Oxford University’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Andrew Hamilton has warned that the health of the UK’s higher education reputation is at risk from government funding cuts and student visa restrictions.

In his annual speech to the university, Professor Hamilton highlighted the superior financial incentives of international higher education institutions. He said, “It is dispiriting to say the least to learn that the share of GDP the UK spends on higher education has fallen to 1.2 %, thereby pushing it still further down the OECD index, and further behind the international average. And this is while public expenditure on universities elsewhere is expanding. When other governments are ramping up investment in higher education, particularly for research, treading water will not be enough.”

“The international trend is clear. China has a project to make two universities – Tsinghua and Beida - among the best in the world, and is investing over $280 million per institution per year in pursuit of that goal. In all, China is aiming to create more than 100 leading universities in the course of the century.”

Professor Hamilton also stressed the importance of postgraduate students in contributing to the quality of teaching and research at Oxford, and to the political and economic condition of the UK as a whole. He highlighted the five-year funding packages for almost all doctoral students that US universities provide against the recent cuts in the UK to the funding of overseas graduates.

Professor Hamilton concluded, “If part of the point and benefit of higher education is to enhance individual life and career prospects, then major funding barriers to the kind of study that can do a great deal to enhance those prospects is hardly equitable, or likely to promote the social mobility that is such an important part of the current higher education debate.”