Recent growth in the number of international postgraduates studying vulnerable subjects such as maths and engineering could put the UK at risk of losing both academic courses and skills, a report has warned.
The report, “Strategically Important and Vulnerable Subjects” (SIVS), was published by the Higher Education Funding Council of England on 9 September.
The report said that the sustainability of the subjects—including chemistry, engineering, maths, physics, quantitative social science and modern foreign languages—was increasingly dependent on overseas students.
In the SIVS disciplines of science, technology, engineering and maths, it said, the number of international students on post-graduate taught courses had more than doubled over the past eight years. The number of home students, however, grew only 1 per cent.
On post-graduate research courses, overseas participants grew by 23 per cent, while the number of home researchers fell 2 per cent during the same period.
The expansion, warned HEFCE, was “so marked that any decrease in overseas postgraduate students could lead to concerns about the future viability of courses and the overall sustainability of these disciplines”.
In addition, it said, such a decrease in international students could lead to a “risk in relation to the UK’s future workforce”.
The report’s breakdown of the statistics by discipline showed that the biggest increase in international students was on mechanical engineering courses, where numbers grew from 22 per cent in 2002-03 to 54 per cent in 2009-10.
“One question arising from this, which may be an issue for the engineering professional bodies to explore, is the relationship between the trends in UK and overseas students across the different engineering disciplines and the areas of relative industrial strength within UK,” it said.
HEFCE said that it was developing a new policy on SIVS in the light of the impending changes to higher education. It would consult on the details in the coming winter.