While overall international student levels are set to grow from seven to nine million by 2030, traditional mobility trends are at a turning point, sector leaders from across the ‘big four’ told attendees of ICEF’s Global Monitor Summit 2025.
“The last two years have absolutely been a reset,” said BUILA chair Andrew Bird: “Over the next three to four years we’ll have winners and losers but we’re not going to see those big peaks that we did pre-Covid.”
As visa restrictions and inflammatory immigration debates have dominated the ‘big four’ destinations in recent years, student mobility is shifting to a wider field of destinations, with ICEF editor-in-chief Craig Riggs predicting a move to the ‘big 14’.
“It feels like something has tipped over in the last year,” said Riggs, highlighting students’ greater emphasis on affordability and return on investment, which are further contributing to the rise in emerging destinations most notably in Asia.
Domestic politics, government rhetoric and public sentiment have been the largest driving forces of disruption across the key markets, said sector leaders, with the US, UK, Canada and Australia all experiencing varying degrees of policy volatility in recent years.
“Politics is policy right now, and we’re stuck in the middle,” said Bird, predicting the incoming changes to UK universities’ compliance metrics – as proposed in the immigration white paper – would cause the most fundamental change in where institutions recruit students from.
While the government has made damaging proposals to shorten the graduate route and impose a levy on the income from international student fees, rhetorically, the UK continues to maintain a welcoming stance towards international students.
The same cannot be said for the Trump administration in the US, with NAFSA CEO Fanta Aw warning delegates: “The worst is not over in terms of domestic politics.”
Amid unprecedented government hostility, including Trump’s travel ban impacting 19 countries and a near-month long pause of student visa interviews globally, experts have warned that international enrolments this fall could be down as much as 40%.
Despite policy volatility of its own, the UK has been one of the destinations to see a rise in international student numbers pivoting away from the US, though as Aw reiterated, “this is not a zero-sum game, the growth in the sector says there’s room for all of us”.
On domestic policy challenges in the US, Aw described that “multiple truths are in tension” as the administration attempts to show it is at once lowering immigration and growing the economy.
“The US government needs to be able to show that the economy is growing… That’s where it’s a losing battle. Yes, they’ve got control of immigration, but the economy is down,” said Aw.
“Domestic populations have bought into the top narrative that immigrants are the problem, even though the governments know that they are dependent on migrants,” said Aw, speaking to a tension highlighted by leaders across the ‘big four’.
Across the sector, the economic value of international students – who contributed over $50bn to the US economy in 2023 – is well known, but the challenge is communicating this to communities, said Aw.
“Don’t take for granted that the local community knows,” Aw warned delegates. “We need to take our stories to the ground level because the domestic immigration backlash started at that level.”
Our populations have not yet understood our reliance on bright international talent
Phil Honeywood, International Education Association of Australia
In Canada, “the general public have bought into a false narrative that [international students] take more than they give back, when actually, 60% of all entrepreneurial activity in Canada is driven by international talent,” highlighted CBIE president Larissa Bezo.
Since the Canadian government’s implementation of international student caps in January 2024, the country has been rocked by 16 different policy changes, causing extreme volatility culminating in record high study permit refusal rates so far this year.
“We’re hoping that more significant policy disruptions won’t be the case, but we will be seeing refinements,” said Bezo, adding there was “still work to do in terms of labour market alignments”.
Bezo highlighted the “false truths and false narratives” held by the public, which were peddled by the previous government around the time of the caps, playing into the rhetoric of “we don’t have room”, she said.
“In the case of Canada, we don’t produce enough domestic talent to meet our country’s needs… these are the narratives that we need to be bringing to the public space,” Bezo urged attendees.
Phil Honeywood, CEO of IEAA, laid out the complex policy landscape in Australia, where the recently elected Labor government “is giving [institutions] a bit more love” than its conservative predecessor, including raising the country’s enrolment cap under certain conditions, though undeniable policy challenges remain.
The most significant of which has been the government’s hiking of the student visa application fee to AUD$2,000 this June, representing “the most significant indicator that [international students] are not welcome here… it’s not just the financial impact but it’s the message,” said Honeywood.
“We’re undeniably in a global skills race and the big four destinations are not producing the professionals that we desperately need,” Honeywood said. “Our populations have not yet understood our reliance on bright international talent.”
