The Home Office isn't able to say how many academics it is turning away

The UK government appears to have no idea how many times it has refused to grant a visa to overseas academics hoping to visit the country to do some scholarly work.

It is a concern. Anyone with even a passing interest in the academic world will be aware of the concern surrounding the difficulties faced by overseas academics who wish to visit Britain to participate in conferences or collaborative research.

The “hostile environment” seemingly cultivated by the Home Office in recent years has largely applied to overseas nationals seeking the right to remain in the UK for extended periods. But there have been widely reported parallel concerns that even those wanting to come to the UK for a short time—for academic reasons or otherwise—are facing insurmountable barriers when applying for visas.

In July, for example, three All-Party Parliamentary Groups condemned the UK’s “insulting” visa system as “not fit for purpose” and damaging to academia. Their report is online here.

I decided it would be worthwhile to find out what the trend for turning down visitor visas for academics actually looked like: was it really getting worse? Or could the rhetoric belie the actual figures? Either way, this was definitely a story.

To find out, I went through the process of applying for an academic visitor visa online. I never submitted the form (since I already enjoy full UK residency rights and didn't want to waste anyone's time)—but I did want to know the precise phrases used on the application form, to make sure I was using the right terminology when I asked the Home Office for the data.

For those who don’t know, people requesting a UK visitor visa for the purpose of academic work need to specify the reason for their visit, choosing from the following categories: research; teaching; clinical practice; formal exchange; collaboration on international project; dependent of an academic. All very reasonable.

With this knowledge secured, I submitted a freedom of information request to the Home Office, asking how many visitor visa applicants who stated that the purpose of their visit was “academic” had initially been refused a visa in the past year, and how many of those initial refusals were overturned on appeal. I also wanted to know the breakdown by the subcategories listed above and—if time permitted—the same information for the preceding two years.

Responding, the Home Office acknowledged that it held the information but said that the cost of answering our request would exceed the ￡600 limit specified in freedom of information law.

Undeterred, I submitted a second, simpler request, asking only how many applications had been received for “academic visit” visas in the past year and how many were initially refused (along with the breakdown by subcategory, since this was all part of the application form). The request was again declined.

“The only way for the Home Office to find out who had stated ‘academic visit’ as their main reason for coming to the UK, what kind of academic visit it was and provide the application outcome would be for the Home Office to examine every application record manually,” I was told.

“To locate the information you have requested would involve a manual trawl through every individual case record to identify the relevant cases.” The response stated that “at a generous estimate”, some 500 applications could be examined within the cost limits of freedom of information law.

From the information that we were given, I calculated that it would take 2.9 minutes per application checked. In July this year, 420,000 visa applications were received—meaning it would take more than two years to assess those applications alone. 

Suffice it to say that I found it somewhat surprising that the government did not appear to have such important information to hand and was unable to compile it without allocating years’ worth of time to the task. For all we know, there has been no increase in academic visa refusals—despite the anecdotes. But to be unable to say either way is concerning.

It suggests that, when it comes to visitor visa applications of any type—academic or otherwise—the Home Office is not easily able to assess refusal trends.

I put these concerns to the Home Office. A spokesperson said: “We welcome international academics and recognise their contribution to the UK’s world-leading education sector. We have made it easy for those visiting the country to come to the country for short periods by entering on a visitor visa.”

Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, told me he was “surprised that a manual search is the only way” to obtain information on academic visa refusals. “In this day and age, it should be possible to do an electronic search of such important information,” he said. “I think the underlying problem...is that the Home Office does not really understand the education sector yet is by default a key regulatory body for educational institutions. This causes problem after problem, of which this is just the latest one.”

Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at the University of Oxford and director of the Centre for Global Higher Education, added that “the fact that the Home Office does not code applications on the basis of social sector seems odd”.

“The department also has a habit of economising by minimising what it sees as unnecessary processing. Thus there are no proper consolidated data on departures, either—something which got the Home Office into a fix when the number of likely international student stays was badly overestimated,” he added.

I'll continue to chase information that can shed some much-needed light on the number of academic visitor visas being declined. Even if it takes two years per month to crunch those data.

Read the original news story based on this investigation.