UK home secretary seeks review of graduate route that gave 50,000 Indians post-study-work option

NEW DELHI: The United Kingdom home secretary, James Cleverly, has requested the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to carry out a rapid review of the “graduate route” which allows international students of UK institutions to remain in the country for two years after graduation to find work. According to the latest UK government statistics for the year ending in December, 2023, as many as 50,053 Indian students were granted graduate-route extensions on their UK student visas in 2023, claiming 44% of all such grants and the most of all nationalities.

Cleverly, home secretary in the government led by the UK’s Indian-origin prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has asked the MAC to submit its findings by May 14, 2024. The graduate route was launched in July, 2021, to give international students graduating from UK universities two years – three years for PhD – to remain in the UK to find work.

“But we also recognise that UK universities’ reputation for quality could easily be put at risk if evidence emerges of immigration abuse or visa exploitation which are not tackled,” says Cleverly’s letter.

The letter, written on March 11 to the chair of the MAC, Brian Bell, also outlines the terms of reference for the review. In December 2023, Bell spoke about the review of the graduate route but had said the MAC was awaiting a formal go-ahead by the home office. The salary threshold for the skilled worker visa UK is up for revision, from £26,200 to £38,700. From this year onwards, the UK has already put a stop to UK dependent visas of which Indians were again the main beneficiaries.

UK study, skilled worker visa

Cleverly’s letter points out that since the graduate route was introduced in 2021, a total of 1,75,872 visas have been granted.

He said that while the government remains "committed to attracting talented students from around the world", they want to "ensure the graduate route is not being abused….In particular, that some of the demand for study visas is not being driven more by a desire for immigration rather than education".

Cleverly’s letter says that initial data from the MAC report shows a sharp increase in the number of international students attending the cheapest universities in the UK.

"Initial data from the MAC annual report shows that the proportion of international students studying at lower tariff institutions has risen to 32% in 2021/22, while the number of [international] postgraduate students attending institutions with the lowest UCAS tariff quartiles has increased by over 250% between 2018 and 2022," the letter says.

The letter points out that a student emerging from a low-cost one-year programme can get a two-year extension through the graduate route, and then, convert that into a UK skilled worker visa which will allow them to work at a much lower salary threshold than other types of UK work visas. A salary threshold is the minimum salary an immigrant worker must earn to be eligible for a work visa.

Cleverly’s letter says that only 23% of those allowed to switch from the graduate route to skilled worker visas actually went into “graduate-level jobs”. The rest, over 70%, went into lower levels of work.