In May 2025, the Home Office published the Immigration White Paper. This paper proposed a 6% levy on all international student fees. Given the well documented financial challenges in the sector, we conclude that most universities are unlikely to be able to take much of a hit to their bottom line, and as such we assume that any levy will be passed on to international students in the form of fee rises. 

In new modelling released by Public First in September 2025, we estimate that a policy change which increases international student fees in this way will lead to a loss of 16,100 international students in the first year of the levy, and 77,000 cumulatively in the first 5 years. This will mean a £240 million loss of fee income to the sector, and the UK economy in the first year of the levy, and a loss of £2.2 billion cumulatively over 5 years. 

This impact will not be spread evenly across the country. International students tend to be concentrated in certain areas, usually around one, or several, large universities. Public First have therefore also modelled what the impact of the levy will be on the Gross Value Added (GVA) on every constituency in the UK each year, once the levy has bedded in. 

You can find our analysis of the impact to different constituencies here.

You can download the constituency-by-constituency breakdown in spreadsheet form here.