Britain’s universities can’t hold onto their foreign researchers – 43% gone in 5 years
Key Points
- A new Migration Advisory Committee report finds 43% of foreign researchers on Skilled Worker visas leave the UK within five years
- Natural and social science professionals have the lowest five-year stay rate of any common occupation, at 57%
- Every employer sponsoring more than 100 visas in the research occupation across 2014 to 2024 was a university
- 49 of the top 50 sponsoring employers in the wider education industry were higher education establishments
- The analysis excludes researchers on the Global Talent visa, who are not yet covered
UK universities are losing 43% of the foreign researchers they sponsor on Skilled Worker visas within five years, a new Migration Advisory Committee report has found.
Researchers classified as natural and social science professionals had the lowest stay rate of any common occupation on the Skilled Worker route, with only 57% still holding valid UK immigration status five years after their first visa.
Every employer sponsoring more than 100 visas in this occupation across the 2014 to 2024 study period was a university.
The wider education industry showed the same pattern: 49 of the top 50 sponsoring employers were higher education establishments, and migrants entering through education roles were roughly half as likely to remain in the UK as those entering through other industries when other factors were controlled for.
The committee found that working in education was associated with an adjusted odds ratio of 0.52 of holding valid immigration status after five years, the largest negative effect of any industry studied.
The natural and social science professional occupation produced an even lower adjusted odds ratio of 0.35.
The report attributed the gap to typical working practices in higher education, where short-term contracts are common for academic staff and workers are more internationally mobile than those in other sectors.
Among migrants entering the Skilled Worker route between 2014 and 2019, 88.2% of those working in human health and social work activities still held valid UK immigration status after five years, compared with 76.4% in all other industries combined.
Nurses had the highest stay rate of any common occupation at 94%, while care workers and home carers, added to the route in 2022, are tracking similarly across the limited period observed so far.
The Migration Advisory Committee noted that the analysis excludes researchers on the Global Talent visa, who are routed separately and not yet covered.
The findings have implications for UK research capacity as the government consults on changes to settlement rules.
The report flagged that groups with lower stay rates under the current policy, including higher earners and people working in higher education, could be more susceptible to being deterred by a less generous settlement offer or more likely to leave if they are already in the UK and moved to a longer path to settlement.
The committee’s analysis covers 916,000 unique migrant journeys between 2014 and 2024.
