Looking at UK cross-border movement of Undergrad students

[u/thuleting]

[u/spine_slorper]

Irish residents are eligible for home fee status in northern Ireland (and the rest of the UK but it would have more of an impact in NI) which may be why their EU domiciled students haven't dropped as much as the other countries after brexit?

Also ROI students are eligible for the lower 4k ish fees for NI students whereas rUK students studying in NI need to pay the 9k ish fee

Edit:

Also I bet that the drop off in NI students in Scotland was because before brexit EU citizens (which NI residents are entitled to become) could get free tuition in Scottish unis (so more NI folk went as it was cheaper than NI) but now they can't and have to pay more than they would if they stayed in NI.

[u/thuleting → u/spine_slorper]

Thank you for the insight!

I only suspected NI students might choose to study in Scotland because of their potential EU citizen status and hence free tuition. I think the fall off might also relate to rise in provision/capacity/support in NI (?) as there is no increase % of NI students studying in Scotland from 1998 until now. It only goes down despite the scrapping of tuition fees/graduate endowment in Scotland .

It is interesting to hear that part of divergence in the higher education systems across UK seems to be through home fee eligibility restricting rUK student enrolment. NI->Scotland being a major exception. I'm no sure there's major financial incentive in Welsh students to stay in Wales instead of England any longer.

It's also interesting how unlike all the others, NI Uni's take more EU students than non-EU overseas students.

[u/thuleting]

(EDIT: Reddit app on phone limits display res for the larger images here but browser/PC/download works fine)

This may only interest me here.

I initially wanted to look at how rates of Scottish (/Scotland-domiciled) undergrad students going to the rest of the UK (rUK) changed following policy divergences like student tuition fee and graduate endowment abolition etc.

Turns out the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) has very good student domicile data going back around 30 yrs. Before them the data is both patchy and pretty impenetrable.

I tried to find their most up-to-date, revised figures for annual enrolments by student domicile and higher education provider country. Full-time, 1st-degree Undergrads were chosen as this is where the UK nations perhaps differ most in their student support policies. Total enrolments were selected rather than just counting 1st-year entrants as this accounts for students dropping out/transferring between Universities. Downside of this is it will slightly inflate Scotland University total numbers given the standard Undergrad is 4 yrs vs 3 yrs elsewhere. Also mind HESAs coverage has somewhat varied over time.

I'm no expert on anything here so I'll limit relating all the changes we see here to different political events.

Graph:

1. Relatively few Scottish students go to study in rUK and instead Scotland takes on more students from elsewhere in UK (as with the other nations, mainly from England due to it's large population). As anticipated, the proportion of Scottish students going to rUK has and is decreasing but this is very slight as already by 1994 the proportion was already very low (<10%). Wales has large and increasing proportions of incoming and outgoing students (mainly to and from England again) despite initially having a decreasing trend. The % of rUK students in England and their students in the rUK is very small given England's larger, growing population size. However because of this there are increasing numbers of England-domicile students in the rUK.

2. As we already know, Uni's across the UK have increasingly taken on many more non-EU overseas students to increase revenue. Scottish Uni's did expand their share of the EU student base, likely through the offer of free tuition, but levels across the UK collapsed after Brexit eventually made them inelligeble for home fee status/student finance options. England's share has largely remained the same over time, although interestingly NI's has recently expanded.

3. Full breakdown of domiciles here across the nations. Scotland's initial expansion of and relative dependence on EU students is more visible here. Perhaps most noticeable is how vanishingly small Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish representation in the English and one another's higher education systems is. Wales is unusal in enroling ever so slightly more England-domiciled students than Welsh students despite an initial expansion in Welsh numbers.

4. Overall comparing intra-UK student mobility between 2024 and 1994 yields very small percentage-point changes. However, it is interesting that studying within one's own domicile nation has increased in all 4 nations although for most only slightly. NI is actually of greatest interest here in having increased by 10 percentrage points which is perhaps related to the similarly striking decrease in NI students studying in Scotland. Representation of England-domicile students among UK students has increased slightly across all nations except Scotland where Scotland-domicile student representation has increased.

Hope someone can make more of this than me!

[u/luckykat97 → u/thuleting]

Point 1 is not surprising at all. As Scottish student you can study in Scotland tuition free. Going to uni in England would mean significantly more student debt due to tuition which is why so few do it. Meanwhile for England domiciled students, everywhere in England, Wales or Scotland costs you 9k in tuition so you just choose a favourite.