UK sees 23% drop in Indian student visa applications: Here's why

In January 2024, the UK enforced new family visa regulations to cut “unsustainable and unfair” levels of migration.

Latest data released by the UK government shows that there has been a drop in the number of student visa applications over the past year. Home Office statistics for the past year until June 2024 has revealed a 23 percent decrease in the number of students going to the UK for higher studies.

While Indians continued to top the tally of student visa grants, they have begun showing signs of putting off applying to UK universities amid greater migration curbs, UK government data showed. India students continued to constitute the majority of students coming to the UK to study at the master's level in the last year at 81 percent. Chinese nationals were the second most common nationality granted sponsored study visas (107,236), accounting for 25 percent of the total, with a smaller proportion than Indian nationals studying at the masters level at 59 percent.

However, Indian students continue to represent the largest group granted leave to remain on the Graduate Route visa, which allows foreign students to work in Britain for two years after their degree.

“There were 1,10,006 sponsored study visa grants to main applicants who were Indian nationals in the year ending June 2024 (25 percent of the total), 32,687 fewer than the previous year,” data revealed.

Experts say there are multiple reasons behind the drop in numbers and have linked it directly to fewer applications from Indian students in light of the recent changes in the visa policy. For instance, tighter curbs were imposed on the rights of most student visa holders to bring along dependent family members earlier this year.

Restriction on family visa

In January 2024, the UK enforced new family visa regulations to cut “unsustainable and unfair” levels of migration. The final measure in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Cleverly’s package to reduce legal migration raised the minimum income required to sponsor someone coming to the UK on a family visa from £18,600 to £29,000, an uptick of more than 55 percent.

In May 2024, the UK government said that the number of dependents accompanying students to the UK had plunged almost 80 percent, with over 26,000 fewer student visa applications made from January to March compared to the same period in 2023.

Increasing salary threshold

By early 2025, the minimum income required to sponsor was further planned to be increased to £38,700 to meet the new salary threshold for a skilled worker visa.

However, the new Labour Party government has put a hold on the decision until the independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) reviews the impact of the hikes.

Earlier, the Conservative Party government said that the decision to curb immigration would mean “approximately 3 lakh people arriving in the UK last year would no longer be able to".

Prevention of visa switching 

Starting January 2024, students were no longer allowed to switch their visa before completing their course, preventing people from using the route as a "backdoor to work in the UK, while clamping down on institutions which undermine the UK’s reputation by selling immigration, not education", the government had said in a statement.

Stricter visa policy for Indian professionals

The UK government is considering stricter visa regulations for foreign IT, telecom, and engineering professionals as part of efforts to reduce high levels of migration, reported The Times of India earlier this month.

Each year, thousands of Indian IT and engineering professionals come to Britain to address critical labour shortages in these fields. Proposed changes might involve raising the minimum salary threshold for these sectors or implementing regional restrictions within the UK.

… Yet, UK remains a popular destination

Despite such restrictions, the UK remains one of the most popular study-abroad destinations for some consultants. invest4Edu saw an uptick of about 20 percent from Q3 to Q4 in 2023-24 for UG programs.

Further, the level of abuse in the UK’s Graduate visa programme is very low, according to a report filed by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) in May 2024 -- set up by the British government to look into the issue.

“We have not found evidence of widespread abuse specifically for the Graduate route. The risks of abuse are relatively low due to the limited number of conditions the route imposes,” the report said, offering hope to students.