UK university application specialist counselling company, SI-UK, has told The PIE News it plans to open 12-15 new offices in the next 12 months as part of plans to have an office in every country that sends more than 1,000 new students to UK higher education institutions each year.
Since opening in Tokyo in 2006, the company has grown to having 53 offices in 23 countries and is aiming for around 120 by 2025. The last 24 months have seen SI-UK enjoy a year-on-year growth of 250% and in 2019 it helped 16,200 students makes 40,500 applications to UK institutions.
“In the past 6-9 months new offices have been established in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, Chiang Mai in Thailand, Lucknow, Jaipur, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad in India, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Kampala in Uganda, and Cairo in Egypt,” explained SI-UK’s Dwayne Gallagher.
This year, the company plans to open offices in the USA, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, while also expanding its presence in China and India.
“There has been an increase in demand from key markets where the ability to work post-graduation is a driving force”
Gallagher noted that the since the announcement of the new post-study work rights graduate route in the UK, SI-UK has seen “an increase in demand from key markets where the ability to work post-graduation is a driving force behind the choice of study destination”.
“This particularly true for the Indian Sub-Continent,” he added, also predicting that the fastest growth for SI-UK will come from South Asia, China, Indonesia and the USA.
“The USA is another large supplier of students to the UK and is thus a market where there is high demand for support, yet limited companies with the ability to supply this in a comprehensive manner,” Gallagher told The PIE.
SI-UK also caters for the “already onshore” international student population in the UK, running an iteration of its UK University Fair in London as well as in India, Thailand, Japan, Nigeria, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
According to HESA statistics, 485,645 were studying in the UK in the academic year 2018-2019, up from 458,490 the year before. The UK government is pushing to increase international student numbers to 600,000 over the next 10 years.
