Donald Trump's anti-Harvard campaign fuels interest in UK universities

Business Standard

5 hours ago

For the past 15 years, Don McMillan, a college-admissions consultant, has worked just down the road from Harvard University, one of the most prestigious schools targeted by his clients from the US and around the globe.
This month, he expanded his business 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) and an ocean away to tap into what's becoming a rapidly growing line of work: Advising the students who are souring on America and looking to go to college in the UK instead.
'There's more of an interest now for US students to study in the UK,' said McMillan. 'In the past our American students might only apply to Oxbridge and St. Andrews. Now they will look at a broader range.'
The main deadline for UK undergraduate admission was at the end of January, too early for the impact of Trump's recent policies to have had an effect. But interest has since surged as his administration started slashing funding, revoking the visas of foreign students and trying to block Harvard's overseas students from entering the US, escalating a clash with the university that's been playing out in court.
Studyportals, a platform widely used to research colleges, said that foreign students' searches of British universities rose 10 per cent in the year through May, with the number of those looking at American schools falling by a similar amount. Among Americans, the focus on UK schools was up 12 per cent.
An influx would be a welcome shift for UK universities whose finances have been squeezed in recent years as domestic tuition failed to keep pace with rising costs and international enrollment fell short of expectations. Over 40 per cent had deficits in 2024, according to a report last month by the Office for Students, which warned that the pressure could continue if fees from foreign students don't rise as much as expected in the years ahead.
The British Council, which promotes UK cultural institutions abroad, said earlier this year that Trump's return to the White House — along with heightened restrictions on studying in Canada and Australia — could increase the number of those opting to come the UK.
At Bayes Business School in London, Andre Spicer, the executive dean, has already started trying to recruit them. His school recently hosted its first alumni networking event in Manhattan since the pandemic and he has been utilizing US-educated faculty members in a push to market the school to Americans.
One selling point: It costs £50,400 ($69,200) to earn a Master of Business Administration degree in 12 months, less than the cost of the typical two-year programs in the US. 'And you can escape the Trump years,' he said.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government has stopped short of actively encouraging such efforts, in contrast to the European Union, which recently announced a €500 million ($586 million) plan to lure research scientists after the Trump administration started slashing such funding.
In fact, facing political pressure from Nigel Farage's anti-immigration Reform UK party, whose popularity has surged in opinion polls to overtake his own Labour Party, Starmer has been weighing steps that could discourage international enrollment. His government is considering imposing a 6 per cent levy on university income from tuition fees from such students, as well as cutting the amount of time that students can stay in the country after graduating to 18 months from two years.
Yet those are fairly small disincentives compared with the steps taken by the Trump administration. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio — who earlier this year moved to expel some foreign students who were engaged in anti-Israel demonstrations — said last month that the government is planning to 'aggressively' rescind the visas of Chinese students who have ties to the Communist Party or are studying in 'critical fields.' He also instructed embassies worldwide to stop scheduling interviews for student visas ahead of the US government's decision to implement stricter reviews of applicants' social-media profiles.
Amer Mourad, the London-based chief executive officer of Global Study UK, said that has been particularly worrisome to students in the Middle East. Last month, he was contacted by the mother of an Egyptian student who was trying to make fallback plans, worried the US would block his enrollment due to politically oriented social-media posts. Mourad has recently seen other prospective students from countries in the region switching their focus to UK universities instead of those in the US.
'Clearly there is fear,' he said.
Ewen Nemeth, an 18-year-old from Chester, in northwest England, was accepted to Edinburgh and Warwick universities but had planned to take a gap year and apply to Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania for the next year.
Now, he's opting for a backup plan — taking an offer from Warwick to start this fall at the school in Coventry, about 95 miles northwest of London. He'll avoid the hassle of working on US applications, and skip the uncertainty of heightened visa scrutiny.
For Americans, interest in the UK had already been on the rise, with US undergraduate applications up 12 per cent by the January deadline for the upcoming academic year.
City St. George's, in London, has been among the beneficiaries. Mattias Frey, deputy dean and department head of media, culture and creative industries, said the number of US graduate students applying to its creative writing program more than tripled in 2025 and he's expanding staff to accommodate them. He said the students haven't been directly citing US politics as a driver of their decisions 'but there's something in the air about it.'
'I would call it a safe space that maybe they're not feeling right now in the United States,' he said.
McMillan, the Boston admissions consultant, said he's been picking up on that, too. He said roughly half of the Middle Eastern students he has been advising are planning to apply to an English-speaking university outside the US in the next application cycle, a sharp in increase from just one in five in previous years. For his American clients — who were almost always focused on US schools — it has shot up to 15 per cent. 'I expect this number to rise,' he said.
Since Trump's return to the White House, McMillan has spent more time researching and visiting campuses in Europe, where his company already has consultants in Italy and France. This month, the 18-person firm hired someone in the UK for the first time, anticipating it will become a more prominent destination.
'There's a real gap between the administration and the vast majority of Americans who value and understand the importance of this intellectual richness that's coming to the US,' McMillan said. 'We're concerned about the brain drain.'