BEGIN seminar – Dr Ruth Neville
Date: Tuesday, 3rd of February 2026, at 14:00 (UK Time)
Location: Online (MS Teams).
From boom to bust: two decades of international student mobility
Abstract:
International students have become central to the sustainability of UK higher education, yet their presence has become increasingly politicised. As universities face mounting financial pressures and government policy grows more restrictive, there is an urgent need for robust, data-driven evidence on where international students come from, how mobility responds to external shocks, and what future trajectories may look like.
This talk draws on my PhD research, which analyses undergraduate applications to UK higher education from over 150 countries between 2009 and 2030. Using a combination of spatial interaction models, time-series methods, and machine-learning forecasts, I examine how international student mobility reflects non-linear development processes and responds to major geopolitical disruptions such as Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The findings reveal a paradoxical future for UK higher education. While applications from several key sending countries are projected to stagnate or decline, universities are forecast to become increasingly dependent on a smaller number of source countries. This “concentration paradox” characterised by fewer students from fewer places, but greater institutional reliance raises important questions about resilience, risk, and inequality across the higher education sector.
Beyond forecasting student flows, the seminar reflects on what these patterns tell us about the drivers of educational migration, the role of political and economic uncertainty, and the challenges facing universities as they navigate the tension between internationalisation strategies and migration governance.
Recording:
Bio:
Ruth Neville is a Research Fellow and Policy Fellow in Computational Social Science at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA). Her research uses spatial and computational methods to study population mobility, with particular expertise in international student migration to the UK. Her PhD, undertaken in collaboration with UCAS, analysed undergraduate applications from over 150 countries, examining responses to Brexit and COVID-19 and developing forecasting models for future higher education demand. She has also worked on a number of projects related to human mobility in crisis, including displacement of Ukrainian refugees and mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is currently a Research Fellow on the No Space Like Home project, analysing the spatial distribution of small homes across England to support housing policy and planning debates.
