Hard Brexit 'may spark disaster' for universities, MPs told
Academics claim hostility towards immigrants and the devaluation of the pound has deterred postgraduates from heading to the UK.
Wednesday 11 January 2017 18:09, UK
A hard Brexit could spark the "biggest disaster" in higher education for years, academics have warned.
Cambridge University has experienced a 14% drop in applications from across the continent for undergraduate courses since the EU referendum, the Education Select Committee was told.
Meanwhile, hostility towards immigrants, the devaluation of the pound and uncertainty over research projects has deterred postgraduates from heading to the UK, it has been claimed.
Alistair Fitt, vice-chancellor of Oxford Brookes University, told the committee that if the Government opts for a so-called hard Brexit and attempts to slash immigration it could spell "the biggest disaster for the universities sector in many years".
Coventry University vice chancellor John Lathan said it would make British universities "extremely uncompetitive", while Cambridge University EU law professor Catherine Barnard warned it would cut off "the flow of excellent people who are coming at the moment".
Prof Barnard added: "In respect of those who have declined an offer from Cambridge at postgraduate level, we have put a question in the so-called decliners survey to say 'what was it that dissuaded you from coming?'
"Those who answered the question offered a range of factors from a concern about anti-immigrant sentiment to devaluation of the pound and the fact that their scholarships would be worth less, although obviously not in the UK, and uncertainty over future research collaboration."
Despite the warnings, MPs were told universities could benefit from Brexit in some areas.
Prof Fitt said the UK does not "get as much out" of some research and innovation funding pots as it puts in and suggested a new system may re-tip the balance.
He said: "If we were able to replace the amount of structural funding with our own funds, that's a real opportunity that we could not only retain all that's best in that system, but actually make it an even better system."
Meanwhile, Alastair Buchan, head of Brexit strategy at the University of Oxford, said the sector could see an increase of non-EU students following Brexit.
He said: "One of the things that we did lose (on joining the EU) was that nice and easy flow of clinicians and clinician science from Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
"We had really good collaborations, which hopefully in this Brexit climate might be reinvented, because that movement of English-speaking medicine was actually a casualty of joining Europe."