Plan to limit international student recruitment ‘driven by No 10’

It is so sad that we have moved in a relatively short time from the Prime Minister's Initiative to attract a large number of overseas students to our country (previous government), to a point where we are basically blocking any overseas students (who do not fit the expectations of our current government) from access to what was once considered the home of quality education. As to the definition of a "top" university, are our current ministers and leaders examples of what happens when you have attended a so-called top university? It takes years of work for universities to build up their international departments and recruitment supply chains around the globe. This does not appear to be a problem for other anglophone countries, happy to accept the students the UK rejects; or even the Dutch and French universities that are now offering degrees in the English language at considerably more favorable fees than those charged in the UK. Once again, is immigration going to be the criterion that destroys our reputation in the global student market?

Education is a vital 'export' especially in a nation that seems to have rejected 'making stuff'. It also builds life-long links between the UK and the countries whose nationals have been educated here. Both good reasons for encouraging international students instead of rejecting them. Does the current government want to destroy the UK, to make it a laughing stock? Sometimes it is hard to see what more they could do if that were their actual intention, rather than an effect of the decisions they make from what presumably they think are sound ideas for our nation's future.