Limits to growth? Key enrolment trends for UK transnational higher education, 2002-2021.

Abstract

This article examines enrolment trends in UK transnational higher education since the early 2000s. During the first phase, which lasted until the mid-2010s, TNE enrolments grew rapidly but thereafter, during the second phase, levelled off very significantly. A third phase of high enrolment growth coincides with the departure of the UK from the European Union and the start of the Covid pandemic. The article focuses on medium-longer-term supply and demand factors which, collectively, are resulting in a marked slowdown in TNE enrolments at British universities.