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Rohit Sethi
Brexit is likely to bring a lot of relief to Indian students and professionals in terms of higher education programmes and well-paid jobs in the UK. Britain is set to bring an improved version of post-study visa regime to boost its International Education Strategy in 2021. The strategy aims at welcoming foreign students from around the world and raising the UK’s total number of international students to 6,00,000 annually from the current 4,60,000. This will boost the country’s education exports to 35 billion pounds by 2030.
What this new strategy means
The offerings will include a chance for the undergraduates and master’s students to stay in the UK for seeking job opportunities for at least six months after completion of their course. It is an attempt to remove the UK’s existing complex visa regime and put an end to the preferential benefits that were offered to EU students. The government of Britain, therefore, will give three months to students before graduating to help them find jobs during that period, and accordingly transform their study visa into a work visa.
The opportunity is not only open to the graduates and those doing master’s but also favours the PhD students to stay in the UK by giving them a year time to find jobs after graduating. The best part of this opportunity is to give these students unrestricted access to work during their post-study leave period.
Besides this, there lies another lucrative opportunity for international graduates. The students will get two years of time after graduating wherein they will have an option to switch their UK study visa to the UK work visa, even from outside the UK.
How Indian professionals will leverage the benefit
With Brexit supposed to come into existence by 2021, the UK will start following a skills-based approach to pull in bright migrants rather than taking in individuals based on the countries they belonged to. It will also remove the cap of 20,700 on the number of skilled work visas, which will significantly benefit Indian doctors and IT experts, who otherwise were strangled by the dearth of visas.
The upcoming transition has already started seeing positive results. A report highlights that skilled workers from India to Britain moved at the fastest pace in 2018. Over 19,500 Indian students received study visas, which shows a straight 70-per cent surge in the issuing of visas in the last two years.
The road ahead post-Brexit?
Britain is looking to increase its reach to global partners by providing educational offerings that international students can’t refuse. The UK also plans to simplify its student application mechanism, which otherwise is very complex to run through and apply for.
It is clear that with new post-Brexit rules and policies, the diverse master’s programmes in the UK, which are relatively of shorter duration will regain popularity and end the hesitation among Indian students who had started to fly off to newer shores like Australia, Canada and other EU countries, majorly due to the UK’s complex visa procedures enveloped by multiple restrictions.
These programmes will also give students an early entry into the job market, thus empowering them with a competitive edge as compared to other foreign universities. Moreover, there is no doubt that the UK houses some of the world’s most-reputed educational institutions offering world-class education to the domestic as well as international students.
— The writer is Director, ESS Global, a study abroad consultant
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