UK business schools deal with Brexit | Daily News Byte

Moving from Germany to the UK to study a Masters in Analytics and Management at London Business School was an expensive, bureaucratic challenge for Alex Scheuer.

The 23-year-old had to spend £800 to get a student visa and hundreds more on health insurance because, after Brexit, his German citizenship did not give him free care through the UK’s NHS. He is still uncertain whether he will find a job in London after his degree.

“To be honest, I’m not sure if I can stay here,” he says. “I opened the door to come to London, but the higher salary than where I was was not enough to offset the cost of living.”

Despite all this, Scheuer has no regrets about coming to the UK and would recommend that other EU citizens do the same, at least to attend the country’s best institutions. His likely move after graduation next August is to return to Berlin, but the return of studying at a London school made it worth coming to the UK, he believes.

“The LBS brand sets you up for a career wherever you go,” says Scheuer. “I’ve calculated that my business salary in Germany should increase by about half, meaning I can recoup the tuition fees I’m paying from my savings in two years.”

Brexit has had some impact on the UK’s business education sector – which, at the top end, punches above its weight globally – but not as big as some had feared.

Changes to the UK student visa program, lowering the barrier for international students ahead of the EU referendum, as well as the fall in the value of sterling since Brexit was announced, have helped attract business students to the UK from the EU and beyond.

Postgraduate enrollments from EU countries for the 2022/23 academic year fell in 47 per cent of institutions surveyed by the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS), the trade body for UK MBA providers. However, 50 percent reported significantly higher intakes from other parts of the world this year, while a further 24 percent reported similar or slightly higher intakes from non-EU countries.

A recent survey of business school admissions offices by the Graduate Management Admissions Council concluded that the growth in overseas applications for British MBAs compared to before the pandemic has largely offset domestic applications due to higher tuition fees.

Top schools like LBS have benefited the most. The percentage of students from EU countries at LBS’s stucco Regent’s Park campus has increased since the 2016 Brexit vote. According to LBS executive director, recruitment and admissions, Arnold Longboy, the proportion of EU students enrolled on all LBS degrees increased from 21.1 per cent in 2021-22 to 23.4 per cent in 2022-23. He credits the two-year graduate visa scheme introduced by the government in July 2021.

“While student numbers from Europe have remained relatively stable post-Brexit, we’ve seen an increase in interest from a number of other regions,” says Longboy, adding that the increase in students from India and China has been encouraging since 2017-18. More attractive visa rules. “However, European students have not necessarily been displaced by this growth. As the school has grown, we have been able to accommodate growth. [from] certain regions in the development of certain programs”.

Britain’s Universities and Colleges Admissions Service reports that EU applications to UK university courses have fallen by 53.1 per cent since 2020, and business schools, potentially, stand to lose more than most institutions. UK business school deans are concerned not only about student numbers but also about the loss of EU benefits for MBA providers through research funding and executive education training.

According to the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS), around 30,400 business students from the EU study in the UK, contributing £1.3bn to the country’s economy each year through course fees and off-campus costs. In addition, around a third of business school staff are from outside the UK and 14 per cent of those are from the EU, Cabes says.

Business schools in the UK received £18.2mn in research funding from EU sources in the 2020-21 academic year, almost a quarter of the total. And, for the past five years, business and management research has received more funding from EU state institutions than from the UK government.

“I don’t think Brexit has caused an exodus of staff or students, but neither is without consequence,” says Cabs chairman Robert McIntosh. “Recruiting and retaining staff from the EU is certainly a difficult task, as visa practicalities and the attitude differences they may experience make it difficult for people here to advance their careers.”

Perhaps the greatest strength of the UK’s leading schools is that, despite Brexit, culturally they remain internationally minded – both for students and faculty.

“For people on the MBA job market, job opportunities here haven’t changed significantly because of Brexit,” says Cathy Harvey, associate dean for MBA and executive degrees at Oxford’s Said Business School. “We have a very international mix and, because our students have global roles, some may be from outside the EU but live and work there and choose to come to Oxford to study . . . we benefit from their experience. is.”

Harvey says Brexit has created new opportunities for teaching about geopolitics and dealing with uncertainty. “Things like Brexit bring to the fore issues about the relationship between the corporate world and government.” Perspective is important, she adds: “Although we think of Brexit as being a few years down the road, it’s still early days in terms of what it will mean.”