International students left in limbo by Home Office visa delays and refusals

International students are losing university offers, paying hundreds of pounds to rearrange flights and missing the first weeks of their courses due to lengthy Home Office visa delays.

Top universities are concerned about months-long delays to process applications that allow overseas residents to come to the UK to study, and a noticeable increase in visa refusals compared to last year.

UK Visa and Immigration (UKVI), which processes claims, states on its website that visas will be processed within three weeks, but in some cases they are taking up to four months.

Even a fast-track service, which costs an extra £500 to speed up the process, is experiencing delays. It comes as the UK tightens visa rules for international students over fears that too many are going on to claim asylum.

One 19-year-old who lives in northern Cyprus, said she had to withdraw her offer to study for a law degree at a Russell Group university last year due to visa delays, and then had her application refused this year – leaving her worried for her future.

She said: “I’ve watched so many of my friends start their universities, have new social lives, pursue their futures, they’ve been waiting for me in the UK and I’ve been telling them yes I can come this year, but I’ve been let down.”

Universities UK, a group of 142 universities, warned the delays could hit the economy if students cannot come here, with a single of cohort of international students generating an estimated £40bn in net benefit for Britain over the course of their studies.

Vanessa Wilson, CEO of University Alliance, which represents 20 professional and technical universities, said they had “grave concerns” about visa delays and refusals and the “impact these are having on both international student recruitment numbers and in turn university finances”.

She said visas were being refused for “fairly arbitrary and unpredictable reasons, which raises serious questions about the consistency and proportionality of UKVI’s decision-making”.

The University Alliance cited one student who lost their place for apparently failing to provide financial documents within the deadline, despite emails showing that they had submitted them in time. Another student was refused a visa for a research master’s degree, citing a lack of understanding of the course, despite the student’s answers accurately reflecting the programme.

At some universities, the number of prospective students experiencing visa delays is in the high double figures.

Study visa applications were down 19 per cent – to 352,500- in the year ending September 2026 compared to the year before, since Labour introduced stricter visa rules for international students.

A student visa ban on nationals from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan is also in place as part of the crackdown.

The 19-year-old in northern Cyprus graduated from her British curriculum school in the summer of 2025, and said she met her necessary grades but was not able to take up her place because UKVI took so long responding to her visa application that she missed the last enrolment of 15 October.

The Armenian-Russian national had to withdraw her application, and ask her university to defer her offer, so she could try again this May. She then received a visa refusal on 3 October, which she believes was inaccurate.

“If they had given me a refusal two or three months ago, I would have lots of options – applying again, applying to a different country, or correcting their mistakes, but I feel they did not want to give me that option.”

She explained that the stress of not knowing if she could start her studies had given her heart palpitations that she had to be medicated for. She also said she had received a scholarship of more than £5,000 on her university fees, which she has now lost.

Another 19-year-old Indian national faced delays getting his visa to study maths and economics at Warwick university. He applied on 17 August, via the standard service route which is meant to take three weeks but it was granted just two weeks before the course’s October cut-off date.

“I actually don’t know what would have happened [if the visa approval hadn’t come through in time]. But I really would have no choice. Taking a second gap year would have been the only option because the UK colleges were already started and Indian colleges start at the beginning of August, so I would have been too late to go somewhere else,” he said.

A Russian student now studying at the University of Westminster applied for her visa in May but it wasn’t granted until September – by which time her course in fashion management had already started.

Speaking about the wait, she added: “The first three weeks were fine because I knew that it would be delayed because of my nationality. On the fourth week, when I was thinking the visa would come through, I was constantly checking my phone and emailing them. Then by the fifth week, I kind of started going crazy. Then I completely lost hope and I already started looking at other universities.”

Rose Stephenson, at the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), warned that recent restrictions on student visas, as well as processing issues, will not only impact students, but have “a really big knock-on economic impact to the UK” and “cause further harm to the financial sustainability of UK universities”.

Dr Hollie Chandler, director of strategic policy at the Russell Group, an organisation of 24 top universities in the UK, said that while a robust visa system is in everybody’s interests “an effective visa system must also include transparency over decision-making and processing times, and should prioritise targeted measures that don’t deter genuine talented students”.

A spokesperson for Universities UK, which represents institutions, said visa processing had become markedly less predictable and it was pressing for a review of caseworker decision-making and improvements to the system “so that genuine international students are not prevented from studying in the UK because of delays or poor-quality decisions”.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are processing straightforward applications within our published service standards.

“Our university sector is world-class, and we welcome international students who make a positive contribution across society as a whole. However, this must not be at the expense of the integrity of our immigration system.”