U.K. Universities Competing for U.S. Undergrads

All Souls College, Oxford

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article on a small but growing number of U.S. students applying to British universities – not as study abroad but as their home institution.  The article is here.   U.S. high school and transfer students are looking at colleges outside the country as the price of an American college education continues to skyrocket  and as job opportunities here become less tied to an American degree (two trends at work here: more recognition by U.S. employers of degrees earned overseas and more Americans seeking jobs overseas as opportunities dry up here – see article here).  The WSJ notes:

Every college that features in the top 20 of the U.S. News and World Report’s most recent ranking of best U.S. colleges costs at least $34,000 a year for tuition and fees. Most, in fact, are closer to $40,000 a year, and quite a few top that level. The downsides of going abroad include: plane tickets, time zones, foul weather and the cultural labyrinth resulting from two nations divided, as the saying goes, by a common language. However, if one is contemplating spending at the higher end of the scale, there is also approximately $80,000 or more to be saved. More than 3,000 normally U.S.-domiciled undergraduate-level students applied to do just that in 2009, according to UCAS, the organization responsible for managing applications to higher-education programs in the U.K. And while only 1,330 were accepted, according to UCAS, the relatively modest numbers mask a rising trend. There has been a 27% increase in undergraduate applications from U.S. students since 2006, while the total number of U.S. students studying for full degrees at British higher-education institutions as of 2009—across both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels—stands at just over 14,000, data from the U.K.’s Higher Education Statistics Agency show.

And it is not just the U.K. that is attracting the attention of U.S. students and their parents.  Earlier this year I wrote a post about “reverse brain drain” and included a section on American students applying to Canadian universities:

[a]s education and career advancement opportunities continue to improve in other countries, U.S. universities might very well find that they have to compete to retain American students.  In other words, over the next twenty years it might not be so uncommon for U.S. students to apply to graduate school in other countries, and in large numbers.   And then maybe undergraduates will follow.  Already, more U.S students are opting for college in Canada, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer: “During the last decade, the number of American students at Canadian universities has more than doubled, says the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, to 8,200 in 2007-08, up from 3,312 a decade ago.”

But the days of low tuition fees in the U.K. and Canada might not last.  Canadian tuition is on the rise (see here) and as I write this Britain is experiencing a nationwide protest by students against kikes  in tuition (see here).