17 April, 2025. Trump’s America is a hostile environment for foreign students. Those wishing to study for a degree in an English-speaking country should look at universities in the UK, Canada or Australia.
Scandalously, the Trump administration – though fond of lecturing other governments on the sacredness of free speech – is now seeking to control what US universities can teach, who they can hire, and what sort of students they can enrol. There is noble resistance to this, led by Harvard, but at the moment no telling how it will end. With the burning of books? Early evidence already suggests that foreign students are shunning America’s universities and some of its best professors are leaving. Meanwhile, with fees for home students pegged back, first class universities in the UK are struggling to recruit sufficient overseas students to balance their books. Think about applying to them. You will receive a warm welcome! It’s true that Britain’s surging net immigration figures in recent years prompted the previous Conservative government to clamp down on visas for any dependants of overseas students. However, there are some exceptions and there is also mounting pressure for these rules to be either scrapped or significantly loosened.
In The Times Higher Ed’s ‘World University Rankings 2025’, three British universities are in the top ten – Oxford 1st, Cambridge 5th and Imperial College London 9th – and four more in the top fifty. Canadian and Australian universities are also in the top fifty.