Book launch – Brexit, EU Students and UK higher education: Broken bridges

On 23 June 2016 a narrow majority (51.5%) of the UK electorate voted to leave the European Union. The Leave campaign’s slogans were ’Take back control’ and after the vote, ‘Get Brexit done’, a process that was completed in the final break in 2020, amid toxic anti-EU rhetoric from the then Conservative Party government. The Brexit decision, which polls show is now regretted by a clear majority of UK voters, was a monumental error of historic proportion. Despite predictions that it would destabilise and damage the European Union it has had no such effect, but the damage to the UK itself has been immense. There has been no evident increase in the level of control that British voters enjoy. Policies of austerity, welfare cuts and privatisation of public services have continued unabated since 2016. Meanwhile, as well as suppressing trade and economic activity and partly isolating the UK in its geographical region, Brexit has been the springboard for a sharp deterioration in political and civic life. The nativist, White supremacist and anti-migration sentiment first fostered in the Brexit campaign now dominates British politics. On 13 September a crowd of 100,000-150,000, largely male and almost entirely White, carried racist slogans during its march in London on 13 September; and the Reform Party, which now has a 50/50 chance of taking government at the next election, has undertaken to abolish the migration status of 430,000 people granted Leave to Remain in UK, including many people working in UK higher education.

Higher education has a crucial role in fostering values of internationalism, education for all, inclusion, cosmopolitan tolerance and the common good. The shared nature of education and knowledge positions higher education and academic research against all forms of nativism and national closure. The UK Higher Education sector was strongly opposed to Brexit in 2016, as were student-age voters. Prior to Brexit UK higher education had been highly engaged in Europe, through collaboration with European researchers in the Horizon research programme, the contributions of EU citizens to British science, EU funding of educational infrastructure in British regions, the entry of non-UK EU citizens into academic posts in UK facilitated by free movement within the EU, and above all via EU students studying alongside UK citizens and other international students in UK classrooms. As international students in a non-commercial relation with UK universities, EU students provided crucial educational and cultural balance within cross-border education. More than 30,000 EU citizen students entered the UK each year through the Erasmus + programme and in the last year before Brexit was completed, 152,905 non-UK EU students were enrolled in UK degree programmes on the basis of UK home country fees. After Brexit, Erasmus students vanished completely and the number of EU students entering UK degrees each year dropped to less than half. After Brexit EU students in UK have been required to pay international student fees which average more than £22,000 per year for first degrees. There are many good higher education options in Europe at a small fraction of this cost. Since Brexit the number of EU citizens enrolled in doctorates and becoming academic staff in UK has also dropped sharply.

In the late 2010s the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education gathered data on the expected effects of Brexit, conducting interviews with academic staff and university leaders in 12 contrasting UK universities. Almost every interviewee expressed concern about the loss of talented EU students and the educational and cultural diversity they provided. Just published by Bloomsbury Academic, Brexit, EU Students and UK Higher Education: Broken Bridges, by Vassiliki Papatsiba and Simon Marginson, reports that research, demonstrating the gaping hole that Brexit has created in British universities. Setting the study data in the context of the internationalisation of higher education in UK, and of the overall effects of Brexit, the book focuses on the impact of the loss of EU students in three domains: student numbers and revenues, the quality and diversity of education, and the heightened competition between institutions. At a time when higher education institutions are locked into an existential battle to stay afloat amid the falling value of domestic fees and the ceiling on international student numbers, Brexit, EU Students and UK Higher Education helps to explain why they are struggling so painfully, and also reminds us what higher education could be if the tide turned in UK political culture and a more creative and cosmopolitan policy was once again able to flourish. In the webinar on 7 October Vassiliki and Simon will present insights from the book and discuss with the participant audience how we might rebuild the broken bridges – how we can once again become positive about migration, invite in European students, celebrate the sharing of educational diversity, embrace and learn from educational relations beyond UK shores, and re-Europeanise British universities.