More than 220 million students globally have been affected by Covid-19 in the 2019–2020 and 2020–2021 academic years, according to a report by the European Commission. From courses moving online to students scrambling to return home, the pandemic brought significant change to global higher education.

In previous economic downturns, higher education enrolment has proved to be counter-cyclical. As workers are out of employment, they tend to turn to education to upskill, ready for when labour market conditions become more favourable (see chart below).

This trend is playing out again, at least among domestic students. University applications in the UK for courses starting in autumn 2021, increased by 11.6% for domestic applicants. Common App in the United States had received 6,060,037 first-year applications to member institutions by March 2021, an 11% increase over the 2019–20 total through the same date. In Germany, for the winter term of the 2020/21 academic year, the number of domestic first term bachelors and master’s students rose by 2% to 389,200, according to the German Statistical Office.

While domestic enrolment has already rebounded in many countries, international student enrolment has decreased in the near term. At the start of the 2020-2021 academic year, the number of international students dropped by 20% in Germany and by 16% in the US, with the drop in new student enrolments at 43%. In Australia, strict travel restrictions saw applications for student visas dropped by 80–90%.

These declines represent stores of pent-up demand that will manifest once restrictions ease, and it is likely that international student numbers will recover quickly. In fact, in the United States, student visa numbers have begun to return to pre-pandemic levels as visa processing restarts after pandemic-induced halts and delays. In April 2021, visa processing was 80 times higher than in April 2020, and the backlog of applicants is beginning to be cleared.

Looking further ahead, China and India, the top two markets globally for sending students abroad, are forecast to see declines in their young populations (those aged 15–24). However, rising levels of household wealth will offset this, enabling more students to travel abroad for their education. Between 2021 and 2026, the number of households earning above $70,000 per year is forecast to grow by an average of 13% annually in China and 24% annually in India.

High population growth and forecast GDP growth in locations such as Vietnam and Saudi Arabia also provide significant potential for more young people to seek education abroad. Top destination markets for these countries, such as the US and UK, along with Australia, Japan, and Canada can look to benefit by attracting rising numbers of international students from these countries.

Europe and the Erasmus+ programme

A significant driver of student mobility in Europe is the Erasmus+ programme. About 10 million individuals, including students, professors, and trainers in all sectors, are expected to participate in mobility activities abroad between 2021 and 2027 according to the European Commission.

Based on the latest available data, in 2018, 444,133 total students participated in the Erasmus+ programme and 21,760 UK students participated. Spain, Germany, Italy and the UK were the top four destinations for students.

The UK left the Erasmus+ scheme in 2020, and created the ‘Turing Scheme’ as a replacement, offering 40,000 placements for British students, though no reciprocal funding has been included for inbound placements.

The UK was historically the fourth largest destination for Erasmus+ students; however, the UK was only the seventh biggest source of Erasmus+ students (see chart below), so for European universities, the loss of UK students will likely be less than the number of European students they will gain.

For those who would have gone to the UK to study, they may now be looking for programmes taught in English elsewhere to replace the experiences and language exposures they would have had in the UK. European countries with the highest number of English Taught Bachelor’s (ETBs) that look set to benefit the most from the UK’s withdrawal from the Erasmus programme are The Netherlands, Spain, and Germany, each with over 200 ETBs. This in turn will only further underpin demand for student accommodation in these destinations.

_{Read the articles within Spotlight: Global Living (Part 2) – 2021 below.}