UK universities face ‘irreversible decline’, global league table suggests

UK universities will have their international reputations dented and face possible closure because of continuing funding pressures, according to an authoritative league table that named Imperial College London as second in the world.

Imperial overtook Oxford and Harvard universities and was behind only the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the annual Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) world university rankings.

But the overall table made grim reading for UK institutions, including Cambridge dropping from second down to fifth, as 52 out of the 90 British universities received lower rankings this year.

The rating of only 20, including Imperial, improved, while University College London remained ninth overall.

Related: UK universities report drop in international students amid visa doubts

Ben Sowter, QS’s senior vice-president, said some UK universities could be forced to close because of current funding policies, while the sector was beginning to “lose its footing” in critical metrics such as staff-to-student ratios, job outcomes and academic reputation.

“The cumulative effects risk pushing UK higher education into a downward spiral towards irreversible decline,” Sowter said, noting that more than 50 UK universities had recently announced job cuts.

“These cuts have been directly linked to drops in enrolment resulting from recently announced policies. It’s not hard to see how this could lead to the gradual erosion of UK higher education,” he added.

“As faculty positions vanish due to falling student enrolments – and universities that depend on the economic impact of international student mobility face increasing financial difficulties – some institutions may well be forced to shut down.”

Prof Hugh Brady, Imperial College London’s president, said his institution’s ranking was a “fantastic” reflection of the energy of its staff and students. The university has expanded in recent years to include a new campus at White City in west London.

“I would say it is an equally fantastic performance to have four UK institutions in the top 10, given that our pockets are a lot shallower than our peers. Our concern is how we can stay there,” Brady said.

Brady said the UK’s success could be put at risk by government policies that have frozen the level of tuition fees for UK students since 2016, as well as restricting international student visas and undermining graduate work visas that were essential to bring talented students and researchers to the UK.

“At the very least we need to be able to match our opposition. At the moment it’s becoming increasingly difficult to do that, because of the lack of sustainability of the funding model around teaching and research and what’s perceived abroad as the language of unwelcome,” he said.

Brady called for a cross-party consensus on higher education policy after the election, to create a tool kit that matched those used by the UK’s international rivals.

He said”: “If you look across the sector, universities lose about £2,500 per UK student on average. In the Stem [science, technology, engineering and maths] disciplines, it’s more like £4,000. These are the graduates that we need to be producing but it’s a loss leader for us. And so we fill the gap through income from fee-paying international students.”

“There are many benefits for having international students. But the reality is without that income, we would not be able to cross-subsidise the education of the UK students and indeed many courses.

“If you take artificial intelligence or quantum [computing] or clean tech, there are many courses that we offer at master’s level that would simply not be viable if they weren’t attractive in the international market.

“That broader menu, particularly in Stem disciplines, that is now available to UK students, would shrink dramatically if international students stopped coming.”

The QS world rankings rate 1,500 universities in more than 100 countries based on research output, teaching and graduate employment.

Jessica Turner, QS’s chief executive, praised the UK’s performance “despite the turbulence the country has faced”, but warned further decline will follow unless sector was revived.

“Whatever the result of July’s election, the next government must make a properly resourced, continually championed higher education sector an urgent priority. It is one of the UK’s great assets and achievements and must be maintained accordingly,” Turner said.