Ross Kennedy analyses the Immigration White Paper’s impact on Higher Education and international students

16 May 2025 

The UK’s Immigration White Paper has major consequences for international students and graduates, those employing them and the Higher Education sector too. Vanessa Ganguin Immigration Law’s Ross Kennedy analyses them for immigration practitioners in Free Movement.

Summarising the changes, he writes: ” The government now plans to increase burdens on sponsoring education institutions while reducing the duration of the graduate visa, alongside measures addressing asylum policy, in the hope that this cuts net migration. They estimate that the graduate visa changes will result in a yearly 3.5% reduction of approximately 12,000 students, a new higher education tuition levy could reduce numbers by around 7,000 annually (but with higher impact in the short-term of around 14,000 students) and changes to sponsor compliance could result in 12,000 fewer students.”

One irony of the changes proposed in the Immigration White Paper is that while the Graduate visa will be curtailed from 24 months to 18 months for international graduates of British universities, graduates of elite overseas universities who qualify for the High Potential Individual (HPI) visa are seeing expansions to the route, including doubling the number of institutions that overseas graduates can have studied at, with no apparent reduction to the two year visa duration. “This risks creating a two-tier system where a student that graduates from a top international university qualifying for the HPI visa will have a longer opportunity to stay in the UK than graduates of British ones,” writes Ross Kennedy.

Ross Kennedy adds a tip for employers seeking to hire international students: “When a graduate visa holder switches into the Skilled Worker route, their employer needs to pay the Immigration Skills Charge – this is increasing by 32% and, combined with doubling the time that a person needs to be sponsored to qualify for settlement, this places huge costs on the sponsor. However, students switching directly to Skilled Worker are exempt from the Immigration Skills Charge for the duration of their sponsorship in the same role and for the same employer, with potentially massive savings for employers and making it easier for the individual to find sponsored employment.”

If you would like to discuss any of the upcoming immigration changes and how they may affect you, please contact us. You can use the form below, email one of our lawyers or call 0207 033 9527.

Graduation photo by Jeremiah Lawrence / Unsplash