University College London isn’t the most globally prestigious institution of higher education in the UK, perhaps not even in London (Oxford and Cambridge and, in the capital, Imperial probably win there). But last year it took in enough international students, more than any other British university, to earn half a billion pounds in fees. Call those educational exports, which is what they are, and you only need three UCLs to equal the annual overseas earnings of the entire UK fishing industry that took up so much time in Britain’s Brexit talks with the EU.
It’s taken a long time for some policymakers to recognise the importance of higher education as a globally traded service. This is true even in the UK, where services make up an unusually high proportion of exports (about half), which has the advantages of historical cachet and the English language, and which can implicitly use high fees charged to foreigners to subsidise British students. That ignorance is dissipating rapidly, and should continue to do so.
The Office for National Statistics reckons (it’s still deciding how to collect proper official data on the sector) that UK higher education as a whole exported ￡25.6bn a year in 2020 despite the pandemic — more than exports of pharmaceuticals, or aerospace. The large majority was from in-person students coming to the UK, not services delivered remotely or by British institutions setting up campuses abroad. But the UK adopted an international HE strategy only in 2013, decades after Australia, for example, had been actively promoting itself as a destination for foreign students.