Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world
The number of US students looking to study at UK universities has risen sharply since President Donald Trump launched his attack on some of America’s top higher education institutions, data shows.
Interest in British degrees from the US was 25 per cent higher in March than in the same month last year, according to Studyportals, a global student search platform that tracks the page views of its users to gauge course preferences.
American universities including Harvard are under pressure from Trump to give the federal government the power to vet admissions and influence hiring, as his administration cuts funding to elite universities and seeks to revoke the visas of hundreds of foreign students.
Experts said the figures suggested Trump’s assault on universities had also affected international interest in studying for a degree in the US and undermined universities’ competitiveness.
Studyportals data shows overseas interest in US courses was down 15 per cent last month compared with March 2024, while the UK registered a 13 per cent increase in the same period.
The platform records data on searches and page views by 51mn students in more than 230 countries and territories. There were 7.3mn page views by students in the US last year, making Americans the site’s fourth-largest market.
Student recruiters said the UK was likely to be a top alternative study destination because rival markets such as Australia and Canada were targeting large reductions in student numbers using visa caps. The data shows all the top study destinations have experienced a rise in US page views, but none as large as the UK.
Mark Bennett, insights director at Keystone Education Group, an international student recruitment company, said the UK was set to be one of the “main beneficiaries” of Trump’s policies because of the “relative stability” of its immigration rules.
While the Labour government had not reversed changes by the previous Conservative government that tightened the student visa regime, he said its “message of welcome towards international students contrasts with the situation in the US, as well as in Australia and Canada”.
In the first three months of this year, US interest in domestic study was 27 per cent lower than the same period last year, while US interest in the UK was 23 per cent higher, according to Keystone’s search platform for master’s courses, which tracks the search behaviour of more than 7mn students across 190 countries.
The Trump administration is cutting funding and threatening institutions that it sees as bastions of liberalism but also as failing to tackle antisemitism.
Harvard has balked at demands to hand over records on its “foreign student visa holders’ illegal and violent activities” and has sued the federal government.
Columbia, which last month yielded to pressure from the administration to overhaul aspects of its governance, and Princeton have also had their federal funding cut.
Across the board, about 1,500 students have lost their right to study following the termination of their US visa registrations, although the Trump administration on Friday said it would reinstate these records until it had issued a new policy to legally rescind their visas.
Speaking before Friday’s court filing by the government, Miriam Feldblum, chief executive of Presidents’ Alliance, which represents more than 500 US higher education leaders, said visa revocations were “creating a climate of fear, anxiety and uncertainty”.
“The unwelcome environment will have chilling, rippling effects for our domestic economic prosperity and clearly undermine our global competitiveness,” she added.
International enrolments across all US courses fell 7 per cent between the academic years starting in 2016 and 2017, the start of Trump’s first term as president, according to official data. Feldblum said the new administration would have “greater consequences”.
American students are the fifth-largest international cohort who come to study in the UK, with 23,250 Americans in higher education in Britain in 2023-24, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency.
Growing international interest in UK courses is a positive sign for the cash-strapped sector, which has become heavily reliant on lucrative tuition fee income from overseas students.
But Jamie Arrowsmith, director of Universities UK International, which speaks for the sector, said it was “too early to say” if rising interest would translate into higher enrolments. UK ministers’ highly anticipated decision on immigration reform would be “vital” for universities’ stability, he added.
Additional reporting by Anna Gross in London
