Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will make an assessment of future prospects for exchange programmes between students in the US and UK after the UK leaves the EU.

The Government continues to support the mobility of the brightest and best students between the US and the UK. Last year we issued over 14,000 student visas to American students to study here, a steady increase over previous years. The Institute for International Education (IIE) Report Open Doors 2016 confirms that the United Kingdom remains the leading destination for American students in Europe, and that over 11,000 UK students studied in the US during 2015-16.

Exchange programmes enrich the education of students and are important in enhancing and developing the UK’s relationship with all important international markets, including the USA. Through the US-UK Fulbright Commission in 2016 alone 85 US students and post-docs took up study in the UK and 45 British students studied in the US. The Fulbright social mobility programme with the Sutton Trust also supported a further 66 British students to gain fully funded undergraduate scholarships to study in the US.

The Government also provides £2m per annum grant–in-aid to the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission which, together with some university partnership funding, enables Marshall to award up to 40 scholarships per year to US citizens with both academic and leadership potential for Master’s and PhD. courses in UK universities.