Vice-Chancellor Andrew Hamilton has called the UK government’s new visa controls “harmful” and “hostile to student entry”.
He made the comments in his annual Oration to University academics, in which he covered numerous examples of Oxford’s positive influence on the wider world. He noted the concerted efforts of academics and scientists to combat the outbreak of Ebola, alongside the Edgeworth Professor of Economics’ advice to the Bank of England during the 2007 financial meltdown.
Such examples, Hamilton said, made a compelling argument for greater public investment in universities, though Oxford has never found funding too difficult to come by, netting on average £200m a year for the last five years.
Hamilton also praised the work of Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, a centre set up to inform debate on international migration and public policy.
In October 2011, the Observatory published a report on the public’s opinion of immigration, the intention of which was to “try to build a more detailed understanding of public attitudes to immigration”.
The report found that the public’s views on immigration “are complex and nuanced in a way that previous polls have failed to capture, and that these views vary substantially depending on which immigrant groups the public is considering”.
Crucially, it found that when asked about immigrants, 69% of people were likely to think of asylum seekers, while only 29% thought of students, despite current information from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) that students represent the largest group of immigrant arrivals (37%).
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Hamilton noted this disparity in his speech, and remarked that “student migration simply isn’t an issue for them and there are few votes in restricting overseas student numbers.”
“Why are we doing this to them — and to ourselves?” the Vice-Chancellor asked. “The excellence of UK Higher Education is, in crude material terms, an attractive commodity in the world market. Why, at a time of continued economic constraint, are we limiting one of our most effective generators of overseas revenue?”
OUSU President Louis Trup commented, “The Vice-Chancellor is right to call for an increase in higher education funding. Spending on higher education brings enormous benefits to the local communities in which universities exist as well as to the national and international knowledge economy.”
Meanwhile, the OUSU VP for graduates, Yasser Bhatti, also supported the Vice-Chancellor, saying, “I was impressed that the Vice-Chancellor is taking international students’ contribution to the University so seriously and that he shares my view that this must be a key campaigning priority in the General Election year.”
Hamilton’s comments come as John O’Keefe, joint winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Medicine, voiced similar concerns. In a Monday interview with the BBC, he called immigration rules “a very, very large obstacle” to recruiting scientists from around the world.
