Foreign students cool on British universities as funding strain worsens

As the financial climate in the UK tightens, university bosses have called on the government to address the long-term funding crunch facing the sector

A third of UK universities saw a decline in overseas non-EU applicants in 2023, almost twice as many as the previous year, according to a Financial Times analysis of data from the university admissions service.

The cooling of international demand for a swath of British higher education institutions came as overall non-EU applications grew 3.6 per cent to 518,865, the slowest rate in six years and a sharp decline from 11.6 per cent in 2022.