Indian Students Lead in UK Study Visa Approvals for 2023

The United Kingdom has issued most study visas to Indian students in the 2022/23 academic year, data by the UK government have shown.

Chinese students ranked second after those from India, and there was a two percent increase in the total number of visas issued to main applicants in the country, Erudera.com reports.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that students and their dependents accounted for 39 percent of non-EU long-term immigrants to the United Kingdom, totaling 378,000 in the year ending June 2023.

This marks an increase from 320,000 in the same period of 2022, mainly attributed to dependents which number is up from 58,000 in June 2022 to 96,000 in the year ending June 2023.

According to data from the Home Office’s report, “Why do people come to the UK? To study,” the rise has come especially because authorities approved more visas for dependents from India and Nigeria.

“The increase in the number of people coming to the UK to study in the last two years may partly be reflected in the attraction of the new Graduate visa route. This visa route allows international students to apply to work in the UK for at least two years after completing their studies,” ONS said on its website.

In the year ending September 2023, more than 150,000 visas were approved for the dependents of students. Nearly 68 percent of those visas to dependents of students were issued to individuals from India and Nigeria.

The number of sponsored study visas granted to main applicants stood at 486,107 in the year ending September 2023. That was a two percent increase compared to the same period in the previous year but up over 86 percent compared to the pre-COVID-19 period in September 2019.

Indians continue to lead with most study visas in 2023, receiving a total of 133,237 visas, a five percent increase from the previous year, followed by Chinese students, who received 22 percent of all study visas (108,978), indicating a decline of seven percent.

Following a significant growth in 2021/22, the number of visas issued to Nigerian nationals, the third-largest cohort, stabilized at 51,071, an increase of 0.2 percent, followed by students from Pakistan and the United States.

Starting in January 2024, as part of its efforts to reduce net migration, the UK government will not permit most students to bring their dependents to the UK.

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