Travel restrictions caused by the coronavirus pandemic did not stem international student mobility, according to the ¡°surprising¡± findings of a new report.

This?was despite the ¡°significant¡± fall in international student numbers to Australia and New Zealand, which an expert said?might have benefited the UK as a result.

The annual?Education at a Glance report, published by?, said most of the 38 OECD member countries closed their national borders during the pandemic in an effort to contain the spread of the virus.

¡°A lot of people, me included, expected to see relatively strong declines in the?number of international students, but that is something that we do not see,¡± Abel Schumann, lead author of the report and senior programme manager at the OECD, told Times Higher Education.

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¡°I found that surprising.?I and many other people would have expected to find a clear drop in international students.¡±

The total share of mobile students across the OECD rose from 18.7 per cent in 2019 to 20.1 per cent in 2021.

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However, the report noted that the Covid-19 pandemic had a very uneven impact across the group ¨C with the share of mobile students increasing by more than two percentage points in Latvia and Slovenia.

¡°In higher education there was a very strong shift to remote learning, so that contributed and made it easier to follow part of the course programme from abroad,¡± said Mr Schumann.

¡°Maybe in the end people were simply not put off moving abroad by the pandemic.¡±

He added that if the share of international students did not decline during the peak pandemic year of 2021, it would be very surprising if it had declined since.

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At the other end of the scale, Australia and New Zealand ¨C which Mr Schumann said implemented ¡°very strict travel restrictions¡± ¨C saw their share of mobile students fall by six?and nine percentage points respectively.

Mr Schumann said it?was possible that these large declines were actually of benefit to the UK ¨C which, despite its high tuition fees, remained an ¡°extremely popular destination¡±.

With 601,000 international students in 2021, the?UK is second in terms of popularity only to the United States.

¡°We saw the share of international students in those two countries really drop, and it¡¯s possible that some students who went to Australia or New Zealand were looking to find a place in another English-speaking country and decided to go to the UK,¡± Mr Schumann said.

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The report found that 57 per cent of all mobile students across the OECD and its partner countries in 2021 were from Asia ¨C the largest group of all.

At 60 per cent, the UK attracts a much higher share of students from Asia than its average European rival (27 per cent).

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Mr Schumann said this could partly?have been due to the country¡¯s close connections with members of the Commonwealth, through which it welcomed a much higher share of Indian students than other European nations.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com