Russian Elite Cut Off From British Education
1- 20.06.2025, 14:42
- 8,694
The situation has changed.
Due to the war in Ukraine and more frequent refusals to issue visas, the number of Russian students in the UK has fallen to its lowest level in 15 years. According to the British Interior Ministry, from March 2024 to March 2025, Russians issued 1,275 student visas - 20% less than a year earlier. This is the lowest figure in fifteen years. Until recently, the UK remained one of the main destinations for education among the children of the Russian elite. According to Forbes, it ranked first among foreign countries in the number of students from the families of Russian billionaires - two dozen heirs of major businessmen studied in British universities, writes The Moscow Times.
But with the outbreak of war, the situation began to change. Professor Paul Nightingale of the University of Sussex's Public Policy Research Center, formerly head of projects at the U.K. government's Economic and Social Research Council, said universities "should unequivocally expel the children of oligarchs and their families." According to Maya Chankseliani, associate professor of comparative and international education at Oxford University, the decline in Russian students is primarily due to fears of ill-will from local residents and student communities. "There is no official ban on Russians entering British universities," she explains, "but the general climate is hard to ignore: many people do not want to go to study where they may be viewed with suspicion or hostility."
In the British parliament, there have been calls to tighten the approach to the education of Russians. A number of Conservative Party MPs have called for the children of Russian oligarchs to be banned from attending private schools in Britain. Activists proposed to completely exclude all Russian students.
The number of enrollments is also declining due to sanctions. As the founder of Paradise Education Natalya Shtrain told the TourDom portal, schools no longer accept children whose parents are under sanctions. There are significant problems with payment - payments cannot be made from sanctioned banks in pounds, and all British banks have left Russia. In addition, the UK denies Russians student visas if money for living and studying is kept in sub-sanctioned banks. Visas have been denied to students who submitted account statements from sanctioned Russian banks (more than 90% of the banking system is under sanctions) as part of their package," said Vyacheslav Lychagin, general director of Global Dialog Vyacheslav Lychagin. At the same time, the funds needed for education are considerable - studying at Oxford, Imperial or UCL costs $35,000-$55,000 a year.
Negative impact on the Russian student flow has a negative impact on the general tightening of migration policy: according to 2023 data, the share of denials of student visas for Russians has increased 10 times - from less than 1% to 10%. The procedure for obtaining a student visa to the UK has become more complicated and requires confirmation of financial capacity not only for study, but also for living. Restrictions on the term and work during study have been introduced: students of bachelor's degree programs and above can stay in the country for no more than 5 years and are not allowed to work in the country.
Since 2022, British universities began to curtail academic cooperation with Russian institutions and instead expanded exchange programs for Ukrainian students. According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), the number of students from Ukraine in the UK has almost doubled over the past two years.
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