UNIVERSITIES across the UK have warned the Prime Minister they will lose millions of pounds every year under tougher immigration policies.
In a letter to the David Cameron, 68 chancellors, governors and university presidents warned the Westminster Government's crackdown on immigration could lead to foreign students going elsewhere.
Signatories include former Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell, chancellor of St Andrews University.
Last year, The Herald revealed that leading Scottish universities had written to the Home Secretary calling for institutions north of the Border to be made exempt from the new immigration laws.
Michael Russell, the SNP Education Secretary, has also attacked the plans.
The moves come after the Coalition's decision to tighten up the issuing of student visas as part of wider restrictions on immigration.
The UK attracts around one in 10 foreign students, generating around £8 billion a year in tuition fees.
Professor Eric Thomas, president of Universities UK, said: "The UK seems to be telling the world it doesn't welcome international students, while other countries are travelling in different directions.
"We are requesting that international university students should be removed from the net migration statistics for policy purposes."
Immigration Minister Damian Green said: "There is no limit on the number of genuine students who can come to the UK and our reforms are not stopping them. But we are determined to prevent the abuse of student visas as part of our plans to get net migration down."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article