The UK higher education sector needs to stop ¡°over-obsessing¡± about the ¡°ridiculous process argument¡± of whether overseas students are included in targets on net migration, a former immigration minister has said.

Mark Harper, a minister in the ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ Office from 2012 to 2014, when there was a major crackdown on what was deemed to be ¡°abuse¡± of the student visa system, said that it ¡°served nobody¡± if the numbers of people coming to the country to study were not counted.

However, Mr Harper, who was speaking at the launch of a report for the?³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ Policy Institute and Kaplan?that estimated that overseas students are worth 10 times more to the UK economy than they cost, said that he was?personally ¡°relaxed¡± if students made up a ¡°big chunk¡± of net migration.

His comments follow reports in the past few weeks that Theresa May,?the prime minister, who was in charge of the ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ Office when Mr Harper was immigration minister, has become increasingly isolated over her resistance to removing students from the net migration figures. The government has a long-standing target to cut net migration to the tens of thousands.

³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ

¡°I think this is an issue that people over-obsess about [because] it is a net number. Students arrive and students leave¡­so if the sector doesn¡¯t grow, then they make no contribution at all to the net migration target,¡± Mr Harper said.

If student numbers were growing, then the lag in those arriving and those leaving did contribute to net migration, but there was then a ¡°sensible question to have about how much of our migration should be accounted for by international students, and I am very relaxed about that being quite a big chunk of it, actually¡±, Mr Harper said.

³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ

¡°That should be the debate that we have, not pretending [international students] don¡¯t exist and don¡¯t count them,¡± he continued. ¡°Obsessing about this doesn¡¯t get us very far.¡±

Mr Harper added: ¡°If you don¡¯t count something, my view is the risk is that you start getting abuse coming back into the system. That serves nobody at all.¡±

Paul Blomfield, Labour MP for Sheffield Central, said at the event that he thought it was possible to ¡°square the circle¡± by counting overseas students but excluding them from immigration targets.

¡°While there is the obsession about net migration [in the UK], then it will only cause a political problem if we are successful in recruiting more international students because of the lag factor,¡± he said.

³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ

Meanwhile,?Mr Harper acknowledged that the change to post-study work rules during the Conservative-led coalition government had been poorly communicated to the rest of the world, leading to damaging headlines overseas about the UK¡¯s openness to international students.

While there was indeed a post-study work route for overseas graduates ¨C who can switch to a skilled worker visa if they find a job above a certain salary threshold ¨C ¡°we have done a rubbish job at explaining what our offer is¡±, he said.

simon.baker@timeshighereducation.com