Key findings:

• The Centre for Migration Control has found that the number of foreign students studying at British higher education institutions has increased by 28.1% between the 2021/22 and the 2022/23 academic years.
• CMC sent Freedom of Information requests to 80 higher education providers, accounting for 383,125 of the 680,000 international students that were resident in Britain for the 2021/2022 academic year. They found that, for the 2022/2023 academic year, the number of international students at these institutions had leapt to 490,865, an increase of 107,740 (28.1%).
• Were this rate of increase to carry across all institutions, then the number of foreign students at British universities during the 2022/23 academic year will have reached a record high of 870,000. This would be a near doubling of the number of international students that were resident in Britain in the 2016/2017 academic year (442,375). This number of students is equivalent to the entire combined student population of 216 higher education institutions. Meaning that, effectively 216 British universities are there solely to service foreign students.
• Even if this huge increase, seen across 100 universities, was not applicable at other institutions in the sector then the number of foreign students in Britain would still reach a record high of 787,000.