Between and Beyond - Shifting International Student Preferences in 2025

International education policy is a lot for prospective students to keep track of this year. And the resulting shifts in search trends that can be almost as hard for universities and recruitment professionals to keep up with.

This means it’s a fascinating – and hopefully also a very useful! – time to be diving into Keystone’s unique combination of search and survey data: understanding how audience behaviour is changing and whether the causes are what we think they are.

I’m going to look at some ‘headline’ data in this post, focussing on potential pivots from the US to the UK as well as potential for growth elsewhere – and what might happen next.

Between: the wider evidence for a US-UK pivot

Recent UCAS data confirms that undergraduate applications for UK study from both domestic and international audiences are up 2.2% on the same point in 2024. Applications from the USA are up nearly 14%.

These are encouraging, but they necessarily miss the postgraduate trends that are a key part of the overall landscape (especially for international).

The chart below uses our Keystone data to show how postgraduate search interest in the UK and USA has grown or shrunk in comparison to the previous year. This is based on behaviour on Keystone platforms, which means we’re seeing what audiences actually look for and how that changes over time:

There’s a pretty clear story here:

We’re seeing sustained increases in UK interest throughout 2025. Crucially, this doesn’t slow down after the publication of the white paper in May (more on that below).

Some of this growth is a recovery versus a challenging 2024 (when the UK was dealing with rising visa fees and a student dependents ban).

Some is also driven by the USA trends. Here interest is consistently down, correlating with a series of statements and actions on international study in recent months (including visa revocation and pauses, discussion of reducing institutional funding, etc).

We know that policy statements and actions are driving some of this: as of June, a clear majority (65% and 70%) of prospective international students say they’ve been put off US study by funding and visa policies, respectively.

Beyond: growth for Europe, East Asia and MENA

So, there’s evidence of rising interest in the UK and falling interest in the USA, particularly at postgraduate level (something we’ve been commenting on elsewhere). But how do things look on a more global level?

Here I’ve plotted the change in interest for a selection of destinations across all levels of study, comparing March with June. This gives us a snapshot of how things have been looking at the end of the first and second quarters of 2025 (a period which spans most of the recent US policy statements and actions).

Here’s what I’d pick out:

• Growth for the UK is still visible, but not quite as substantial in-year (the UK was already growing in March, vs 2024); so we can potentially attribute some (but not all) of the UK growth to a US pivot
• Interest in the USA is still down in-year as well as over-year; the intervening months here (April and May) are when critique of international study is at its strongest and when the yearly falls begin
• The biggest growth, in regional terms, is towards East and Southeast Asia. There’s a broader story emerging here, but China, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore have all grown substantially since March. South Korea also sees in-year growth, after entering the top 10 countries for the first time in Keystone’s 2025 State of Student Recruitment report

What does all this mean for 2025?

Based on this data we’d expect to see reduced interest in the USA following through into applications in this cycle alongside growth for the UK. But it isn’t quite as simple as that. And none of this is a foregone conclusion.

USA

We’ve seen more positive news for international students in recent weeks, with visa processing resuming and steps to protect federal funding for study abroad initiatives. If prospective students perceive a more predictable and welcoming environment in the USA then some of those searches may come back. We’ll certainly be monitoring that.

And let’s not forget that even a smaller searching audience for the USA is still a very big audience. US universities remain incredibly popular, receiving millions of searches across Keystone platforms every month.

UK

Here a lot probably depends on how policies in the recent immigration white paper are detailed and implemented.

I wrote previously about encouraging signs in the initial impact. It looks like this is holding true for now.

As it stands, based on Keystone’s Pulse survey in June:

• Only 16% of audiences say the proposal to cut the Graduate Route post-study-work-visa from 24 to 18 months will make them much less likely to study in the UK (actually down from 20% in May)
• Only 18% say they’d be much less likely to study at a university marked ‘red’ as a result of proposals to ‘RAG-rate’ universities based on their compliance with student visa issuance, admissions and continuation thresholds

RAG-rating probably depends on communication (and whether international students focus on this over other labels, such as rankings).

The Graduate Route cut isn’t likely to be implemented ahead of September so the recruitment impact here probably depends on how much it impacts the next (2027/28) cohort.

Elsewhere

The shift away from the USA doesn’t favour a single country and the overall picture here is of international student audiences considering a much broader range of destinations than they were at the start of 2025.

That has the potential to hold true whatever happens next for the USA and the UK and this represents a real opportunity right now for study destinations (and universities) who can engage students with a clear and supportive offer.

One of the positives of a turbulent year may well be that more students and more used to thinking about more destinations in 2026 and beyond.