“The time feels right politically and in terms of the mood of the nation to remove students from migration numbers and simplify the visa process.”
Well, this is slightly awkward, is it not? Playbook has no idea whether the publication of today’s Higher Education Commission report on (yes, you guessed it) international students was deliberately timed to fall just two days after the Migration Advisory Committee’s own investigations. If it was, though, then it is fair to speculate, based on the above excerpt, that the commission may have been somewhat surprised by what the MAC said.
The MAC’s assertion that students should remain in migration statistics does not make the HEC’s statement any less valid. But would it not feel a little more like the time was politically right to remove students from migration numbers if an influential political body advising the Home Office had not just recommended the exact opposite (as reported on the HE website this week)?
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