QS Rankings Reveal UK Higher Education ‘Losing Its Footing’ Internationally

The latest worldwide rankings of universities delivered a stark wake-up call for Britain on Thursday, with more than half of its institutions sliding amid fears that the nation’s higher education sector is rapidly losing its prestige.

The annual rankings, compiled by the influential analysts Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), showed a precipitous drop-off for British universities.

Of the 90 from the United Kingdom that made the global list, 52 fell from their positions a year earlier.

“U.K. higher education is losing its footing as a world leader,” said Ben Sowter, QS’s head of intelligence. "The cumulative effects risk pushing it into a spiral of irreversible decline."

While the rankings affirmed the outsize strength of elite universities like Imperial College London, which jumped to No. 2 globally behind only MIT, the widespread slippage highlighted the casualties of years of belt-tightening and policy changes by successive governments bent on overhauling education funding models.

University chiefs sounded alarms that some institutions may ultimately have to close their doors if a crisis-level shortage of resources persists.

More than 50 schools have recently announced job cuts as international enrolment, a critical revenue stream, has dropped due to new visa restrictions and other factors.

"There is little doubt the sustainability of many institutions is under threat," said Hugh Brady, the president of Imperial College London, in an interview.

"We are already seeing courses disappearing that are vital to areas like AI, quantum computing and clean energy simply because they are not financially viable without the subsidization from international students' tuition."

Brady, whose university's No. 2 global ranking was hailed as a "fantastic" achievement by its faculty and students, called for an overhaul of funding policies that have left universities losing roughly $3,125 per British student enrolled in important STEM disciplines like science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Such austere budgets have forced universities into a perpetual juggling act, trying to balance spreadsheets by aggressively recruiting lucrative international students to subsidize the education of domestic ones.

Brady said entire postgraduate programs would vanish across Britain if cash-strapped universities could no longer draw on that global talent pipeline.

"The broader menu of offerings, particularly STEM courses at the master's level that are so essential to the U.K.'s competitiveness, would shrink dramatically if internationals stopped coming," he warned.

Jessica Turner, QS's chief executive, joined those sounding the alarm that government funding cuts have jeopardized "one of the UK's great assets" and made it increasingly vulnerable to rivals abroad.

She urged urgent attention to reversing policies that have caused Britain's once world-beating higher education brand to falter.

"The overall decline of so many institutions in our rankings should be a wake-up call that years of neglect are eroding the very foundation of one of Britain's most competitive sectors," Ms. Turner said.

"Steps must be taken promptly before damage becomes irreversible."

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