Universities in England will pay an annual levy of £925, about $1,200, for every international student they enrol beyond an exemption threshold, from August 2028, in a policy that places institutions popular with Nigerian students directly in the line of a new cost.
The levy was first announced in the UK government’s 2025 budget and has now been reaffirmed by the Education Minister, Josh MacAlister, who said the revenue would support England’s higher education and skills system. According to the Department for Education, the charge covers both new and existing international students.
Under the design confirmed so far, each university will receive an allowance covering its first 220 international enrolments every year, an exemption worth roughly £200,000 in levy liability for a provider at the threshold. Beyond that, every additional overseas student costs the institution £925 annually. The Office for Students will oversee implementation using enrolment data.
The government projects the levy will raise £445 million, about $594 million, in its first year, 2028 to 2029, with the figure rising to £480 million, about $641 million, by 2030 to 2031. Sector analysts have put the cost to universities at around £330 million, with the levy landing hardest on the institutions most dependent on international fee income.
MacAlister said the government had conducted consultations and published an impact assessment in 2025, with an updated analysis expected shortly. He also maintained that a planned increase in domestic tuition fee caps could generate about £6 billion for providers over five years, against the levy’s projected cost of less than £1 billion, an argument meant to show that the new charge is affordable within a larger funding settlement.
The policy lands on a cohort in which Nigeria features prominently. Home Office figures show that Nigeria received 26,060 sponsored study visas in the year ending June 2026, behind China with 86,368 and India with 82,523. Pakistan recorded 19,600 and Bangladesh about 8,800. For Nigerian students, who form one of the UK’s largest international cohorts, the levy could translate into higher tuition, as universities pass the charge on through fees.
The scale of what is at stake for both sides of the arrangement is considerable. Department for Education data show Nigerian students generated £1.7 billion in UK higher education export revenue in 2024, compared with £5.3 billion from India and £4.9 billion from China, out of an estimated £23.9 billion generated by international students overall. Any policy that dents enrolment from the five largest sending markets touches one of the sector’s most valuable income streams.
The early signs of pass-through are already visible. Birmingham City University has raised fees for continuing international students by two per cent for 2026 to 2027, with a further 3.5 per cent planned for 2027 to 2028, and the University of Bath has advised overseas students who began in 2026 to budget for annual increases of up to eight per cent.
Recruitment pressure is not limited to pricing. Some British universities have withdrawn admission offers to Nigerian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi applicants over concerns about breaching stricter visa sponsorship requirements, a signal that the operating environment for students from these markets is tightening from several directions at once.
For intending Nigerian students, the practical arithmetic is straightforward. A levy of £925 per student per year is a cost someone must carry: the university, through margins already squeezed by the freeze on domestic fees; the student, through higher tuition; or the enrolment numbers themselves, through fewer offers. Which of those bears the weight will differ from institution to institution, and the 220-student exemption will do little for the large research universities that recruit thousands of overseas students a year.
The consultation record and the updated impact assessment, both promised by the minister, will set out how the government expects the burden to fall. Until then, the fixed points are the levy’s size, its start date, its exemption and the £445 million it is expected to raise in year one, with Nigerian students and the universities that recruit them among those with the most at stake.