University Challenge 101

The affect of Brexit on International student intake will be interesting

most HEIs have way more non-EU students (Ug and PG taught) on tier 4 visas, than EU. Most of our EU students are on the Erasmus exchange scheme or ā€œyear abroadā€ schemes, which apparently will be unaffected by Brexit.

FYI, the term International Student applies to non-EU non-UK students only. They arrive on special tier 4 visas. It is these students counted in the immigration figures, not the ones from the EU.

And for research students things might be a bit different. There may well be a distinct difference in getting research grant funds from EU institutions, especially where you need an EU HEI as a collaborator. So it will (probably) hamper our ability to access the massive research funds available through the EU.

We have seen a small slow down in EU researchers, and some European researchers relocate back to their home country.

We have well formed plans based on modelled impact assessments.

Iā€™m not sure whether this will have any direct impact on the student though, except perhaps when it comes to applying for jobs with a few of the stuffier employers.

At the other end of the scale it definitely has an impact on university academics though. If their graduate students donā€™t complete their doctoral degrees there are, or at least once were, consequences. When I was a lab manager one of my university users used to bring his MSc students en masse to look at various pieces of specialist kit we had on site. He often used to bring his partner too - she was also a post-doc in his group. I think heā€™d left his wife for her, although theyā€™d been together years by the time I got to meet them. Strong woman, Polish, rode a 650 bike. Anyway, while my user took his students off to another part of the site this lady asked if we might drop in on a grad student from the group whoā€™d recently got a job with us. We found the guy and to begin with the chat was amicable enough. But then she asked him how his thesis was coming along. He said that frankly he was stuck and given that he was now very busy in proper work he was thinking of giving up on it. She started to bawl him out, saying that he was letting his group leader down really badly. Then without warning she slapped him round the side of the head. Hard. Then she did it again, and stormed off. As the person responsible for her, in a sense, on site I half expected to be hauled up on a disciplinary. Fortunately the ex grad student didnā€™t make a complaint. Perhaps he suddenly felt more motivated to deliver the thesis though, despite not technically needing to any more.

VB

We have seen a 50% drop in applicants for funded PhD research positions from the EU countries.
We used to attract the very best applicants (maybe we still do, I am not involved in that side of the organisation) but we are certainly attracting less of them.

I understood the funding / subsidies for international students may also suffer?

it is already, there are some studies already published that shows increased problems for students. This is very recent problem.

there are no funding/subsidies for International Students, apart from local grants, bursaries offered by each HEI

similar here. Which HEI are you?

Sorry, i donā€™t know the answer to that. I know we fund research projects and that includes PhD research positions but how their pay is funded (Whether that comes 100% from the project funding or whether there is additional subsidy I am not sure).
Certainly not all projects are 100% funded by us and collaborative projects are also partly funded.
We have also found that where there were trans european projects we often took the lead, but often the lead is now given to a european Uni or research establishment.

Brexit has certainly had an effect.

None :grinning:

I work for BHF, we fund about Ā£100m of research a year.

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I imagine that from now on itā€™s all going to be spent on British hearts :wink:.

VB

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sorry i am not sure i fully understood your question.

The funding of researchers varies depending on the source of the funding. We receive some money from the EU for some projects, and there are restrictions on who we can fund as researchers. Typically we cant use that money for researchers outside the UK and EU.

Some funding will come from charities, others from companies each will have rules about how you spend the money and who you can employ. Weā€™ve had grants from overseas companies and again the rules might be different.

Most of our international researchers are self funded.

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