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 – 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 – 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