New U.K. immigration rules will deter international scientific talent and harm universities, science policy experts say. This month, a rise in the minimum salary that international skilled workers must meet to obtain a visa took effect, coming on top of a sharp hike in the fee migrants must pay to access health care, as well as new restrictions on visas for family members.
The changes “will make it much harder for higher education institutions to attract talent from overseas,” says Jenny Sherrard, national head of equality and policy for the University and College Union (UCU). They are “counterproductive to the U.K. government’s ambitions of becoming a ‘science and technology superpower,’” adds Camilla D’Angelo, a policy manager at the Campaign for Science and Engineering. The U.K. Department for Science, Innovation and Technology did not respond to a request for comment. But at a hearing last month, science minister Michelle Donelan defended the changes, saying the government was elected on a pledge to control immigration.
The new salary rules affect those entering the United Kingdom under the “skilled worker” route, in which employers sponsor the visa of a potential employee. Previously, workers had to earn at least £26,200 to be eligible for the visa; in December 2023, the government announced this threshold would rise by almost 50% to £38,700, well above what many early-career researchers earn. (The pay for a postdoc at the University of Cambridge, for instance, starts at £33,348.) Just 3 weeks before the changes came into effect on 4 April, the U.K. Home Office announced there would be a lower threshold of £30,960 for postdocs or Ph.D. holders in science, technology, engineering, or math. But the initial announcement caused chaos, says Gertjan Lucas, a behavioral strategy researcher at the Nottingham University Business School, who serves on the UCU committee for migrant members: “We’ve heard reports of universities refusing to renew contracts, even before the [April] deadline came into effect.”
Many scientists will be able to sidestep the salary thresholds by applying for the relatively new Global Talent Visa, says Martin Smith, a policy analyst at the Wellcome Trust. The visa can be granted to anyone—including research assistants and technicians—named on a grant from a long list of recognized funders. But not all applicants will be able to get the “endorsement” from a U.K. institution that is required for the visa, D’Angelo notes.
The hike in salary thresholds comes after a rise in the surcharge that migrants pay upfront to use the National Health Service. The charge was introduced in 2015, with migrants paying £200 for each year of their visa. This year it rose to £1035 per year, or £776 for children. A family of four applying for a 5-year visa today would pay £18,110 up front for the health surcharge, as well as up to £6500 in visa application fees—an “extraordinary amount” to require of young scientists, Smith says.
Students are also affected by new immigration rules: Since January, holders of student visas have been unable to bring family members with them to the U.K. unless they are studying for a postgraduate research degree. Sherrard says the change is likely to drive down the number of international students and hurt university finances. “This is a massive own goal,” she says, because universities rely on income from international students, who pay much higher fees than domestic students. The government is also reviewing a visa that allows graduates to remain in the U.K. to work, leading to uncertainty over its future.
There are already hints that the changes are having a negative impact. Universities are seeing “quite worrying” drops in international student recruitment, says Harry Anderson, deputy director of Universities UK International. Software platform Enroly, which processes one-third of international student applications, says numbers for the January intake were down by one-third compared with the previous year. “The ramifications are pretty bleak,” Anderson says: With less money coming in from student fees, it will be harder for universities to fund staff roles—especially at the new salary thresholds.
Fifty universities—out of 141 in the country—are already cutting jobs or freezing hires, Lucas says. A drastic drop in international student numbers in the next academic year could make the situation worse, causing up to 80% of universities to fall into deficit, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report commissioned by Universities UK.
The new immigration rules come in the context of “relentlessly negative” rhetoric around migrants from the Conservative government, Sherrard says. That could put off even those who are not deterred by the new costs and visa hurdles, Lucas says. The changes send a message to migrants that “you’re not welcome here.”
