Visa Rules May Spell Trouble for U.K. MBAs

Under new visa restrictions taking effect next year, international students attending MBA programs in the U.K., such as London Business School, above, will have less time to find jobs after graduation before they have to leave the country. London Business School

By Alison Damast

Overseas MBA students have sought out British business schools in droves for much of the past decade, attracted by a generous immigration provision that allowed them to stay on and work in the country after graduation.

Come next spring, MBA students will no longer have the same luxury, according to new regulations for student visas announced last month by the British government. The reforms, enacted to crack down on rampant abuses of the student visa system, do everything from cap the number of foreign skilled workers that U.K. companies can hire to tighten language requirements. The existing program, popular because it allows MBA students to stay for two years after graduation to look for work, is slated to close in April 2012. In 2009, about 38,000 of these work visas were issued to students, including MBAs, according to a report from the Home Affairs Committee of Britain's House of Commons.

The news is not all bad, though. The government has set a cap on the number of foreign workers who can obtain the coveted Tier 2 skilled-worker visas, but business school students will be exempt from this cap, as long as they are hired while in school or shortly thereafter and receive starting offers of more than ?20,000, according to Dina Giannikopoulou, a researcher at the Association of MBAs, a U.K. accreditation group. MBA students also are exempt from some of the more stringent requirements of the visa changes because of their post-graduate status. They'll be able to stay a few months post-graduation to look for jobs, though the U.K. government has not yet specified how long that period will be, Giannikopoulou says.

The regulations for business school students are the end result of several months of lobbying by business schools, which are concerned that overseas students might not come to the U.K. to study if the government does not provide an alternative to the current post-study work visa route, says Giannikopoulou.

"There was a huge amount of concern at the outset when this debate started late last year, and what has happened, I would say, is a collective sigh of relief," she says. "I wouldn't say schools are happy with what happened, but it could have been a lot worse."

The U.K. is the world's second-largest destination, after the U.S., for global GMAT examinees, and its schools are known for their diverse student bodies—often more than half the MBA class is made up of students from outside the European Union. In 2008, non-EU students made up 83 percent of all international students enrolled at U.K. business schools, according to the Association of MBAs.

The new government restrictions and the debate in the media that has whirled around them over the past few months have caused concern among overseas applicants, especially those who want to work in the U.K. for a period of time after they graduate, say career services directors at U.K. schools. Many applicants have expressed worry that it will be tougher to find a job and, as a result, some schools have seen dips in applications this year. In an Association of MBAs survey of 47 accredited business schools conducted this January, 97 percent of responding schools said they believed continued restrictions on student visas are likely to affect their enrollment numbers.

"It is certainly a highly emotive topic for U.K. business schools, since they've spent the last 20 years building up their reputation to attract high-quality international candidates," says Nunzio Quacquarelli, managing director of QS Quacquarelli Symonds, a London company that organizes the annual QS World MBA Tour. He notes that international applications to U.K. business schools are down five percent to 10 percent this year. "However, as the proposed changes stand," he says, "they are not so onerous as to pose a major impact on [U.K. business schools'] ability to recruit non-European candidates."

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