and engineering. Research conducted by members from multiple, different academic departments would help to advance the knowledge of the use of AI in more disciplines. (3) This study revealed that faculty affiliated with schools of education are taking an increasing role in researching the use of AIEd in HE. As this body of knowledge grows, faculty in Schools of Education should share their research regarding the pedagogical affordances of AI so that this knowledge can be applied by faculty across disciplines. (4) The vast majority of the research was conducted at the undergraduate level. More research needs to be done at the graduate student level, as AI provides many opportunities in this environment. (5) Little study was done regarding how AIEd can assist both instructors and managers in their roles in HE. The power of AI to assist both groups further research. (6) Finally, much of the research investigated in this systematic review revealed the use of AIEd in traditional ways that enhance or make more efficient current practices. More research needs to focus on the unexplored affordances of AIEd. As AI becomes more advanced and sophisticated, new opportunities will arise for AIEd. Researchers need to be on the forefront of these possible innovations.

In addition, empirical exploration is needed for new tools, such as ChatGPT that was available for public use at the end of 2022. With the time it takes for a peer review journal article to be published, ChatGPT did not appear in the articles for this study. What is interesting is that it could fit with a variety of the use codes found in this study, with students getting support in writing papers and instructors using Chat GPT to assess students work and with help writing emails or descriptions for students. It would be pertinent for researchers to explore Chat GPT.

Limitations

The findings of this study show a rapid increase in the number of AIEd studies published in HE. However, to ensure a level of credibility, this study only included peer review journal articles. These articles take months to publish. Therefore, conference proceedings and gray literature such as blogs and summaries may reveal further findings not explored in this study. In addition, the articles in this study were all published in English which excluded findings from research published in other languages.

In response to the call by Hinojo-Lucena et. al. ( 2019 ), Chu et. al. ( 2022 ), and Zawacki-Richter et. al. ( 2019 ), this study provides unique findings with an up-to-date examination of the use of AIEd in HE from 2016 to 2022. Past systematic reviews examined the research up to 2020. The findings of this study show that in 2021 and 2022, publications rose nearly two to three times the number of previous years. With this rapid rise in the number of AIEd HE publications, new trends have emerged.

The findings show that of the 138 studies examined, research was conducted in six of the seven continents of the world. In extant systematic reviews showed that the US led by a large margin in the number of studies published. This trend has now shifted to China. Another shift in AIEd HE is that while extant studies lamented the lack of focus on professors of education leading these studies, this systematic review found education to be the most common department affiliation with 28% and computer science coming in second at 20%. Undergraduate students were the most studied students at 72%. Similar to the findings of other studies, language learning was the most common subject domain. This included writing, reading, and vocabulary acquisition. In examination of who the AIEd was intended for, 72% of the studies focused on students, 17% instructors, and 11% managers.

Grounded coding was used to answer the overarching question of how AIEd was used in HE. Five usage codes emerged from the data: (1) Assessment/Evaluation, (2) Predicting, (3) AI Assistant, (4) Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS), and (5) Managing Student Learning. Assessment and evaluation had a wide variety of purposes, including assessing academic progress and student emotions towards learning, individual and group evaluations, and class based online community assessments. Predicting emerged as a code with ten axial codes, as AIEd predicted dropouts and at-risk students, innovative ability, and career decisions. AI Assistants were specific to supporting students in HE. These assistants included those with an anthropomorphic presence, such as virtual agents and persuasive intervention through digital programs. ITS systems were not always noted in extant systematic reviews but were specifically mentioned in 18 of the studies in this review. ITS systems in this study provided customized strategies and approaches to student’s characteristics and needs. The final code in this study highlighted the use of AI in managing student learning, including learning analytics, curriculum sequencing, instructional design, and clustering of students.

The findings of this study provide a springboard for future academics, practitioners, computer scientists, policymakers, and funders in understanding the state of the field in AIEd HE, how AI is used. It also provides actionable items to ameliorate gaps in the current understanding. As the use AIEd will only continue to grow this study can serve as a baseline for further research studies in the use of AIEd in HE.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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The authors would like to thank Mildred Jones, Katherina Nako, Yaser Sendi, and Ricardo Randall for data gathering and organization.

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• International

Student visa: Views of students and higher education institutions

• Home Office

Published 14 May 2024

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1. Introduction

1.1 background.

Since leaving the EU, the UK government has maintained a highly competitive offer for international students who want to study in the UK via the Sponsored Study visa route. At present, under the Future Borders and Immigration System ( FBIS ), there continues to be no limit on the number of international students who can undertake sponsored study in the UK.

In 2023, there were 457,673 sponsored study visas granted to main applicants, 5% fewer than in 2022 but 70% higher than 2019. The Sponsored Study visa route plays a crucial part in the UK government’s plan for growth, and ministers are keen to build an evidence base on route delivery to inform future policy and underpin assessments of economic impact.

1.2 Student visas

The Sponsored Study visa route is open to international students who are aged 16 and over, have been offered a place on a course by a licensed Student sponsor, have enough money to support themselves and pay for their course, can speak, read, write, and understand English and, if 16 or 17, have consent from their parents.

The length of time successful applicants can stay depends on the length of their course and what study they have already completed in the UK. If they are aged 18 and over and the course is at degree level, they can usually stay up to 5 years. If it is below degree level, they can usually stay up to 2 years.

To sponsor international students, higher education institutions ( HEIs ) must hold an active and unsanctioned licence. There are routine duties which must be fulfilled by the sponsoring institution to maintain a valid sponsorship licence – these and other immigration compliance requirements are set out in the UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) Student sponsor guidance.

1.3 Research aims

The aim of this research was to understand international student and sponsor decision-making when using the Sponsored Study visa route. The outputs of the research will be used to aid understanding of trends appearing in management information ( MI ) data, and to help inform the focus and design of future evidence gathering and evaluation plans.

Specifically, the research aims were:

• to understand why international students chose to study in the UK, awareness of policy restrictions, the relative attractiveness of policy features and how these compare to international offerings, and the relative importance of other drivers outside the sphere to policy influence
• to gather details on post-study work intentions and reflections on the Sponsored Study visa route interacting with other visa routes (for example, Skilled Worker, Graduate) as means of retaining international talent and pathway for high-skilled migrants to work and settle in the UK
• to learn from user experiences and identify areas for improvement in operational delivery, including experiences of the fully digital application process
• to provide insight on HEIs ’ understanding of sponsorship requirements, how sponsors comply, any external support needed to overcome barriers and burdens, and the impact of sponsorship policy on international student recruitment efforts; the research aimed to address what influences actions taken by sponsors when recruiting domestically and internationally and whether this varied by different faculties

The key research questions were:

• what factors motivate international student decisions to undertake higher education study in the UK (compared to other countries); to what extent are they influenced by policy features (for example, ability to bring dependants); how did they learn about the route
• has the launch of the Graduate route influenced study intentions; what are their intentions for after their course ends
• what labour market activities are the dependants of visa holders undertaking in the UK
• how have students and sponsors found the application/sponsorship process; how have students found their experience of studying in the UK
• how have changes to the Sponsored Study visa route impacted wider HEI strategy around international recruitment
• what are HEI sponsors doing to achieve their international recruitment objectives; how is this working in practice

1.4 Methodology

The research was split into 2 strands, one focusing on the views and experiences of the Student visa holders, the other focusing on the views and experiences of higher education institutions. This involved an online survey with over 2,000 Student visa holders and 25 follow-up qualitative interviews, and a telephone survey of 115 institutions and follow-up qualitative interviews with 20 institutions.

On the Student visa holders strand, 2,415 current Student visa holders completed the survey out of the 40,000 invited. The sample of students invited was selected to match the overall population profile of Student visa holders by nationality, age, and gender. The number of completed surveys by each of those categories is presented in table 1 below. The completed surveys were then weighted on an age by nationality basis back to the main population profile.

Table 1: Profile of students who completed the visa holders survey

For the qualitative strand, 25 interviews were completed, aiming for a spread of profiles and experiences, by nationality (at least 3 to 6 interviews with students from India, Nigeria, and China), dependants (14 had dependants), level of qualification (5 undergraduate students, 15 master’s students, 5 doctoral), working practices (18 worked while studying), experience of applying (17 positive, 8 negative), and future plans (18 plan to stay).

For the HEI strand, a census approach was adopted. computer assisted telephone interviews were completed with 115 HEIs , out of a total sample of 172 institutions. Each institution had up to 4 named contacts, and all were considered in scope for the survey. No weighting was applied.

Table 2: Profile of institutions who completed the HEI survey

For the qualitative strand, 20 follow-up interviews were conducted with a range of institutions from across the UK (9 from London and the South, 11 from the rest of UK). The cohort included responses from a range of institutions with varying percentages of international students (6 each of high, medium and low, and 2 unknown), and respondents included some HEIs who wanted to increase their international students intake (3 HEIs ), and some who used third-party services (6 HEIs ).

More information on the methodology for both strands of the research can be found in Appendix 1: Methodology .

2. Prior awareness of visa routes

This chapter explores the ways students reported first hearing about the Student visa as well as examining their awareness of other visa routes, namely the Graduate route.

2.1 How did students first hear about the Student visa?

When asked about where they first heard about the Student visa, students indicated that they were most likely to have heard about it from friends or family members (23%). This was closely followed by education agents (22%) and places of study in their home country (19%)(figure 1).

Figure 1: How visa holders first heard about the UK Student visa

• Base: Visa holders survey, All visa holders (2,415).
• Percentages <1% are not included in this chart.

Differences by nationality

There were some differences by nationality in how the students first heard about the Student visa. Nigerian students were the most likely out of all nationalities to have heard about the visa from friends and family (42%), whilst Chinese students were the least likely (12%) to have done so. Chinese students were the most likely out of all nationalities to have found out about the visa from a place of study in their home country (33%). Pakistani students were more likely than average to have reported hearing about the visa from social media or an employer or work colleague (15% and 5% compared to 8% and 1% respectively).

Differences by subject and level of study

There were further differences depending on the subject studied and the level of study. Those who were studying a science, technology, engineering and mathematics ( STEM ) subject were more likely to have heard about the visa from friends or family than those studying a non- STEM subject (25% compared to 22%). In contrast, those who were studying a non- STEM subject were more likely to have heard about the visa from an education agent (23% compared to 20% among those studying a STEM subject) or from a place of study in the UK (10% compared to 7%). Undergraduates were most likely to have first heard about the visa from a place of study in their home country (28%). Master’s students were more likely to have heard from friends or a family member (25%) and doctoral students were more likely to have heard from a place of study in the UK (25%).

Differences by age and dependants on Student visa

The age of the student also seemed to determine how they first heard about the Student visa. For example, older students, aged 25 and over (27%) were more likely to have heard about the visa through friends or family compared to younger students aged 16 to 24 (19%). In contrast, younger students were more likely than average to have heard about the visa through an education agent or a place of study in their home country (both 24%).

Those with dependants were more likely than those with no dependants to have heard about the visa from a friend or family members (32% compared to 22%), from the UK government website (19% compared to 14%), from social media (14% compared to 7%), as well as from colleagues or peers (4% compared to 2%). In comparison, those with no dependants were more likely than those who had dependants on their visa to have heard about the visa from an education agent (24% compared to 13%), a place of study in their home country (17% compared to 11%) and a place of study in the UK (9% compared to 4%).

Several students who participated in the qualitative interviews found out about the Student visa through official websites, such as the GOV.UK website, the Home Office website and the UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) website. This was driven mainly by students studying non- STEM subjects, those on master’s courses and those with dependants on their Student visa. This predisposition towards official sources among the qualitative interviews could be explained by the slight “self-selection” of the kind of audience who would be confident enough to take part in qualitative interviews.

“I was just searching on Google and then I found out that the UK actually has a UK government website with all the information.” – Student visa holder, India, master’s, no dependants.

“[I] just checked the information that’s available on the Home Office website, like the conditions, and of course the information that they provide when they grant a visa.” – Student visa holder, France, doctorate, has dependants.

Interviewees also reported that they found out through friends and family as well as from universities in the UK, mostly on their website. It was often the case that the friends and family were themselves students in the UK and had Student visas themselves, which indicates that they would be in a good position to offer advice or share knowledge about the Student visa. Some of the students who had first heard about the Student visa through universities in the UK had come across this information whilst proactively searching courses and university requirements. For others, they had been informed about the Student visa through acceptance letters that they had received from the universities.

“Once your application to the university is approved, they start to send you emails about how to apply for the visa.” – Student visa holder, USA, doctorate, has dependants.

2.2 Awareness of other routes

Most students (70%) were aware of the Graduate route before the survey had taken place. Just over two-in-five (22%) students were not aware of the Graduate route and only 8% said that they did not know if they were aware of it.

Figure 2: Awareness of Graduate route

Certain nationalities were more aware of the Graduate route. Pakistani (80%), Nigerian (78%) and Indian (78%) students were more likely to have been aware of the Graduate route than Chinese students (63%). Furthermore, students who had ‘other’ nationalities, not including Pakistani, Nigerian, Indian and Chinese students, were more likely to be unaware of the Graduate route (31% compared to 22% overall).

Those studying on a postgraduate course, both master’s and doctorates (76% and 70%), were more likely to be aware of the Graduate route compared to undergraduates (54%). This finding may have been influenced in part by the higher proportion of postgraduate students being from Pakistan, India, and Nigeria who, as mentioned before, had more awareness of the Graduate route. Furthermore, those who were studying at Russell Group universities were more likely to be unaware of the Graduate route compared to those who were studying at non-Russell Group universities (27% compared to 20%). This may have been driven by the high proportion of Chinese students studying at Russell Group universities.

Students who may have been more likely to benefit from the Graduate route were more aware of its existence. For example, those who had the intention to remain in the UK post-study were more likely to be aware of the Graduate route than those who wanted to leave the UK post-study or did not know what they wanted to do after their study (76% compared to 56% and 62% respectively). Those who had worked whilst studying were more likely to be aware of the Graduate route compared to those who didn’t (82% compared to 67%). Additionally, those who had dependants on their Student visa were more likely to have been aware of the Graduate route than those with no dependants on their Student visa (80% compared to 74%).

Younger students were less likely to be aware of the Graduate route. Over three-quarters (78%) of students aged 25 and over were aware of the Graduate route compared to 62% of students aged between 16 to 24. This may be influenced in part by the high proportion of Chinese students aged between 16 to 24 (70%) who were less likely to have been aware of the Graduate route.

3. Decision-making

This chapter explores the reasons and decision-making process of Student visa holders when choosing to come study in the UK, including the influence of other countries, visa routes, and other influences. The chapter then considers how HEIs prioritise how many Student visas to sponsor and why, discusses the recruitment practices and goals of sponsor HEIs , and investigates the impact of the recent policy changes on their practices.

3.1 Reasons for studying in the UK

The majority of Student visa holders said their reason for coming to study in the UK under the Student visa was because they wanted to pursue a particular course at a particular university (60%). A further third said that studying at their chosen university and wanting to live in the UK were both equally important (33%). Only 4% of international students said their main motivation was primarily wanting to live in the UK.

Table 3: Main drivers for decision to come study in the UK, overall and by nationality

• Base: Visa holders survey, All respondents; Total (2,415), India (519), China (507), Nigeria (431), Pakistan (155), Other (803).

Students from China were more likely to say they wanted to pursue a particular course at a specific university (74%). Students were also more likely to say a particular course or university was what drove their decision if they were studying for a PhD (80%), planned to leave the UK after their studies (75%), studying at a Russell Group university (69%), or had no dependants (62%).

On the other hand, students from Nigeria and Pakistan were more likely than average to say that both living and studying in the UK were equally important for them (42% and 41% respectively). A similar pattern was found among students who worked while studying (45%), students with dependants (38%), and those with 3 or more dependants (43%).

Reasons for choosing the Student visa over other UK visa routes

Students who wanted to live in the UK and those who thought living in the UK was equally as important as pursuing a course at a particular university were asked their reasons for choosing a Student visa over other UK visas. Access to the Graduate route, the ease of the application and the ability to bring dependants were influences on students’ decision to get a Student visa rather than a different UK visa. Among this group, the main reason for choosing the Student visa was the fact that they primarily wanted to study in the UK, rather than work (57%). In addition, more than a third (37%) said they chose the Student visa because it led to the Graduate route, about one-in-six (16%) chose it because it was an easier application process compared to other UK visas, and one-in-ten (10%) chose it because it allowed them to bring dependants. A full list of the reasons for choosing the Student visa over other UK visas is in figure 3 below.

During the qualitative interviews, most students indicated that their decisions were mostly driven by the fact they wanted to do a bachelor’s degree, master’s or doctorate (as applicable), and it was just a matter of deciding where to do it.

“Wanting to study a master’s was my priority one and then came studying in the UK and then finally the university.” – Student visa holder, India, master’s, no dependants.

Figure 3: Reasons for choosing the Student visa over other UK visa options

• Base: Visa holders survey, All respondents who wanted to live in the UK and those who thought it was equally as important as pursuing a course at a particular university (1,004).
• Percentages under 5% are not shown above.

Among those who said they wanted to primarily pursue a certain course at a particular university, the majority chose their current option because it fitted their academic interests (74%) and because the course would enable them to develop the right professional or technical skills (73%). In addition, almost half (47%) said it was the reputation of the UK higher education institution that attracted them.

The reputation of the UK institutions seemed to be an attraction particularly among students from China (56%), who indicated in the qualitative interviews that they sought the good reputation of UK universities and relative accessibility of acceptance compared to the high competition for good universities in China.

“So I come from China, and it is so competitive if I want to go to a very high reputation university but in the UK it is not that hard to get an offer from a university, and the second reason that I came here is that I am really interested in the culture and the history, so I choose to come here.” – Student visa holder, China, undergraduate, no dependants.

The UK’s reputation for higher education also extended beyond China, with students from India and the USA also noting the UK’s academic reputation.

“I really like the intellectual community at the University of [redacted]…The reputation of the university itself.” – Student visa holder, USA, doctorate, has dependants.

“My choice of destination was always the UK because I know the top Universities are always in the UK.” – Student visa holder, India, master’s, no dependants.

Additionally, some students from Nigeria and India mentioned that they preferred the UK’s practical and applied learning system, compared to the very theory and book-based approach in their countries.

“In India a lot of the studying comes from the book but not practical. When it came to [studying] other countries it had practical as well as theoretical so I chose something that gave me hands on practice.” – Student visa holder, India, master’s, has dependants.

3.2 Impact of alternative options on students

Half of the Student visa holders (50%) also considered other countries before applying to come to the UK, as shown in figure 4. While two-fifths (41%) considered other countries as study destinations, 12% considered other countries for non-study related reasons. Students from India and Pakistan were the least likely to consider going to other countries (31% and 36% respectively).

Figure 4: Proportion of Student visa holders that considered other destinations, overall and by nationality

The countries most mentioned were firstly other English-speaking countries like the USA (by 51% of those who said they were considering other countries alongside the UK), Canada (42%), Australia (34%), followed by Germany (19%), France (13%) and Japan (10%).

The USA and Canada were more likely to be considered by Nigerian students, 60% of whom considered the USA, and 79% considered Canada. Canada was the main alternative destination considered by those with dependants (70%).

Students from Pakistan were more likely than average to consider Australia (50%) and Germany (32%). Students from China were also more likely than average to consider Australia (40%) and were the most likely to consider France (19%) and Japan (19%).

In line with the survey, most of the students in the qualitative interviews mentioned they had considered either Canada or USA, or both, due to the international recognition of their degrees and accreditations, and opportunities after graduation (the same reasons as for the UK).

“I considered Canada and the US but after weighing up the pros and cons I decided on apply to a UK university because the visa process was simpler, and the documentation required. I had just got married too so I liked that I could bring my wife with me while studying.” – Student visa holder, Nigeria, master’s, has dependants.

“I was also looking at other countries that have master’s programmes, like Canada, because they are internationally recognised and allow board placement.” – Student visa holder, India, undergraduate, no dependants.

Reasons for choosing the UK in the end

The reasons for choosing the UK over the other countries in the end, as represented in figure 5, included the UK course or institution being better (67%), because they wanted to experience living in the UK (42%), or because they wanted to move to an English-speaking country (28%). Almost a quarter (23%) mentioned that the UK Student visa was a better fit for them, rising to 41% of students from Pakistan, to 46% among those aged between 35 and 44 and to 36% among those with dependants.

Figure 5: Reasons for choosing the UK over other countries

• Base: Visa holders survey, Respondents who considered moving to a country other than the UK (1,192).

For some students, the deciding factor in choosing the UK seemed to be the ease of application and the speed of the processing of the UK Student visa compared to those of USA and Canada. Many people said they were put off by the USA visa needing an in-person interview which was difficult to set up due to high demand, and by the cost of it. In contrast, the process for applying for a Canadian Student visa was all online and straightforward, but the processing times were very long.

“Looking at both the Canadian and the UK visa thing for students, I found the UK process to be a little more laid back and convenient for me, especially since I was married by then.” – Student visa holder, India, master’s, has dependants.

“I applied to 5 universities in the UK through UCAS, and Canada as well. I was supposed to go to Canada, applied for the visa and all, but Canadian visa got very delayed due to COVID-19, so I decided to accept the [UK university] option just in case.” – Student visa holder, India, undergraduate, no dependants.

In one instance, a student who was accepted by a Canadian and a UK university was forced to accept the offer from the UK university, despite the Canadian university being their first choice. This was because COVID-19 caused delays to the processing of their Canadian visa, meaning they would arrive in Canada after the course had already started. The UK student visa provided them the option to pay to expedite this process, allowing them to start their course on time.

Influence of dependants on decision-making

Ability to bring dependants was important. Not many of those with dependants mentioned it was a driving factor in their decision, but most mentioned how important it was that they were able to bring them too.

“What attracted me the most was the ability to bring my wife with me and the ability to work after my studies… And to get sponsored so I could continue my career.” – Student visa holder, Nigeria, master’s, has dependants.

“If I’d not been able to bring my kids, I would not have considered coming at all, I would not have given it a second thought.” – Student visa holder, USA, doctorate, has dependants.

“It’s important because my course is 3 years. Having my husband with me in the UK is making the whole thing a little bit easier, it’s making the whole journey easier… We are able to support each other. But it was not a criteria for me coming to the UK. What I prioritised was getting the admission to [University] I still would’ve struggled on with it.” – Student visa holder, Nigeria, doctorate, has dependants.

For those who had children as their dependants, they tended to consider the quality of the UK education system for their children and that played an important role in their decision as well.

“I didn’t want my children to have a Korean education because Korean education is very tough and high cost…and I really like them to have physical education too.” – Student visa holder, South Korea, Post-graduate, has dependants.

Influence of the Graduate route

The Graduate route was also a consideration for Student visa holders. As previously mentioned, most students were aware of the Graduate route (70%), and over six-in-ten (62%) had been aware of the route from before applying to the UK Student visa. Of those aware of the Graduate route when applying, as depicted in figure 6, 85% of them said that its availability influenced them to apply for a UK Student visa at least to some extent, and just over a third (35%) said it influenced them to a great extent. Students from Nigeria and Pakistan were more likely to have been influenced by the Graduate route to a great extent (46% each).

Figure 6: Influence of the Graduate route on decision to apply for UK Student visa

• Base: Visa holders survey, All those who were aware of the Graduate visa route when applying (1,059).

However, only a third (34%) of those who said they were influenced by the Graduate route would have changed their destination if it had not been available, while almost half (46%) said they would have still made the same choice, and 20% were unsure what they would have done otherwise. Students from Nigeria were more likely to choose a different country if the Graduate route had not been an option (44%).

Having the Graduate route available provided some peace of mind for international students, that if they wanted to, they could try to find a job in the UK after their studies and they would have the time to look for it.

“It felt hopeful when I was back in my home country that ‘Ok, we still have some time to, you know, find a job and get the experience that I was looking for’ because studying here is an experience that I can get and working is again, another experience that I can have on my resume.” – Student visa holder, India, master’s, has dependants.

“I decided on the MBA because I can get the one-year visa plus 2 years extended visa for working… It was a huge impact on my decision.” – Student visa holder, South Korea, master’s, has dependants.

The length of the course and the UK culture were also common themes in the qualitative research.

“There was very much an experience component of if I’m going to be spending this much money on a master’s degree, how could I make it part of my life experience?” –Student visa holder, Australia, master’s, has dependants.

The fact that UK master’s programmes are 1-year and bachelor’s are 3 years, when in most other countries they are 2 and 4 years long respectively, was seen as a plus, particularly among students returning to education after working full-time. A few students also mentioned wanting to “get away from” the political situation and corruption in their country of origin, and one student mentioned they were attracted by the rule of law in the UK.

Case study 1 - Decision-making

One master’s student interviewed was a 34 year old man from Nigeria, studying sociology, a non- STEM subject in the UK. He had a teaching qualification from Nigeria and had previously worked in Nigeria and the UAE, but he wanted to further his education. He felt that the Nigerian higher education system relied too heavily on textbooks, while he wanted to get a more practical experience out of his master’s. He felt this practical experience would improve his future employment prospects in the education sector.

He was made aware of the opportunity to study in the UK via the Student visa by a friend while he was working in the UAE. He was also considering Canada and the USA. After some internet research on different criteria and application processes for universities as well as visas, he decided on the UK.

This was influenced by the simplicity of the visa process and the documentation required, as well as the fact that he could bring his wife with him as a dependant, as he had just got married. For other visas and university applications he noted the need to use a consultant to be able to navigate the process, which he saw as being prone to fraud and unnecessarily expensive.

“What attracted me the most was the ability to bring my wife with me and the ability to work after my studies…And to get sponsored so I could continue my career”.

He also highlighted the rule of law, and lack of corruption as being very important considerations in his decision-making process for a study destination, as corruption was something he had experienced both in his home country and while working in the UAE.

He was quite happy that his lived experience of the course matched his expectations, and he enjoyed the ability to put into practice what he was learning about. He was working while studying, during weekends, in a hotel in a neighbouring city. After finishing his studies, he was hoping to build a career here in the UK by undertaking a teaching qualification and furthering his teaching practice, though he was originally planning on going back to Nigeria.

“It’s easier to get a job here in the UK than it is in Nigeria.”

Student visa holder, Nigeria, master’s, non- STEM , has dependants.

3.3 Impact of the ability to change to different visa routes on students

In the qualitative interviews no one mentioned the Student visa as one of the main attractions for coming to the UK. A lot of students said they did not consider the visa until after they chose their destinations for study. But, as previously mentioned, some did cite the ease of the visa application process (compared to Student visas in other countries) to be a plus, and sometimes a deciding factor in which country to go to.

Figure 7: Level of agreement with statement: ‘As a Student visa holder, it is important that I am able to switch to another visa (for example, Skilled Worker) before completing my studies

• Base: Visa holders survey, All those who are not PhD students (2,338).

Although no longer allowed, but a possibility at the time of application for the students interviewed, students studying at below doctoral level were asked whether it was important for them to be able to switch to another visa (for example, Skilled Worker) before completing their studies. Just under a third (31%) agreed with that statement, while 29% disagreed, 26% neither agreed nor disagreed, and a further 15% were unsure of their answer.

Figure 8: Whether people would still have applied for a UK Student visa if early switching was not an option

• Base: Visa holders survey, All those who agreed the early-switching option was important (741).

However, if the early-switching option was not available at the time of their application, three-quarters (74%) of the people who agreed that having that option was important to them would have still applied for a UK Student visa. Students from Nigeria were more likely to say they would have still applied for the Student visa without the early-switching option (84%).

From the HEIs ’ perspective, two-thirds (67%) said that it was rare for students to change visas before the end of their studies, 13% said not notably rare nor common. Only 13% of HEIs said it was common. The final 7% did not know.

3.4 Reasons for HEIs recruiting via the Student visa route

Most (93%) HEIs reported that they actively recruit international students. All Russell Group universities surveyed reported that they did this, as did 92% of non-Russell Group Universities.

Figure 9: Factors leading HEIs to sponsor international students on the Student visa route

• Base: HEI survey, All HEI respondents (115).

The most common reason for becoming a sponsor for international students was to increase cultural diversity. This factor was reported by 64% of HEIs . Universities in the North (78%) and Scotland (77%) were more likely to be recruiting to increase their cultural diversity than the rest of the UK.

“We’ve got the corporate reasonings, which is established in to diversify recruitment significantly. There’s obviously finite reasonings as well, but a lot of it is around diversifying our recruitment portfolio.” – HEI, East of England, non-Russell Group.

Almost half (47%) of HEIs stated that they were motivated to sponsor international students for financial reasons. In the qualitative interviews some reported that this worked alongside increasing cultural diversity.

“If we didn’t [sponsor], we wouldn’t be able to recruit students and that’ll have a massive impact on both the diversity of the student population but also, the university is a business.” - HEI, South East, non-Russell Group.

There was also a sense in the qualitative interviews that sponsoring international students was something that the HEI had always done, and the strategy continued to be an integral part of the institution. This was reported by 12% of HEIs in the survey.

One-in-ten (10%) of HEIs reported that they wanted to build global long-term connections with other countries and 10% also stated that they recruited as part of international partnerships with institutions. These 2 motivations were also referred to in the qualitative interviews, particularly those with specific research interests.

“We’ve always had very sound international relationships with universities overseas, so this is just a continuation of that.” – HEI, outside of England, Russell Group.

3.5 Level of recruitment of international students

Nearly three-quarters (73%) of HEIs said they planned to increase their level of international recruitment, as figure 10 indicates. Russell Group universities were less likely to plan an increase, but this was from a small base. There were no statistically significant differences by region.

Figure 10: HEIs recruitment goals for numbers of international students over the next 1 to 2 years

• Base: HEI survey, All HEIs who actively recruit international students (107).

In the qualitative interviews, those who planned to expand tended to say this was driven by financial reasons.

“[The] only way we can actually grow income is by recruiting more international students.” – HEI, South East, non-Russell Group.

Most of those planning an increase in recruitment were only planning a small increase (53% overall). While around a third were looking to increase the number of students (31%), this was frequently either because they felt that a small increase was what was within their capacity, or felt it was more realistic to have some growth for stability given some uncertainty around policy changes.

“There’s a plan to increase slightly, but it will only be slight because we are a small school…We’ve asked to increase our CAS capacity by about 15 but it’s still under 100 we’ll be requesting.” – HEI, London, non-Russell Group.

“So we’re now looking to broadly stabilize our numbers and a lot of that’s reflecting on governmental policy recently around the dependant changes and within the wireless sector has been reported, you know in a number of areas and there is the significant decrease in stream recruitment.” – HEI, East of England, non-Russell Group.

Just under a third of HEIs (30%) reported that they wanted to increase their markets or diversify them. For some, this was an active part of their institution’s strategy.

“The school’s strategy for overseas growth is about the diversity of the student body, and it was about what overseas students bring to the curriculum, in terms of the student cohort.” – HEI, Yorkshire and the Humber, non-Russell Group.

Others felt that there was a need to offset reducing student numbers coming from the UK and also from the EU following the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.

“Home students have been a steady decline due to pre-COVID-19 and Brexit, a downturn in the 18-year old demographic … so [we’re] exploring more into other markets.” – HEI, South East, non-Russell Group.

A full list of what HEIs were hoping to achieve in relation to their international student recruitments can be found in figure 11.

Figure 11: HEI goals in relation to international student recruitment

One institution reported that they recruited specifically so that they qualified for grants from the Scottish government.

“No, we couldn’t [recruit any less] because we’ve got to hit the Scottish numbers…If we don’t do that, we don’t get the bigger block grants from the Scottish Government.” –HEI, Scotland, non-Russell Group.

As seen in figure 12, 90% of HEIs considered international recruitment to be important to their overall strategy (80% very important). This was often because it was a crucial financial aspect but also that internationalisation was a core part of the philosophy of the institution and how they provide and contribute to education.

“[HEI] has always been an international or a global university, and we have always had a large proportion of international students and staff and I think that that is part of the make-up of a global university, (so we are one of the top 100 in the world). Typically leading universities are very international in terms of not only composition, but how they engage with the world.” – HEI, West Midlands, Russell Group.

Figure 12: Importance of international student recruitment to HEIs ’ overall strategy

Figure 13: activities undertaken to attract international students and meet recruitment objectives.

The most common form of activity to attract international students was overseas outreach and advertising (64%), followed by the use of student recruitment agents (56%). Respondents in the qualitative interviews gave some examples of overseas outreach, which can include recruitment trips, British Consular events in the UK, but also revising what they offer and the language criteria for international students.

In addition to the reasons identified in the quantitative survey as seen in figure 13, respondents in the interviews commented that they were reviewing courses and language policies in order to further appeal to certain target markets.

“The team is also looking at revising our qualifications and English language policy to potentially suit more those markets [Nigeria and Ghana].” – HEI, London, non-Russell Group.

Other strategies identified to increase numbers included having feedback on their website from alumni and running campaigns with Study International. Some identified alumni as the biggest recruitment asset through word-of-mouth and being ambassadors for the institution.

Note: Study International is an independent resource aimed at giving students, parents, educators and institutions a globally-inclined information hub with the latest news and trends in international education.

3.6 Targeted recruitment of international students

Over seven-in-ten (71%) HEIs planned to expand the countries or regions of the world they recruit international students from over the next 1 to 2 years. Sponsors who were previously subscribed to the premium service were more likely to intend to expand than non-Premium sponsors (74% compared with 58%), and non-Russell Group universities were more likely than Russell Group universities (72% compared with 64%, but from a low base so not statistically significant).

As shown in figure 14 the most common country for HEIs to target was the USA (28%), followed by China (24%) and South America in general (20%). The qualitative interviews suggested that countries tended to be targeted for financial reasons.

“Countries being targeted next year include Nigeria and Ghana because the intelligence was telling our international recruitment team that those countries have a very young population, from kind of wealthy backgrounds, and there is a desire from that area for young people to come and study in the UK, so that’s some of the indicators which prompted the team to explore that area.” – HEI, London, non-Russell Group.

In some cases, the motivation was to tap into previously unexplored markets.

“I think we want to look at more of South East Asia in terms of Singapore, China and Vietnam where we traditionally don’t get any students from.” – HEI, South East, non-Russell Group.

Figure 14: Locations where HEIs plan to increase recruitment from

• Base: HEI survey, All HEIs who plan to expand the countries or regions they recruit international students from (76).

3.7 Impact of policy changes

HEIs were mostly positive about their ability to adapt to policy changes affecting students, 66% thought they could do so easily, although only 17% said very easily, as seen in figure 15. The qualitative interviews suggested that the difficulty stemmed from timings and being able to process and disseminate these changes to students efficiently.

Figure 15: Extent to which HEIs are able to easily adapt to visa policy changes affecting students

For changes that affect institutions directly, HEIs were slightly less optimistic about their ability to manage the changes – 60% thought it would be done easily, and 9% very easily, as shown in figure 16. Changes that meant having to adopt new processes could take time, particularly around introducing digital technology such as the shift to eVisas or uploading scans of qualification certificates, because this creates certain questions around how they verified the voracity of digital documents, and particularly the algorithm to filter immigration applications had affected the length of time for processing.

One institution also thought that changes could be difficult to adapt to because they were changes that do not suit institutions and were being made when they can make things harder for HEIs .

“I think the Home Office need to think carefully about how they manage that relationship with the sector, both in our operational level and on that more the wider engagement piece, because I think there’s a certain amount of tone deafness there.” – HEI, South East, non-Russell Group.

Figure 16: Extent to which HEIs are able to easily adapt to visa policy changes affecting organisations

When asked whether specific aspects of policy changes would affect recruitment of international students, many qualitative respondents felt that it was difficult to predict the amount of impact there would be.

“It’s tricky to see how large an impact it’s going to have until it’s kind of been in operation for a while.” – HEI, South East, Non-Russell Group.

As shown in figure 17, those who did feel they could predict what the effects would be thought that most changes would not have a major impact. Just over half (59%) of HEIs thought greater scrutiny over student finances would have an impact (6% to a great extent), 35% thought greater scrutiny over international student agents would have an impact (3% to a great extent) and 27% thought students being unable to switch out of the Student visa route would have an impact (3% to a great extent).

Figure 17: Extent to which HEIs think policy changes to the Student visa will affect their recruitment of overseas students in the UK the following year

HEIs thought that losing the ability to bring dependants was the most likely change to have an effect. Three-quarters (75%) thought this would have an impact to at least some extent, 30% to a large extent.

Some respondents in the qualitative interviews felt that they had already started to see an impact in this regard.

“We have like all other institutions [noticed] a marked decline in the number of applications for this January and we’re as a sector, I suppose we assume we’re putting that down to that removal the of dependants.” – HEI, North West, non-Russell Group.

Across the subgroups, there was a feeling that this change would be likely impact older students in particular, and especially female students.

“It’s a big pull to move to another country and if you’ve got kids or a spouse, you’d want them to come with you naturally.” – HEI, North West, non-Russell Group.

“Our biggest disappointment in regard to that (visa changes), was that we knew that it would particularly impact on women in some cultures where they are not permitted to travel unless their partners come with them.” – HEI, West Midlands, Russell Group.

One institution gave anecdotal evidence that they thought this would have a big impact on Iranian students or certain cultures, but in general respondents found this a difficult topic to talk about with any certainty because it’s not an area that they hold detailed or robust data on.

One specific recent policy change was the ability of students to be able to switch visa routes. For most HEIs it was rare for student holders to switch visas before the end of their studies. Two-thirds (67%) thought it was rare and a third (33%) very rare, as seen in figure 18.

Figure 18: At your institution, how common was it for Student visa holders to switch visas before the end of their studies?

4. dependants.

This chapter covers the characteristics of the Student visa holders who also had dependants on their visa, as well as dependants themselves, exploring their relationship to the visa holders, age, and main activities in the UK before briefly discussing their influence on the visa holder’s decision to come study in the UK.

4.1 Profile of students with dependants

Almost a quarter (24%) of Student visa holders had dependants on their visa. A further 3% expected their partner and/or child(ren) to join them as dependants on their Student visa later, and another 3% on another visa in the future. Lastly, 70% of students had no dependants associated with their visa nor any plans to bring some in the future.

By nationality, students from Nigeria were more likely than those from any other countries to have dependants on their visa, with 59% of them currently having dependants. By contrast, only 2% of students from China had dependants, making them the least likely to have dependants.

By level of study, master’s students (25%) were more likely than those pursuing a doctorate (10%) to have dependants on their Student visa. Additionally, more students who planned to stay in the UK after their studies had dependants (27%), compared to those who wanted to leave the UK (14%).

Also more likely to have dependants were students who worked while studying (35% compared to 18% among those who didn’t work), women (34% compared to 14% among men), and students at non-Russell Group universities (32% compared to 5% among those at Russell Group HEIs ). The likelihood of someone having dependants increased with their age, from 6% among those aged 24 and under to 32% among those aged between 25 and 34 years, and 62% of those aged 35 and over.

4.2 Profile of dependants

Among the students who had dependants on their visa, almost all (94%) had their partner as a dependant, and 35% had their children as dependants. The majority of those with children as dependants had between 1 and 2 children, with a mean average of 1.7 children.

Students from Nigeria were more likely to have children as dependants (53%), and also more likely to have 3 children as dependants (19% compared to 12% overall among those with dependent children).

Additionally, students aged 35 and over with dependents were more likely to have children on their visa (72%), as were those who wanted to stay in the UK (39% compared to 22% among those who wanted to leave).”

Figure 19: Activities of dependant partners

• Base: Visa holders survey, All those who have a partner as a dependant (516).

In terms of the activities of the dependent partners, as shown in figure 19, they were most likely to be a full-time employee in the UK (61%). This was followed by the partners being unemployed (13%) or working part-time (10%). Partners of students from India were more likely than average to be full-time employed (74%).

4.3 Influence of dependants in decision-making

When asked whether they would have still come to study in the UK if they were not able to bring their dependants with them (figure 20), roughly two-in-five (38%) said they would have looked for other options instead. Around half (49%) of students with dependants said they still would have chosen to study in the UK, but 10% would have chosen shorter courses or qualifications. In addition, 13% were not sure what they would have done if bringing dependants was not an option.

Figure 20: Whether people would have still chosen to study in the UK if they could not bring dependants

• Base: Visa holders survey, All those who have dependants (549).

Students with dependants from India were more likely than those from other countries to say they would have still chosen to come study in the UK without their dependants (66% compared to 43% for Nigeria, 41% for Pakistan and 35% for all other countries). The base size for students with dependants from China was too low (5 students) to provide any indications.

In general, the more dependants they had, the less likely Student visa holders were to have applied without their dependants. Just over a third (34%) of those with one dependant would have looked for other options, whereas almost half (46%) of those with 2 dependants and just over half (51%) of those with 3 or more dependants would have looked for other options. Perhaps related to the number of dependants, the likelihood of choosing other options also increased with age, from 34% among those aged 34 and under, to 52% of those aged 35 and over.

“Having them [my children] on my visa was crucial. As I mentioned, the reason why I didn’t go to Canada first is because my daughter was really young at that time and I wasn’t sure if I could study and then have her because she was so young, and also coming to the UK with my children was really something that I considered because I checked all the conditions and I saw that it was possible to bring my family members.” – Student visa holder, France, doctorate, has dependants.

It should be noted that many HEIs interviewed did not record data on dependants in any significant way and did not comment on the influence of dependants in the decision-making process for students. Anecdotally, universities expected to see an impact of students not being able to bring dependants in coming years.

Case study 2 - Dependants

One student came from South Korea to the UK to study a non- STEM subject at a postgraduate (non-doctorate) level. She had previously studied in Australia and came to do a one-year course as a mature student. Her husband had studied in the UK and recommended it because of its culture and lifestyle.

Dissatisfied with life in South Korea, she wanted to come to the UK and while the intention was to study, she would have applied for a work visa if she was unable to come as a student. Being able to bring dependents with her was a critical factor in coming to the UK because she wanted her children to experience a UK education and live close to mainland Europe to be able to experience a wide range of history and culture.

“Compared to other countries, like the US, it’s more like focussing on the polite attitudes and really like a high education for the children from the young ages to higher education as well.”

“I didn’t want my children to have a Korean education because Korean education is very tough [with a] high cost.”

She learned about the visa through her husband, sought further information from the university website and received guidance from an agent. She wanted to do an MBA (masters in business administration) because being able to get the 2-year working visa extension was very appealing, although she noted her university did not advertise this.

“I decided on the MBA because I can get the one-year visa plus 2 years extended visa for working…it was a huge impact on my decision.”

Through the support she received, she found the whole process very straightforward and quick.

“It was a lot faster than I expected compared to Korean speed.”

Student visa holder, South Korea, master’s, non- STEM , has dependants.

More detail about the influence of dependants on the decision to come study in the UK was covered in the chapter on motivations and the decision-making process for coming to study in the UK.

5. Application and sponsorship experience

This chapter explores the visa application process for students as well as the sponsorship process for HEIs . The transition from Tier 4 sponsorship to Student sponsorship is also examined.

5.1 The application process for students

Satisfaction with the application process

Overall, satisfaction with the Student visa application process was high. Over four-in-five (82%) students reported that they were satisfied with the application process as a whole. Over a third (37%) said that they were very satisfied. Only 5% said that they were dissatisfied and just over one-in-ten (12%) said that they were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied. A full break down of satisfaction is shown in figure 21 below.

Figure 21: Visa holder’s satisfaction with the application process

• Base: Visa holders survey, All respondents (2,415).
• Data labels below 3% not shown. ‘Don’t know’ not shown (1%).

Satisfaction was highest amongst students from Pakistan, Nigeria and India (94%, 92% and 90% respectively). Students from China and other countries were less likely to be satisfied. Around three-quarters (78%) of students from China and 73% from other countries reported being satisfied, both lower than average.

Students studying at Russell Group universities were less likely to be satisfied with the application process compared to those studying at non-Russell Group universities. Overall, 86% of students at non-Russell Group universities said that they were satisfied whereas this was 75% for those at Russell Group universities.

Students in the 35 to 44 age group were the most likely to be satisfied with the application process, with 92% having reported being satisfied. The 25 to 34 age group were also more likely than average to be satisfied with the application process with 86% reporting satisfaction. The 16 to 24 age group were the least likely to be satisfied with application process. Less than four-fifths (78%) of this group said that they were satisfied.

By qualification level, those studying a non-doctoral postgraduate degree, such as a master’s degree were the most likely to be satisfied (87%). Those studying a doctorate level degree were the least likely to be satisfied (70%), followed by undergraduate degree level students (71%). Both doctorate and undergraduate students were below the overall average in terms of their satisfaction.

The qualitative interviewing also brought up challenges which affected students during the application process. For example, several people described having to pay more money compared to other countries for elements of the visa application process and that these fees had reportedly gone up in recent years. Others said that they were not made aware of costs for services, such as the NHS, at the start of the application.

“These costs [for the Student visa] were orders of magnitude above the amounts I paid for study visas to France. I paid about 100 euros for France and about £3,000 for the UK for one year.” – Student visa holder, Australia, master’s, has dependants.

“When I started the [visa application] process I did not realise we had to buy in the services of the NHS for the entire life of our visa. The payment wasn’t a problem for me, but it wasn’t necessarily communicated at the outset of the application process.” –Student visa holder, USA, doctorate, has dependants.

Completing the application

When applying for their visa, over three-quarters (76%) of all students said that they had received some help to complete their application. Students most commonly used an education agent to help them with their application (50% of all Student visa holders). Other support came from friends and family (26%), and places of study (12%). A full list is detailed in figure 22 below. Students from India were the most likely to have received support, with 85% of Indian students reporting that they had used at least one person or organisation for help. Nigerian students were the least likely to have used support, though a majority of them still did (65%).

Figure 22: People or organisations from where visa holders received help for their visa application

Students from India were more likely than others to use an education agent, with 61% reporting that they used one to help with their application. This was also higher than the overall average. Students from Nigeria and other countries were less likely than average to use an education agent (42% and 37% respectively). Chinese students were the most likely to have received support from a place of study, with 18% of these students saying that they had received support in this way. Qualitative interviewing suggested that education agents performed a variety of roles, from helping organise paperwork, to translation of official documentation.

“So I actually had like an agent. I thought maybe it was safe to have someone as a person who can guide me.” – Student visa holder, India, master’s, no dependants.

Students attending Russell Group universities were less likely overall to have received support with their application than those attending non-Russell Group universities (73% compared to 77% respectively). However, those attending Russell Group universities were more likely to have received support from a place of study compared to those attending non-Russell Group universities (16% compared to 10% respectively).

Students were asked whether particular elements of the visa application process were easy or difficult. They were asked about:

• locating the necessary documents and information required for their application
• navigating and completing online forms
• receiving updates and communicating with the UK Home Office about the status of their application

Just under half of all students (46%) said that it was easy to locate the necessary documentation for their application. Around a fifth (19%) said that it was difficult and a third (33%) said that it was neither easy nor difficult. Figure 23 below shows the breakdown in further detail.

Figure 23: How easy or difficult visa holders found locating the necessary information or documents for their application

• Base: Visa holders survey, All respondents (2,415). ‘Don’t know’ not shown (3%).

Undergraduate students were the most likely to suggest that they struggled with locating the right documents for their application. A quarter (25%) of this group said that they found it difficult. By comparison, this was only 16% for students studying a master’s degree.

“The financial statements that you need to include are a bit confusing, because not everyone has just one source of income. I had to move some money around to get the one figure acceptable for the application.” – Student visa holder, India, undergraduate, no dependants.

Just over half (52%) of all students found navigating and completing the online application forms easy. Conversely, 15% said that they found it difficult and 31% said that they neither found it easy nor difficult. A full breakdown is shown in figure 24 below.

“It was quite easy for me because everything was self-explanatory … You could easily navigate the site and answer the questions [the Home Office] asked.” – Student visa holder, Nigeria, doctorate, has dependants.

Figure 24: How easy or difficult visa holders found navigating and completing online application forms

• Base: Visa holders survey, All respondents (2,415). ‘Don’t know’ not shown (2%).

Students from Nigeria were the most likely to report finding the online application forms easy to navigate and complete (72%). On the other hand, students from China were the least likely to say that. Just under two-fifths (38%) of these students said that it was somewhat easy or very easy.

Those who had dependants on their visa said that they found navigating and completing the online forms easier than those who did not have dependants (62% compared to 54% respectively).

Those who attended non-Russell Group universities were more likely to say that they found navigating and completing online application forms easy compared to those who attended Russell Group universities (55% compared to 47% respectively).

Overall, just under half (47%) of all students said that they found getting updates about the status of their application easy. Conversely, 22% said that they found this aspect difficult and under a third (28%) said that they found it neither difficult nor easy. A further breakdown of this is shown in figure 25 below. This element of the application process had the highest proportion of students suggesting that it was very difficult (7%), higher than the other 2 aspects investigated. Qualitative interviewing revealed that many had been told that they would receive an outcome to their visa application by a certain date but that this was not met. Some had to re-arrange their travel at their own cost and some missed the start of their course due to Home Office processing delays.

“We were told it would take 3 weeks [for the application to be processed] and it took 11 weeks. We got no updates in that time except for an automated response when we submitted our application … Our passports arrived one working day before we flew out … it was so stressful.” – Student visa holder, Australia, master’s, has dependants.

Figure 25: How easy or difficult visa holders found getting updates about the status of their application and communicating with the UK Home Office

Similar to previous aspects of the application process, there was a difference between students attending Russell Group and non-Russell Group universities. Students attending non-Russell Group universities suggested that they found finding out the status of their visa application and being able to contact the Home Office much easier than those attending Russell Group universities (52% compared to 35%).

Case study 3 - Application experience

This student applied to study in the UK after completing GCSEs and the International Baccalaureate at her international school in India. She applied to 5 universities in the UK as well as Canada. Her first choice was to study in Canada, however her Canadian visa was heavily delayed and the UK visa came back first. She therefore opted for the UK as it was closer to India geographically, and the universities she applied to had a higher global reputation.

In order to complete her application, she reached out to an education agent for support. The agent helped her with her Letter of Recommendation (LOR) and Statement of Purpose (SOP). They also supported her with providing bank statements and financial documents for the application. She had struggled to understand the financial side of the application which was confusing due to the number of bank accounts she held her money in. The education agent was able to guide her through the process and ensure she had her money in the right place.

Once her application was submitted, she received a quick resolution, and she was accepted onto an undergraduate psychology course at the university of her choice.

“The application process is short and straightforward but financial statements less so.” – Student visa holder, India, undergraduate, STEM, no dependants.

5.2 Sponsor experience with the application process

Renewing a sponsorship licence

For an education provider to be able to sponsor visas they must obtain a Student sponsor licence. This licence must be renewed every 4 years in order for HEIs to be able to continue sponsoring visas for overseas students. Through qualitative interviewing, HEIs suggested that sponsorship renewal process was not difficult or cumbersome. One HEI suggested that an online portal for renewal would have been useful as it would have allowed everything to be submitted in one location. However, overall, there seemed to be little issue with the renewal process.

“I think from a business efficiency perspective for the Home Office and for us it would’ve been easier if there was a one stop shop for submitting documents” – HEI, South East, non-Russell Group.

Another HEI mentioned that at the beginning of the Sponsorship Licence, the Home Office said that HEIs would receive a notification that their licence renewal window was opening however this had not materialised.

On the whole, however, most HEIs suggested that the sponsorship licence application process was positive.

“It seemed to be quite sensible, far less complicated than I’d thought. I thought they might ask questions where I’d have to go hunting down the answer, and I didn’t.” – HEI, Wales, Russell Group.

Experience of being a sponsor

HEIs gave mixed responses when describing their experience of being a sponsor. Some HEIs suggested that the experience was positive and that their relationship with the Home Office was constructive. These HEIs also reported that they had good networks between institutions which could help share information.

On the other hand, some HEIs suggested that there were issues with the system and that the Home Office was not always able to help in the way that they would have liked. Several HEIs reported issues during the COVID-19 pandemic when students were stranded either in their home countries or in the UK with expiring visas. One HEI however said that whilst it was stressful at the time, in the longer term, COVID-19 had helped.

“We were forced to do things differently during COVID-19, but in the long term that’s helped us. It’s helped us with new automatic ways of doing things which makes it more robust I think.” – HEI, Wales, Russell Group.

Other HEIs expressed their frustrations at certain aspects of the visa application process for students. Delays in processing for students from low-risk countries had created problems and there were instances where, due to miscommunication, students had been allocated in-country visa application interviews after the HEI ’s final registration date. One HEI suggested that having a live ‘Confirmation of Acceptance’ ( CAS ) update would be useful for ensuring that things like that did not happen. Another HEI said that the communication around CAS allocation was poor.

“We are not told why we didn’t get the CAS we asked for, we should be.” – HEI, West Midlands, Russell Group.

Several HEIs mentioned that the process for assigning CAS and the software was easy to make mistakes on, and the implications of these mistakes could be large. One HEI mentioned that the Home Office did not provide training on the CAS software and training had to be sought through the private sector at a significant cost.

“If we make a very human mistake, it’s very difficult to go back and have that altered, so that’s quite a challenge.” – HEI, Scotland, non-Russell Group.

Additionally, HEIs mentioned that the frequency of policy changes was hard to follow and remember what the current guidelines were. This led to what one HEI described as second-guessing particular rules.

Several HEIs reported that the loss of the Premium customer service support team was a real issue as it meant that they were unable to source the information they required to ensure that they were complying with the guidance. When the HEI survey took place (prior to the closing of the Premium customer service team) 70% of HEIs said that they were a Premium sponsor. One HEI said that because the Premium customer service team no longer existed, when they went to discuss issues with the Home Office, they often had more knowledge than those who they were contacting.

“Those quick announcements and changes in policy direction can be a bit of a challenge.” – HEI, Scotland, non-Russell Group.

“Having the Premium customer service team was an excellent way of getting clarification and confirmation about policy and getting support to ensure that we were abiding and not deviating from the UKVI rules, … but now they are closed.” – HEI, London, non-Russell Group.

When asked what improvements would benefit the experience of being a sponsor, several suggested that the sponsorship management software needed to be updated. Additionally, bringing back the Premium customer service support team was mentioned by a couple of HEIs . Some HEIs also raised the need for consistency with regulations and guidelines which would help ensure that HEI staff would not have to second-guess themselves.

HEI engagement with students regarding sponsorship

Most HEIs said that they were very engaged with students throughout their visa application process. Those who reported that their involvement was not that much said that if applicants were struggling, they would still assist where they could. Engagement throughout the application process took multiple forms including producing written guidance sent to applicants and direct contact with individual applicants if necessary. HEIs said that they often took steps such as directing students to other sources of information first, such as the UK Council for International Student Affairs, before engaging with the student directly.

Whilst students’ studies were ongoing, HEIs reported that they tended only to have direct contact with students if they were failing to comply with the requirements. However, a small minority of HEIs mentioned that they held monthly seminars on compliance information for their students.

“The word we use is compassionate compliance: when a student looks like they might have slightly fallen off the rails, one of our colleagues brings them in, we have a compliance briefing, we reiterate the importance of not missing a tutorial or a lecture to get them back on track … We want to work really closely across our services, so we’re not just saying ‘you’re not being compliant with your visa’, but we’re saying ‘what’s the reason for that, how can we signpost you to services that will help you, and if you’re not able to be compliant, let’s find a way for you to pause your studies so you can go away and deal with that.” – HEI, Scotland, non-Russell Group.

Some HEIs said that they were considering increasing the dedicated support for international students in the future. One HEI mentioned that they were considering creating roles within the university to support.

“We’re thinking about bringing in dedicated visa application advisors…Applying for a visa is more complicated than applying for a mortgage.” – HEI, South East, non-Russell Group.

Most HEIs said that they ran surveys of their international students to receive feedback on their processes. HEIs reported that these surveys often have a poor uptake and that the results were negatively skewed as only those who have had issues tend to fill them in. HEIs felt that a level of frustration was to be expected with visa applications and compliance checks.

Subject specialisms and post-COVID-19 trends

Through qualitative interviewing, HEIs were asked whether there were any subjects that were more popular amongst international students. A majority of HEIs reported that courses related to business and management were most popular amongst international students with some saying that courses in health and nursing were also popular.

Very few HEIs said that course popularity had changed since the COVID-19 pandemic. A minority of HEIs mentioned that there was a greater interest in technology and computer-related courses than there was before the pandemic.

Transitioning from Tier 4 sponsor to Student sponsor

Overall, transitioning from being a Tier 4 sponsor to a Student sponsor seemed to have been a positive experience. Of those who were involved in the transition process from their institution being a Tier 4 sponsor to a Student sponsor, 60% said that the process was fairly easy or very easy. Just over one-in-ten (12%) said that it was difficult and 29% said that it was neither difficult nor easy. A full breakdown is shown in figure 26 below.

Figure 26: How easy or difficult HEIs found the transition from Tier 4 sponsorship to Student sponsorship

• Base: HEI Survey, All those who were involved in the transition process (84).

Of those who did find it difficult, the most common response was that there were difficulties communicating rule changes and dealing with student enquiries. The second most common response was the information was provided too late or was difficult to obtain.

“[It’s] always an area with lots of changes, not necessarily in line with HE cycle, last minute changes which affect students’ admission.” – HEI, Scotland, Non-Russell Group.

Another reason for difficulty discussed in an interview was that there were difficulties surrounding the set-up such as not having a registration number and being unable to get approvals in place.

“The system was so complicated; it took us 2 years to build it.” – HEI, Scotland, Non-Russell Group.

The timing of the change was also a challenge, coming when institutions were dealing with the pandemic and complexities around bringing students to the UK.

“My understanding is everyone will be moving to a digital immigration status check at some point in the next 18 months which is good, but it’s been complex when the whole worlds been kind of turned upside down.” – HEI, South East, Non-Russell Group.

For those who didn’t find the transition to be difficult, there was a sense that these changes were part of a gradual evolution rather than a sudden big change.

“To be honest, it hasn’t made much difference to me… Sponsorship is exactly the same really just with slight changes in the points you get for CAS. But in effect nothing has changed from that kind of experience really.” – HEI, North West, Non-Russell Group.

Throughout the transition process some HEIs had sought support. Those who had been involved in the transition process were asked what support they had used. The most common support used was an account manager (11%), UKVI (10%) and legal advisors (4%). The majority (65%) said that they had not sought assistance during the transition process.

6. Support received

This chapter covers the various forms of support used by HEIs and that was offered to students. This included third-party support for HEIs , Premium sponsorship, support that students received from the HEIs , and finally the work and financial support students received.

6.1 Third-party support received by HEIs

When HEIs were asked about their use of third-party support, such as consultancy firms or immigration advisors, the majority did not use any to manage their sponsorship licences (68%). Of the nearly a third who did use support (31%) the most common organisation types used were immigration law firms (64%).

Over half of the time, third-party support was used to help with audit preparation and mock audits (58%). It was also used for policy review or interpretation (19%) and general advice (11%). The full breakdown of this can be seen in figure 27.

Figure 27: How HEIs use third-party support to manage their sponsorship licence

• Base: HEI survey, All those who have received third-party help (36).

These findings were echoed in the qualitative research, where many respondents had no or minimal interaction with third-party support systems. As with the quantitative research, audits were one of the primary ways that HEIs used third-party support and were mostly used on an ad-hoc basis as and when needed.

International agents were again referenced as the most common source of third-party support, where they either worked in a recruitment role for the HEI or as a way to support students in their application process. Most experiences of using third parties were positive, but some highlighted difficulties using international agents and worried that agents do too much to support students during their application process.

“It’s clear that the agent network does help them [in their application], they probably do too much.” – HEI, South East, non-Russell Group.

6.2 Premium sponsorship

The majority of HEIs surveyed had been Premium sponsors (70%, compared to 28% who were not), and institutions with larger cohorts of international students were more likely to be Premium sponsors (84%). Almost all of the former Premium sponsors used their named account manager and regional account manager (99%), and nine-in-ten used the student immigration history details (93%). The full breakdown of the services used can be seen in figure 28.

Figure 28: Services HEIs have used from the student premium customer service

• Base: HEI survey, All those who are a Premium sponsor (80).

HEIs that had an international student population of over 2,500 students were more likely to use student immigration history details (98%).

On the whole people felt positively about the services offered with the Premium sponsorship, and at least eight-in-ten respondents felt satisfied with the 4 most common services offered. The full breakdown of satisfaction can be found in figure 29.

Figure 29: Satisfaction with services offered by the student premium customer service

• Base: HEI survey, All those who were a Premium sponsor (80).

As can be seen in the quantitative research, the named account manager worked well and HEIs were satisfied with it as a feature. This was supported by the qualitative research where the main element of the Premium sponsor system mentioned was the named account manager. Respondents discussed the benefits of the named account manager which included having detailed knowledge of their institution, ongoing direct support, and a more streamlined process which avoided repetition.

“Having the Premium customer service team was an excellent way of getting clarification and confirmation about policy and getting support to ensure that we were abiding and not deviating from the UKVI rules … but it is now closed.” – HEI, London, non-Russell Group.

“You could go to the premium account manager and get an answer pretty much within a couple of days.” – HEI, North West, non-Russell Group.

The loss of Premium sponsorship was raised by multiple respondents as a negative change, and many reported that they felt disappointed at this decision.

“I think the loss of the premium account manager, I think that’s going to be catastrophic, because you’re not going to have any dedicated support for the errors that happen.” – HEI, Scotland, non-Russell Group.

6.3 Support from HEIs towards students

The majority of HEIs signposted applicants to other sources of help and support whilst they were completing their Student visa application (97%). Other forms of common support offered by HEIs were helping applicants to understand the eligibility criteria (89%) and gathering evidence to support applications (68%). This can be seen in more detail in figure 30.

Figure 30: Help offered by HEIs for applicants whilst they complete their Student visa

• Base: HEI survey, All respondents (115).

HEIs that were looking to increase their recruitment goals were more likely to signpost applicants to other sources of help (100%), and HEIs that were Premium sponsors were more likely to support students in gathering evidence to support their application (75%). HEIs with a medium percentage of international students (between 10% and 20% of all students) were more likely to help students to fill out forms (59%).

In the qualitative research, HEIs discussed a range of support that they offer to students, which included but was not limited to:

• information on the website
• signposting to alternative supports
• online videos and webinars
• regular checks ins and opportunities to discuss their application

HEIs highlighted their role as a place to provide transparency and information, as well as steering applicants in the right direction to find additional support.

“From the visa perspective it is probably more around [providing] transparency because we are often at the coal face in terms of speaking to students and helping them through the process of joining us to study in the UK. The main issue they run up against is the lack of transparency, so – ‘What do I need to put in place to make a successful visa application?’ and it is keeping students updated on that process.” – HEI, West Midlands, Russell Group.

“We try to provide as much information on our website and documentation to kind of steer people in the right direction as well.” – HEI, South East, non-Russell Group.

There was some variation in the amount of support offered to applicants, with some institutions only offering support when something had gone wrong, whereas others took a more hands-on approach in supporting applicants. It should be noted that the HEI that discussed a hands-on approach reported they had only small numbers of international students so potentially had more resource available.

“Because we’ve got a small amount of CAS’s we don’t want any mistakes with the applications so we’re kind of a bit pedantic with it and in touch with them a lot.” – HEI, London, non-Russell Group.

“Even though technically we don’t usually help applicants … if they are really, really in a mess, we will help them.” – HEI, Wales, Russell Group.

When asked about the level of support offered to students, HEIs mostly felt satisfied with their current offer. There was some interest in more resource to provide more support, but others also worried about overwhelming students with too much contact.

HEIs also highlighted that their institution offered different levels of support based on the level of risk associated with their applicants. When it came to HEIs who recruited mostly low-risk applicants there were institutions who offered high levels of support and others who offered lower levels of support. An institution that offered high levels of support did so as they felt there was less risk of losing out due to a rejected application – by offering support across other aspects of the application process they were able to ensure return on the investment.

“So we focus on low risk countries to make the process more streamline and also one the key things is that historically they have less issues with visa applications … Because our students go through such a thorough selection process with all the documentation, by the time they get to the selection process, they have gone through so many hoops that they are unlikely to get rejected.” – HEI, London, non-Russell Group.

However, another institution which recruited from low-risk countries reported less engagement and support offered to these applicants. This was because they were lower risk so needed less support on producing documentation and other requirements.

“Students who are under the differentiation arrangement or low risk, we do less checks which is common practice across the sector.” – HEI, South East, non-Russell Group.

Thinking about the feedback received from international students, HEIs reported that there was usually a level of mixed feedback, but that was to be expected with a stressful process like Student visa applications and often feedback is only received when it was a negative.

“We only tend to hear [feedback] from the ones where they’re having a problem. On the whole, there’s nothing particularly surprising.” – HEI, South East, non-Russell Group.

However, on the whole, universities felt that students had as positive an experience as they could offer.

6.4 Financial support and student’s work

A minority of students’ main reason for choosing to study their course was because they had a grant or scholarship (6%), and students doing a doctorate or from India were more likely to have reported a grant or scholarship as a motivator (24% and 9% respectively).

In the qualitative research, some respondents received financial support such as grants or scholarships. Generally, these grants or scholarships only partially covered the costs associated with their degree. There were mixed views on whether receiving a grant or scholarship influenced their decision to attend university in the UK. Some had already made up their minds to study in the UK regardless of the outcome of their scholarship, whilst others said it was an incentive to study in the UK over another country.

“It was an incentive for me, knowing that I would have part of my cost of living covered by the tuition fees.” – Student, France, doctorate, has dependants.

The majority of students had not undertaken any paid work alongside their studies (68%), though of these 46% were considering taking up some form of paid work in the future, whilst around a quarter of students were working (23%). Students who worked alongside their studies were more likely to be from Nigeria and India (47% and 33% respectively), as were those studying for their doctorate (33%).

The majority of work was non-study related work (73%), with a third working on a study-related work placement (32%). Doctoral students were more likely to have a study-related work placement (57%), as were those who attended a Russell Group institution (45%).

In terms of sectors, the most common sectors students were working in were hospitality and wholesale / retail work (36% and 23%). The full breakdown of sectors can be found in figure 31.

Figure 31: Sectors that students worked in

• Base: Visa holders survey, All those who have undertaken paid work (618).

Students who were studying at undergraduate level were more likely to work in hospitality (45%), whilst those studying for a doctorate were more likely to work within education (51%). Students who had dependants were more likely to work within the health and social work sector (40%), as were students from Nigeria (53%).

Students said they worked alongside their studies because primarily to gain work experience and to meet new people (68% and 57% respectively). Other reasons students worked were to support themselves or family in the UK (47%), to practice their English (36%) or to support themselves and / or family outside the UK (22%).

Students from Nigeria were more likely to report the main reason why they worked was to gain work experience (85%), whilst students from Pakistan and India were more likely to say that it was to practice their English language skills (64% and 50%).

Similar findings were found in the qualitative interviews, with respondents highlighting the importance of gaining work experience.

“[I worked] because I need extra money, and also I need experience; teaching at [my university] is a great experience which I want to have on my CV.” – Student visa holder, France, doctorate, has dependants.

Students also discussed the impact of the increased cost of living as a reason for engaging with paid work, as well as unfavourable exchange rates.

Students were working an average of 16.9 hours a week. The majority of students were working 16 to 20 hours (73%), and a small minority were working more than 20 hours (2%) within one week. The 2% working more than 20 hours during term time are not working within the rules. This is a small minority and may also be at least in part an error in approximation on the part of the student. The average time spent working increased to 22.3 hours a week when students were asked about their time spent working outside of term time. Outside of term time around half of students were working more than 20 hours a week (43%) and a third worked 16 to 20 hours a week (33%). More detail can be seen in figure 32.

Figure 32: Hours worked by students in and outside of term time

• The data labels not shown are 2%.

As shown in figure 32, the number of students working over 16 hours a week did not vary much from term to non-term time, but the way in which they were working changed.

Outside of time term over half of the 73% of students who worked 16 to 20 hours a week moved to working more than 20 hours a week (43%). The students who worked more casual hours (less than 15 hours a week) were less likely to work outside of term time, with the number of students who did not work at all raising from 2% to 16%.

Students from Pakistan, India and Nigeria were more likely to work 16 to 20 hours during term time (88%, 81% and 79% respectively). Outside of term time, students from Nigeria were more likely to work over 20 hours a week (54%) and to work on average of 25.1 hours a week. Master’s students were more likely to work 16 to 20 hours a week during term time (80%).

From qualitative research, respondents felt that it could be hard to secure work and felt that the 20-hour limit was sometimes a barrier. Though they did report that it was easy to keep under the 20-hour cap during term time once they had secured work. Some noted that their employers were well versed in the regulations which made it simpler for them.

“I told my employer I was a student, and he explained the conditions to me.” – Student visa holder, Nigeria, Master’s, has dependants.

In terms of pay, students most commonly earned between £10.43 and £14.99 per hour. Nine-in-ten students earned up to £14.99 an hour (90%), and over a third earned up to £10.42 an hour (35%). This can be seen in figure 33.

Figure 33: Visa holders earning per hour

Students from Nigeria were more likely to earn between £10.43 and £14.99 per hour (71%), whilst students from India were more likely to earn between £7.49 and £10.42 per hour (44%).

Case study 4 - Work and study

This student came from Nigeria to study a STEM master’s degree, with the aim of applying for a further doctorate programme. He wanted to stay in his home country but became dissatisfied with the quality of the teaching and lack of research opportunities. He applied to study in the UK and received a £2,000 scholarship for his particular course. This was an influencing factor when he chose to study in the UK at the specific university. He viewed this scholarship as a ‘discount’ for paying the university fees.

When he first started at university, he did not work but once term time finished, he began to look for work. The student wanted to work to meet new people and because a UK salary converts to more money in their home country. Initially, he found it difficult finding suitable work, as he wanted to work in a school setting or a professional setting related to their course, but the timing was wrong for the school roles, and he could not meet the working hours criteria employers were looking for.

“I applied to schools for a teaching assistant role, but they were on summer break, and when I applied for professional jobs, I was unable to get one; they all wanted full-time, full-time, full-time.”

Whilst he looked for work in a school, he got work in a warehouse. The student felt that this work helped him build confidence and allow for a settling-in period. Eventually he joined an agency and worked once a week as an agency supply teaching assistant.

Student visa holder, Nigeria, master’s, STEM , has dependants.

7. Future intentions

This chapter explores the future plans of students and whether they intended to remain in the UK after finishing their studies, as well as what they planned to do in the UK once their studies had finished, and the different visa routes they were considering. Additionally, this chapter also looks at HEIs ’ plans around their status as a Student sponsor in the future and explores any further reflections they may have.

7.1 Future plans for students

More than half (58%) of Student visa holders said that they would apply for a further visa to stay in the UK once their current visa expires. Nearly a third (31%) of students were not sure yet if they would apply for a further visa.

Nearly one-fifth (18%) of Chinese students said that they would not apply for a further visa, making them the least likely out of all nationalities planning to stay in the UK after their studies. A further two-fifths (41%) of Chinese students did not know if they would apply for a further visa, which was higher than reported in all other nationalities (Table 4).

Table 4: Intention to apply for a further visa once current visa expires

• Base: Visa holders survey, All visa holders (2,415); India (519), China (507), Nigeria (431), Pakistan (155), Other (803).

Master’s students were most likely to be planning to apply for a further visa, when compared to doctoral students and undergraduates (60% compared to 45% and 52% respectively). However, undergraduate students and doctorate students were also more likely to report that they did not know if they would apply for a further visa (37% and 44%) when compared to master’s students (28%).

Students who had dependants on their Student visa were more likely than those with no dependants to report that they intended to apply for a further visa (67% compared to 57%). They were also less likely to not know if they intended to apply for a further visa (27%).

Older students had a better understanding of their future intentions than younger students. Over three-fifths (62%) of students aged 25 and over had the intention of applying for a further visa. In contrast, over a third (34%) of students aged between 16 and 24 reported that they did not know if they would apply for a further visa, which was higher than those aged 25 and over(28%).

Students who had worked whilst studying were more likely to be planning to apply for a further visa. Nearly three-quarters (71%) of those who had worked whilst studying intended to apply for a further visa compared to over half (55%) of those who did not work whilst studying. Additionally, those who did not work whilst studying were more likely than those who worked whilst studying to say they did not intend to apply for a further visa (14% compared to 6%) or that they did not know if they intended to do so (31% compared to 23%).

Most students who intended to stay in the UK planned to work (76%), followed by planning to enrol in further study (38%). Just under one-in-ten (8%) of those who intended to stay in the UK were not sure of their future plans.

There were notable differences in sub-groups in terms of which students were considering working in the UK. Nigerian students who were planning to stay in the UK were more likely to be planning to work in the UK (83%). Furthermore, master’s students were more likely to be planning to work in the UK (80%). For those with no dependants, over four-fifths (81%) reported that they planned to work in the UK. Those who were aged between 25 to 34 and 35 to 44 were also more likely to plan to work in the UK (80% and 85% respectively). Unsurprisingly, those who had worked whilst studying were more likely to plan to work in the UK after their studies compared to those who had not worked whilst studying (84% compared to 75%).

In terms of enrolling in further study, Chinese students were more likely than any other nationality to be planning to take this route (58%) at the end of their visa. Similarly, undergraduates were more likely to be planning to enrol in further study (60%), as were younger students aged between 16 to 24 (43%). Additionally, those who were studying at Russell Group universities were more likely to be planning to enrol in further study compared to those in non-Russell Group universities (48% compared to 35%).

The most important factor for students when considering remaining in the UK were opportunities for work in the UK (91%). The next most important factors were familiarity with the English language (37%) and having personal networks in the UK (34%) (figure 34).

Figure 34: Importance of factors when considering remaining in the UK

• Base: Visa holders survey, All visa holders intending to stay in the UK (1,439).

The importance of certain factors varied depending on the nationality of students. Nigerian and Chinese students were more likely to think that personal networks (49% and 43%) were important than Indian and Pakistani students (24% and 23%). They were also more likely to think that familiarity with British culture was important (50% and 44%) compared to Indian and Pakistani students (25% and 27%). Chinese students were the most likely out of all nationalities to think that familiarity with the English language was an important factor (57%).

In terms of work being a motivating factor to remain in the UK, those studying at Russell Group universities were more likely than those studying at non-Russell Group universities to think opportunities for work in the UK was an important factor (94% compared to 90%). Students with dependants on their visa were more than twice as likely to think opportunities for dependants to work was an important factor (33% compared to 16% overall). This suggests that when it comes to decision-making, those with dependants’ place emphasis on the benefits that were available to not only them, but also to their dependants.

There were also further subgroup differences when personal networks in the UK was a motivating factor. Doctoral students, (64%), those at Russell Group universities (42%) and students aged between 35 and 44 (42%) were all more likely to think that this was an important factor.

Most of the students in the qualitative interviews were also planning to stay in the UK. Many were planning to work in the UK or were at least considering it as part of their plans.

“I want to gain professional experience in Business analytics because that was my main purpose for coming here” – Student visa holder, India, master’s, no dependants.

In line with the survey, a few students also mentioned staying in the UK to enrol in further study, such as master’s or a PhD.

Some students we interviewed were motivated to remain in the UK due to better opportunities in the UK. This included jobs being more readily available as well as having access to high quality education. It was also noted that it was relatively easy to stay in the UK as they were familiar with the culture, had developed local networks and had visa options available to them. A few students interviewed also reported that the Graduate route and the time it gave them to think about their future plans was an encouraging factor to consider staying in the UK.

“Also it’s in Leeds, so it allows me to stay local, because all my friends I knew after I get to UK, my church, Christian Union, it’s all in Bradford… so Leeds gave me that option [to stay local].” – Student visa holder, China, undergraduate, no dependants.

“The Graduate route is something that I’ve considered. So, I think that’s one thing that’s attracting me to stay because it gives you more time to find work and stuff like that.” – Student visa holder, USA, doctorate, no dependants.

Of the few students from the qualitative interviews who were unsure of what they planned to do in the future, this was mostly because they considered they had time on their side to decide as they were on an undergraduate course. The students did have some idea of what they may do in the future but nothing firmly decided.

The Graduate route was the most likely route that students who wished to stay in the UK would apply through (62%), followed by Skilled Worker visa (34%) and Global Talent visa (10%) (figure 35).

Figure 35: Visa routes being considered for application after studies are finished

• Percentages <3% are not included in this chart.

There was a considerable difference in the routes students were thinking of taking depending on their nationality, with Chinese students overall most likely to apply for a range of visas, as shown in table 5 below. Nigerian students were most likely to apply for the Skilled Worker visa (49%), the Health and Care Worker visa (25%) and indefinite leave to remain (settlement) (13%). Pakistani students were the most likely to not know which routes they might apply for (21%).

Table 5: Potential routes students might apply for after finishing studies

• Base: Visa holders survey, All visa holders intending to stay in the UK, Total (1,439); India (346), China (211), Nigeria (308), Pakistan (106), Other (468).

As the Graduate route was the most popular potential visa route, it was selected by a range of students. Doctorate students were more likely to consider the Graduate route (83%) as well as students studying non- STEM subjects (65%) and at Russell Group universities (71%). Furthermore, those with no dependants were more likely to consider the Graduate route (66%).

Visas that related to working also attracted certain students. The Skilled Worker and Health and Care worker visa was more likely to be considered by students on STEM subjects (38% and 10% respectively), those at non-Russell Group universities (36% and 10%) and those who had worked whilst studying (45% and 12%).

Over half (56%) of those who did not plan to stay in the UK after their course reported that they would leave immediately after the end of the course. Just under one-fifth (18%) reported that they would stay longer and just over a quarter (26%) did not yet know.

Subgroup analysis for this particular question was limited due to small base sizes. However, it should be noted that men were more likely to leave the UK immediately compared to women (64% compared to 48%). Women were also more likely to not know how long they planned to stay in the UK (31% compared to 20% of men).

Case study 5 - Future intentions

This Student visa holder was a master’s student from India who studied international business. She had her husband and her child as dependants on her visa. Whilst studying in the UK, she had undertaken work, which included working at a fast-food restaurant and at a retail store as a sales associate. After her Student visa expired, the student planned to either apply for the Graduate visa so that she could work or secure a Skilled Worker visa. This was part of her original 5-year plan as the student thought working in the UK in her field would be a different experience to studying in the UK.

“I, along with the student experience in the UK, want the job experience too, so if I’m not getting the Skilled Worker one, I’ll apply for the Graduate route visa.”

“So far I’ve worked in the retail sector, but that’s not where I want to work in the long run, so I want to get the perfect [multinational corporation] (MNC) experience to add to my previous work experience.”

Another factor that motivated the student to stay in the UK was that she was on a 2-year long master’s course, with the intention being that students would secure an internship during this time. However, she found the process of securing an internship very difficult and was ultimately unsuccessful. By moving onto the Graduate route or securing a Skilled Worker visa, she hoped to be able to gain the job experience she would have gained from the internship.

Student visa holder, India, master’s, non- STEM , has dependants.

7.2 Remaining a HEI sponsor

Nearly all (98%) HEIs said that they were likely to continue to be a Student route sponsor. The majority (95%) of HEIs reported that it was very likely they would continue to do so.

Nearly three-in-ten (29%) HEIs reported that they had no further reflections on being a Student route sponsor. Of those who did have reflections to share, the most common ones related to the communication from the Home Office needing to be improved (23%) and issues with the premium account service (23%). This was followed by issues with policy changes or timings of policy changes (21%) (figure 36).

“The uncertainty and the changes of the last year or so do make our lives quite difficult.” – HEI, Wales, Russell Group.

“The Home Office need to think carefully about how they manage that relationship with the sector, both in our operational level and on that wider engagement piece, because I think there’s a certain amount of tone deafness there. Most of the sector wasn’t in favour of the withdrawal of the premium customer service, they wanted it to be enhanced, improved so offered better value for money. But that seems to have been interpreted by the Home Office as nobody wants to pay so let’s make it a free service and offer less…” – HEI, South East, non-Russell Group.

Figure 36: Further reflections from HEIs on what can be improved

• Base: HEI Survey, All HEIs (115).

Those who sponsored over 2,500 international students were more likely than average to report policy changes (33% compared to 21% overall). They were also more likely to want more support or consultation from the Home Office (23%) and would like to see improved information sharing between the Home Office and student route sponsors (9%).

8. Conclusions

8.1 decision making and prior awareness of visa routes.

Students indicated that they were most likely to have heard about the Student visa from friends or family members (23%), from education agents (22%) and places of study in their home country (19%). It was often the case that these friends and family were students in the UK and had Student visas themselves, which indicates that they would be in a good position to offer advice or share knowledge about the Student visa.

The majority of Student visa holders said their reason for coming to study in the UK under the Student visa was because they wanted to pursue a particular course at a particular university (60%). Only 4% of international students said their main motivation was primarily wanting to live in the UK.

Among the students for whom living in the UK was at least partly important, access to the Graduate route, the ease of the application and the ability to bring dependants were influences on student’s decision to get a Student visa rather than a different UK visa, though the most common reason was because they mainly wanted to study in the UK. Most students (70%) were aware of the Graduate route visa before the survey had taken place, particularly those studying at a postgraduate level.

Half of the Student visa holders (50%) also considered other countries before applying to come to the UK, most commonly the USA and Canada. The UK Student visa was a factor in deciding to come to the UK over other countries in almost a quarter of cases.

The ability to change to a different visa before finishing their studies was perceived as important by almost a third of non-doctoral international students, but three-quarters of those students would not have been deterred from applying for a UK student visa if this option wasn’t available at the time.

Most (93%) HEIs reported that they actively recruit international students, mostly to increase cultural diversity, but also motivated by financial reasons. Most HEIs planned to further increase their level of international recruitment as well as to expand the countries or global regions that they recruit from.

International recruitment was seen as a core element of most HEIs ’ overall strategy from an internationalisation and financial point of view as well. HEIs did this mainly by overseas outreach and advertising and via the use of student recruitment agents. Most commonly targeted countries for HEIs were the USA and China and South America in general.

Finally, HEIs were mostly positive about their ability to adapt to policy changes affecting both students and the institution itself. However, some HEIs mentioned that the frequency of policy changes was hard to follow and remember what the current guidelines were. This led to what one HEI described as second-guessing particular rules. Several HEIs reported that they were disappointed with the loss of the premium customer service support. As well wanting to see this reinstated, HEIs felt that the sponsorship management software needed to be updated.

8.2 Dependants

Almost a quarter (24%) of Student visa holders had dependants on their visa. Almost all of these had their partner as a dependant, and just over a third had children as dependants. Most dependent partners were employed full-time (61%), with a further 10% being employed part-time.

About half of all students with dependants said that they would have still chosen to come study in the UK if they couldn’t bring their dependants on their visa, while just over one-in-three would have looked for other options and 13% were unsure of what they would have done.

8.3 Visa application and sponsorship experience

Overall students were satisfied with the application process, Over four-in-five (82%) students reported that they were satisfied with the application process as a whole. Over a third (37%) said that they were very satisfied. Students studying at Russell Group universities were less likely to be satisfied with the application process compared to those studying at non-Russell Group universities.

When applying for their visa, over three-quarters (76%) of all students said that they had received some help to complete their application. Students most commonly used an education agent to help them with their application.

Students were asked whether particular elements of the visa application process were easy or difficult. They were asked about: locating the necessary documents and information required for their application, navigating and completing online forms, and receiving updates and communicating with the UK Home Office about the status of their application. Just under half of all students (46%) said that it was easy to locate the necessary documentation for their application.

Through qualitative interviewing, HEIs were asked whether there were any subjects that were more popular for applications amongst international students. A majority of HEIs reported that courses related to business and management were most popular amongst international students with some saying that courses in health and nursing were also popular.

Most HEIs said that they were very engaged with students throughout their visa application process. Those who reported that their involvement was not that much said that if applicants were struggling, they would still assist where they could.

Through qualitative interviewing, HEIs suggested that sponsorship renewal process was not difficult or cumbersome.

On the other hand, some HEIs suggested that there were issues with the system and that the Home Office was not always able to help in the way that they would have liked.

Transitioning from the Tier 4 to the Student visa route was not seen a difficult by HEIs . Only difficulties flagged were in getting quick specific information about and communicating rule changes to students, compounded by the timing of the change with the COVID-19 pandemic, which had added further complexity.

Overall, transitioning from being a Tier 4 sponsor to a Student sponsor seemed to have been a positive experience. Of those who were involved in the transition process from their institution being a Tier 4 sponsor to a Student sponsor, 60% said that the process was fairly easy or very easy.

8.4 Support received and student’s work

When HEIs were asked about their use of third-party support, such as consultancy firms or immigration advisors, the majority did not use any to manage their sponsorship licences (68%). Audits were one of the primary ways that HEIs used third-party support and were mostly used on an ad-hoc basis as and when needed.

On the whole HEIs felt positively about the services offered with the Premium sponsorship, at least eight-in-ten respondents felt satisfied with the 4 most common services offered.

The majority of HEIs signposted applicants to other sources of help and support whilst they were completing their Student visa application (97%). Other forms of common support offered by HEIs were helping applicants to understand the eligibility criteria (89%) and gathering evidence to support applications (68%).

Only a minority of students’ main reason for choosing to study their course was because they had a grant or scholarship (6%), and students doing a doctorate or from India were more likely to have reported a grant or scholarship as a motivator (24% and 9% respectively). Similarly, the majority of students had not undertaken any paid work alongside their studies (68%), though of these 46% were considering taking up some form of paid work in the future, whilst around a quarter of students were working (23%).

8.5 Future intentions

Master’s students were most likely to be planning to apply for a further visa, when compared to doctoral students and undergraduates (60% compared to 45% and 52% respectively).

Students who had worked whilst studying were more likely to be planning to apply for a further visa. Nearly three-quarters (71%) of those who had worked whilst studying intended to apply for a further visa compared to over half (55%) of those who did not work whilst studying.

Some students we interviewed were motivated to remain in the UK due to better opportunities in the UK. This included jobs being more readily available as well as having access to high quality education.

The Graduate route visa was the most likely route that students who wished to stay in the UK would apply through (62%), followed by Skilled Worker visa (34%) and Global Talent visa (10%).

Appendix 1: Methodology

Student visa holder method.

The study with Student visa holders comprised of an online survey of over 2,000 international students, and follow-up qualitative interviews with 25 students.

The contact details for the student survey were provided by the Home Office. A file containing the details of international students who had had their Student visa approved since 2019 was sent securely and saved on the IFF Research internal secure access servers. The reason for only including Student visa holders from the last 4 years was in order to increase the number of visa holders who were still students and had not completed their studies yet. The data from the Home Office was cleaned to remove any accidental duplicates and to exclude students whose email address was that of an agency or law firm that helped them with the application process, in order to try to maximise the response rate from the drawn sample.

The survey consisted of a one-week pilot between 20 and 26 September 2023 and a mainstage fieldwork period of 5 weeks between 18 October and 20 November 2023.

A sample of 2,000 records was randomly selected from the cleaned file for the pilot, and 40,000 contacts were drawn for the mainstage survey, representative of the total population of Student visa holders by a cross-section of nationality and age and gender. The Home Office were particularly interested in the nationalities that had the highest number of Student visa holders, therefore the top 11 countries were monitored separately, while all other countries were grouped together.

The survey and all communications were translated and made available in Mandarin for all students from China. Weekly reminder emails were sent to those who had not yet completed the survey, including those had only partially completed it, up to a maximum of 4 reminders.

The survey was completed by 46 students during the pilot and by 2,369 students during the mainstage fieldwork period, a total of 2,415 completes. In order to keep the profile of the survey completes as close to the population profile as possible, the data was weighted to nationality by age-band (the gender split was already close to that of the overall population). The full weighting grid can be found in table 6.

Table 6: Weighting grid profile for the Student visa holder survey, country of origin by age

The number of international students surveyed was split across the different demographic categories as represented in table 7 through to table 12.

Table 7: Achieved student interviews by country and age

Table 8: achieved student interviews by country and gender, table 9: achieved student interviews by country and level of study, table 10: achieved student interviews by country and university type, table 11: achieved student interviews by country and subject of study, table 12: achieved student interviews by country and whether they have dependants.

For the qualitative interviews with students, we aimed to cover a wide range of experiences and profiles, with a focus on a few characteristics, as represented in table 13 below. We also covered a good spread of subjects studied (15 non- STEM , 10 STEM ), despite it not being an original quota.

Table 13: Qualitative interviews achieved with students, by category

The qualitative interviews covered in more detail student’s decision making process for coming to study in the UK, their experience with the UK Student visa application process, their experience of working while studying, and their plans for after they finish their current studies.

Ten interviews were conducted by telephone and 15 via Microsoft Teams. The interviews lasted around 45 minutes on average and took place between 8 November and 11 December 2023.

Higher education institutions ( HEIs ) method

The study with HEIs comprised a telephone survey of 115 institutions, and follow-up qualitative interviews with 20 institutions.

The sample for HEIs comprised 172 institutions, with up to 4 named contacts for each, and all were considered in scope for the survey. A census approach was adopted, and no weighting applied. Contact details were provided from the Home Office for up to 4 members of staff at each institution that had a role that made them suitable to talk about the impact of sponsorship policy on their institutions decisions to attract international students and the requirements of being a sponsor. These roles included: Associate Directors of Admissions, Deputy Academic Registrars, Head of Compliance and Immigration Compliance, Head of Admissions, and Director of Human Resources. Screener questions were used in the questionnaire to ensure the respondent was in a position to answer questions fully.

Minimum call protocols were put in place for each piece of sample so each institution was treated equally as it would be for random probability sampling (RPS).

The telephone survey consisted of a one-week pilot between 18 and 22 September 2023 and a mainstage period of 5 weeks between 16 October and 7 December 2023.

Table 14: Achieved HEI interviews by geographical region

Table 15: achieved hei interviews by russell group/non-russell group status, table 16: achieved hei interviews by prior premium sponsor/non-premium sponsor status.

For the qualitative interviews with HEIs , soft quotas were used to ensure coverage across some areas as outlined in table 17.

Table 17: Qualitative interviews achieved with HEIs by category

The qualitative interviews covered in more detail HEIs ’ level of engagement with sponsoring students (for example, intermittent vs. extensive), length of time as a sponsor, experience of being a sponsor and renewing licences, use of third-party support, and subject specialisms.

Five of these interviews were conducted by telephone and 15 via Microsoft Teams. The interviews lasted around 45 minutes on average and took place between 14 November and 14 December 2023.

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