In breaking news this week, the UK’s Home Office stopped study visas from 4 nations– Sudan, Myanmar, Cameroon and Afghanistan– citing abuse of the system as it looks for to clamp down on phony asylum claims.
The policy is due to come into result on March 26, with the Home Office declaring the decision follows a rise in individuals declaring asylum after getting in the UK on a legal visa. Work allows for Afghan nationals are likewise impacted.
According to the Office, asylum applications from students from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan increased by more than 470% between 2021 and 2025.
The PIE News has been digging into data from HESA to discover which UK universities have hosted the most trainees from the affected countries over the past five years, along with how trainee numbers have changed during that time.
Here’s what we discovered.
Trainee numbers from the afflicted nations are fairly low
While overall student numbers from Myanmar in the UK saw a notable increase between 2020/21 and 2022/23– increasing from 510 to 1,280 and continuing to grow to 2,665 by 2024/25– it remains a relatively small source of trainees to the UK. For context, when international student numbers reached their peak in the UK in 2022/23, 173,190 of those were from India, 154,260 were from China and 72,355 were from Nigeria.Student numbers from the other 3 countries were even lower. Trainee numbers from Sudan, for example, gradually reduced– totalling between 395 in 2020/21 and 280 in 2024/25. Meanwhile, the number of trainees from Cameroon grew from 425 to 575 during that duration and student numbers from Afghanistan reached a peak of 620 in 2023/24, before being up to 335 the next year. Source: HESA Specialists have actually mentioned that the
4 nations targeted by the brand-new visa policy do not make up the largest share of asylum from visa holders. For example, Pakistan has the biggest share of individuals who get in the UK on visas and later claim asylum, at about a quarter of the overall– approximately 9,000 people. It has actually been suggested that the political effects of
imposing comparable constraints on Pakistan would be a lot more major, however, because a lot of more people from the country come to the UK and do not then go on to claim asylum. Specific universities seem consistently more popular than others HESA information exposes that, although not representing a large part of the trainee body at any organization, students from the affected countries are more likely to go to several UK universities. For example, the University of Nottingham, the University of Leeds and the University of Manchester were regularly popular choices for Sudanese trainees.< img width=" 1024"height= "572 "src="// www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%201024%20572'%3E%3C/svg%3E "alt=""/ > 
< img width=" 1024 "height= "572"src= "https://thepienews.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/image-1-1024x572.png" alt=""/ > Source: HESA Students from Cameroon tended to favour the University of Portsmouth, the University of the West of England, De Montford University, and the University of Greenwich. Source: HESA
On the other hand, Afghan trainees were most likely to attend the University of Sussex, the University of Essex, Edinburgh Napier University, and the University of Portsmouth.
< img width=" 1024 "height ="564"src="// www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%201024%20564'%3E%3C/svg%3E" alt=""/ > Source: HESA Trainees from Myanmar favoured the University of the West of England, Queen’s University Belfast, the university of Coventry and the University of Sunderland. 
< img width="1024"height="573"src="https://thepienews.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/image-4-1024x573.png"alt=""/ > Source: HESA