International student interest in UK higher education has not experienced the dramatic decline many feared, according to analysis from Keystone Education Group.
Keystone's Share of Search data, which tracks what students actively search for on education platforms (rather than general traffic fluctuations), shows the UK maintaining most of the surge in interest it experienced in April 2025.
While there was a slight dip following the May 11 white paper publication, the decline was not dramatic and may represent a natural levelling off rather than policy-driven abandonment.
"The story in this data is positive," said Dr Mark Bennett, Keystone’s VP of Research and Insight. "Relative interest in the UK has been growing steadily during 2025 and is substantially up on 2024.
“Last week we added two questions to our student survey: asking how aware audiences were of the new graduate route plans and whether they would make them less likely to study in the UK.
“Looking at Masters-level responses, we see that just under half of students are aware of the proposal to cut the graduate route from 24 to 18 months. Awareness of the change will increase, but I think it is interesting that it is currently so low.
“In my experience, ‘negative’ news travels quickly amongst international audiences; the fact that this proposal hasn’t been rapidly picked up suggests that, in and of itself, it may not be critical.”
A survey of over 400 prospective international master's students immediately after the white paper's release revealed that just under half (47%) were already aware of the proposed graduate route changes.
This relatively low awareness among highly engaged audiences actively searching for UK study options suggests the negative impact may be less severe than anticipated.
When made aware of the proposals, 42% of respondents indicated the changes would not impact their UK study plans at all, with 37% saying it would make them slightly less likely to study in the UK and 21% saying it would make them much less likely.
This reaction is notably less dramatic than previous surveys.
Last year, when similar questions were posed ahead of the Migration Advisory Committee review, 43% and 30% of respondents respectively said cutting the graduate route to 6 and 12 months would make them "much less likely" to study in the UK.
Mark added: “I would offer some fairly simple advice to international recruiters making sense of the new UK policy.
“Remember student perception of policy can be as important as the policy itself. It isn’t the case that international students in the UK will face stricter language requirements, pay higher fees or lose access to post-study work. But a misdirected reader might assume all of these things (or worse) from a misunderstanding of these proposals.
“Universities – and Keystone – have a role to play in providing accurate information and encouragement to prospective students (and there are still plenty of reasons to be encouraging).
“Secondly: stay close to the data. The trends we’re seeing so far are encouraging based on early search and survey indicators, but we’ll keep tracking them and you can stay updated with what we’re seeing – at scale – across Keystone platforms.”
The UK continues to take market share as a top study destination, and was recently vote the top country students want to study in in Keystone’s 2025 State of Student Recruitment survey (42,000 students).