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British universities are offering discounts on tuition fees worth up to £5,000 per year in a bid to attract international students in this year’s competitive recruitment cycle.
Branded as scholarships, some of the discounts are applied automatically to students from certain parts of the world, such as India or South-east Asia, with institutions involved including the University of Birmingham, Birmingham City University and Sheffield Hallam University.
Others are contingent on grades – Keele University automatically awards £5,000 to undergraduates who exceed entry or other requirements for their courses. The new Global Success Scholarship at the University of the West of England gives full-time undergraduate students a discount of £3,000 per year if they fulfil a set number of “ambassador duties” throughout the year.
Costas Milas, professor of finance at the University of Liverpool, said, in theory, discounts for international students make sense at a time of financial pressure because their fees are much higher and there has been a drop in demand for certain institutions.
He said discounts linked to performance are also a reasonable way to attract new students but those that are applicable to everyone appear “desperate” and do not send a good signal about sector finances.
The University of East Anglia advertises an automatic discount of £4,000 per year for all full-time international undergraduates joining in 2025-26 through its International UG Merit Scholarship, although it said that this had been the case for many years.
Full-time applicants of all levels and nationalities will automatically receive a discount worth thousands of pounds each year at London Metropolitan University or the University of Bradford.
Rather than admitting students based on admissions criteria and then offering a scholarship, this “less rigorous” method of recruitment uses scholarships to attract as many students as possible and then hopes they will succeed, said Milas.
He also raised concerns around these students dropping out – but admitted it was a “difficult situation” for providers.
“Universities need to be creative here because whether we want it or not, jobs are at risk and the government is not helping, especially the 6 per cent levy it’s not helping at all.”
Recent figures from the admissions service Ucas show that lower tariff universities are losing out to elite institutions in the clearing window.
Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said these automatic scholarships are a mix of desperation and innovation.
“This is the natural result of many forces coming together simultaneously, including fairly flat demand from home students, tougher rules on international students and universities wanting to keep courses open rather than having to shut them due to insufficient demand.
“The most important thing is whether the extra students attracted by this sort of ‘dynamic pricing’ are as well prepared as other entrants and as able to stay the course without slowing the rest of the class down. If they are, then it would be a bit rich to criticise these universities for responding to the incentives imposed upon them.”
Most of the scholarships exclude part-time students, and those on foundation years, medical courses and several other degrees.
They come after universities came under fire last year for allowing international students to enrol with lower entry grades than would usually be allowed in a bid to drive up recruitment.
patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com
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