UK higher education exports are worth almost ?25 billion to the country¡¯s economy, new figures suggest.

(DfE) shows that the UK generated ?29.3 billion in revenue from education-related exports in 2022 ¨C an increase of 8 per cent on the year before in current prices.

Of this, the higher education sector was responsible for ?23.7 billion (73 per cent). This was up ?1.4 billion from ?22.3 billion in 2021.

Out of the 2022 total, ?18.6 billion (78.7 per cent) can be attributed to tuition fees from those from outside the European Union and their living expenditure, which rose from ?16.1 billion in 2021. However, the respective figures for EU students fell from ?3.5 billion to ?2.4 billion.

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Research has previously estimated that international students are worth over ?42 billion to the UK across the duration of their studies.

Transnational education (TNE) activity generated a total of ?3 billion in 2022 across all of education, having grown by 30 per cent in current prices from 2021.

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This includes education programmes that take place outside the UK, either through partner institutions, or directly through distance learning or international campuses.

Higher education contributed ?670 million to this in 2022, which was an increase from ?530 million year-on-year. Alongside the revenue from education exports, the figures show that higher education generated ?24.4 billion for the UK.

The DfE¡¯s publication for 2022 uses a new methodology to calculate export revenue. A review identified new product groups to include, including some forms of online and platform learning, higher education providers¡¯ non-credit-bearing and further education course fees, and subscriptions to academic journals.

The new methodology reveals that total revenue for education-related exports and TNE activity for 2022 is ?2.7 billion more than under the previous method.

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The majority of this increase can be attributed to the addition of academic journal exports, which contributed an extra ?2 billion of exports in 2022.

Under the old methodology, which included students in distance, flexible or distributed learning, higher education TNE activity generated ?1 billion in 2022 ¨C double what it did a decade before. Schools generated ?1.5 billion in TNE for the year in question.

In contrast to higher education, total further education export revenues peaked at ?1 billion in 2011, and have since largely declined. Despite a pick-up in the past two years, the sector now contributes just ?0.3 billion.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com