Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what estimate he has made of likely changes in the number of non-EU national students studying at UK universities over the next five years.

Projections provided by English Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) of their anticipated non-EU student numbers up to 2016-17 were published in ‘Financial health of the higher education sector’ in October 2014 at the following link:

http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2014/201426/

Institutions’ projections showed that the number of non-EU students studying at English institutions (for all years of study) was expected to rise between 4.8 and 5.8 per cent per year between 2013-14 and 2016-17.