The Labour MP and head of the Home Affairs Select Committee told The PIE News that universities may struggle to recruit EU students if the UK opts out in the referendum set to take place by the end of 2017.

“I think we need a better, more effective education campaign with people understanding why we’re there”

“One of the most impressive areas where we have developed our expertise has been the number of European students who’ve come to study in the UK, and if they now need to get visas to come and study here that would be pretty devastating,” he said, after speaking on ‘The Brewing Crisis between Europe and the UK’ at Regent’s University London last week.

Tuition fees for EU and domestic students are capped at £9,000 a year for undergraduate courses, but can double for non-EU students.

Vaz suggested that more universities might opt to open branch campuses in Europe to teach students who decide to study in-country if the UK exits the EU.

“I can’t see universities wanting to recruit [students from within the EU as international students] if we came out,” he said. “They would probably want to go and set up their own campuses, which would be very bad because I think part of the great essence of education studying abroad is you get to know the country – and you can’t unless you live there.”

Addressing attendees at Regent’s, the pro-EU MP called for urgent reform of EU governance to ensure fairer representation of its member states and to avoid heavy-handed decision making that could be done at a national level, but urged that the benefits of staying far outweigh the disadvantages.

“I think we need a better, more effective education campaign with people understanding why we’re there,” he told The PIE News. “I don’t think that it’s got anywhere near the surface as to what we’ve actually gained by being there, and what will happen if we go.”

He predicted that Universities UK, which recently launched its pro-EU ‘Universities for Europe’ campaign, will be an “extremely effective” voice in the debate.

Citing falling numbers of Indian students coming to the UK to study, Vaz also stressed the need to ensure the UK remains an attractive study destination in an increasingly competitive international environment.

He reiterated the Home Affairs Select Committee’s recommendations to give international graduates a minimum of a year’s post-study work rights and to remove students from net migration targets.

“Students are not, clearly, migrants,” he told attendees “They are here for a specific purpose, to study, and then they leave.”