The Number of Student Visa Application for UK Recovered in 2025

The UK government’s review of the Graduate Route and the ban on dependents of incoming international students caused a lot of uncertainty and a drop in international student numbers over the past couple of years. While the graduate route continues to exist and allows students to stay in the UK post study to work fora couple of years, ordering of its review caused a lot of anxiety among students and universities alike. Universities lost a lot of students due to the uncertainties surrounding the changing laws by the government. However, the sector in 2025 is on the recovery path again, with numbers coming back to the UK as they used to. The most recent Home Office statistics show that 28,700students applied for sponsored-study visas in January 2025, a 13% increase over January 2024.

The surge in applications comes after other encouraging announcements at the close of the previous year. According to University World News, the number of visas granted to foreign students in December 2024 was the largest month-over-month increase since July 2022, with a 169% increase over the previous month. In January 2025,providers of services such as Enroly reported a 14% increase in acceptances and a 27% compared to the previous increase in student payments placed on their platform. For the January 2025 intake, UniQuest examined over 40,000applications and discovered that the number of students who answered 'yes' to their offers, or "firm acceptances," increased by31% compared to 2024.

The effects of the dependents' prohibition and the previous government's indication that it could limit the Graduate Route caused several UK universities to suffer during the period of last year. After completing their study, international students can stay in the UK for two to three years thanks to the Graduate Route. When employment rights were curtailed, it is credited with reversing the trend of declining international enrollment in the UK.

The uncertainty around immigration policies has adversely affected universities and the consequences are there to be seen:

●    The biggest university in Wales, Cardiff University, has said that it intends to reduce its staff by 10%. There will likely be 400 full-time job terminations. The institution is discontinuing courses in vital subjects for which it is well-known, like nursing. CU says it could go out of business in four years if its £31.2 million financial imbalance doesn't improve.

●    Durham University and Newcastle University, two other Russell Group universities, have announced plans to lay off 200 and 300 employees, respectively.

According to the Office for Students, 72% of UK universities will run at a deficit in 2025–2026compared to 40% in 2023–2024. This is because some institutions are experiencing cash flow issues so bad that they might only have enough money to cover one month's worth of costs are incurred, including staff salaries.

For the very first time in eight years, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson stated in November2022 that domestic tuition fees would rise from £ 9,250 to £ 9,535 annually towards an effort to bring stability to university finances. However, this might not be nearly sufficient in the absence of a steady increase in overseas enrollment. For instance, tuition fees accounted for more than half (52%), or £ 50 billion, of the university sector's total revenue in 2022–2023, with overseas student spaying 43% of those fees.