The number of international students enrolled at British universities has grown so rapidly over the past decade that the tuition they pay has contributed to the higher-education sector’s largest relative increase in income, a new report says.

The report, “Patterns of Higher Education Institutions in the UK,” is the eighth in a series published by Universities UK, the umbrella organization for vice chancellors, that examines trends in higher education.

In the decade from 1997-98 to 2006-7, the number of international students from outside the European Union who enrolled at British institutions more than doubled, the report says. China sends the largest numbers of students in most levels of study, and Indian students are especially well represented at the graduate level, but “students from the United States are also prominent, especially amongst undergraduate visiting and junior-year-abroad students and at postgraduate levels.”

Foreign students from outside the European Union can be charged much higher tuition than the government-set undergraduate cap of £3,000 per year, which applies to domestic and EU students. Because of that policy, international students are an increasingly important source of income for British institutions, and the report notes that a growing number of universities now enroll “large numbers” of foreign students.

“In 2001/02, there were just three institutions with more than 5,000 students from outside the UK,” the report says. “By 2006/07 that had risen to 14. UK universities are becoming increasingly international in their composition, a development that embraces EU as well as non-EU students.”

The authors of the report also tracked the subjects students are choosing to study and found that enrollments in architecture, building and planning, agriculture, the physical sciences, and engineering and technology are growing “more slowly than average.”

In contrast, enrollments in subjects related to medicine, biological sciences, mathematical sciences, law, mass communication and documentation, historical and philosophical studies, and creative arts and design have increased. The number of students enrolled part time has also increased at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. —Aisha Labi