“Compliance has always mattered… But institutional risk has never been higher. Control has never been more limited, and consequences have never been more immediate,” said Ross Porter, London Business School associate director, visas & financial aid, at The PIE Live Europe.
Though the UK government’s international education strategy (IES) set no cap on international student recruitment, Porter asked if the sector was now being “capped by stealth” amid tightened scrutiny, rising visa refusals and processing delays.
With student visa refusal rates at their highest level since 2016, Porter said the overall sector was “uncomfortably close to amber” – referring to the red-amber-green (RAG) rating system based on institutions’ visa refusals, enrolment rates and course completion, coming into force in June 2026.
The RAG ratings are part of a broader tightening of the Basic Compliance Assessments (BCA) framework for student sponsors, which was first announced in last year’s immigration white paper and will raise the compliance thresholds for universities to maintain their sponsor licenses.
Alongside the incoming changes, Porter highlighted current visa delays of up to six months, and recent “visa brakes” switching off entire markets overnight, raising serious questions for how institutions remain compliant while operating and growing sustainably within these constraints.
Panellists emphasised the importance of complaince being embedded at the heart of institutions’ recruitment strategies, with Birmingham City University director of UKVI Jo Cully emphasising: “It can’t be an afterthought.”
Compliance teams need to “be in the room” when recruitment decisions are made, when targets are set and when universities choose which agents to work with, said Cully, noting its importance for institutional integrity but also for the student experience.
“It’s important we remember that if we’re not getting compliance right from the start and we’re not recruiting ethically, the person who really suffers is the student,” she said.
While in the past, compliance teams were frequently only consulted when an institution was near a breach, speakers welcomed greater collaboration between compliance and recruitment departments.
But they urged leaders to invest more in compliance departments and listen to their guidance, ensuring authorising officers are present alongside vice chancellors during UKVI meetings with institutions.
“What I want to do today is impress upon universities that compliance people are the rock stars of the institution, and that getting international students should be compliance led and nothing short of that, because that’s the direction that UKVI is expecting institutions to go,” immigration lawyer Thal Vasishta told delegates.
“When immigration law is so closely related to politics, as it is more so now… UKVI will be making a lot more investigations,” said Vasishta: “Ultimately, what I’d like to think is that UKVI are looking to target unscrupulous institutions and agents and not necessarily those in the room today.”
Compliance people are the rock stars of the institution
Thal Vasishta, Paragon Law
Vasishta said institutions’ record keeping must be watertight, which will allow them to negotiate any issues that might arise with UKVI. He advised universities to develop a “crisis management plan” to effectively communicate with parents, students and agents if they slip into a red or amber UKVI rating.
Panellists agreed on the importance of data collection within universities, to help them remain compliant but also to collectively challenge key falsehoods from UKVI, citing sector-wide visa delays reported by most institutions this January.
“You need to have your own data, you can’t rely on outside data,” said University of Law head of sponsorship compliance Andrei Olteanu.
“This will be even more important with BCA… If you’re close to the 5% refusal threshold you’re going to want to challenge every refusal, and you want to be 100% sure that what you’re challenging is backed by data,” he warned.
What’s more, speakers said individual institutions couldn’t effectively push back on the Home Office alone on issues such as missed service standards, and that the current environment demanded greater collaboration between universities.
For instance, while institutions are held to account on reporting any changes in student visa circumstances to UKVI within 10 working days, the Home Office is not sticking to its own 18-week service level agreement, said Cully.
“So, I think this is something we need to collectively challenge… and not in an aggressive way, but if they don’t uphold their own reporting timeframes, we as a sector need to be challenging that,” she urged.
Beyond greater university collaboration, Vasishta highlighted the possibility of engaging with local MPs to advocate for the sector on Home Office issues, and if necessary, taking formal legal routes including pre-action letters and judicial reviews.
And Cully advised institutions to lean into the sector at large – be it agents, software solutions or recruitment professionals.
“We can’t work in [silos]. If we want to continue to leverage higher education as one of our main global exports, we have to all work together, because this immigration policy is not going away,” she said.
