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.