The feel-good factor bursting from every inch of Leicester after Leicester City¡¯s remarkable Premier League triumph has not escaped higher education, with the football team¡¯s success likely to rub off on the city¡¯s universities, according to their two vice-chancellors.

¡°Our international undergraduate applications grew about 60 per cent [in the current cycle],¡± Dominic Shellard, De Montfort University¡¯s (DMU) vice-chancellor, told Times Higher Education, adding that it would be ¡°churlish¡± for him to suggest that the football club¡¯s success had not had an impact.

Professor Shellard said the?league win now meant that ¡°everyone knows where Leicester is¡±, adding that it was different from the discovery of Richard III¡¯s remains in the?city, ¡°which didn¡¯t quite have the demographic or the global reach. It was a fantastic discovery and brilliant for the city, but football is a language everyone speaks.¡±

Paul Boyle, vice-chancellor of the University of Leicester ¨C whose researchers were instrumental in unearthing the remains of Richard III underneath a Leicester car park ¨C agreed that the city being in the ¡°spotlight¡± was likely to be beneficial for his university as well.?

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¡°These stories are hugely positive and that reflects very well on the city,¡± he said.

¡°Don¡¯t get me wrong, the overriding feeling here is all about Leicester City and the football club, but let¡¯s not forget Mark Selby won the Snooker World Championship as well. It¡¯s global attention to a city that could probably have never dreamt of getting that much publicity.¡±

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He added that although Leicester¡¯s academic offer and research were the predominant reasons for strong overseas recruitment, the ¡°fantastic product¡± of the Premier League, with its international reach, ¡°certainly isn¡¯t going to hurt¡±.

Professor Shellard said that De Montfort ¨C Leicester City¡¯s official education partner for the past four years ¨C?had agreed a new partnership with the club in December, ¡°which is now going to take us into engagement overseas¡±, including opening an office in Bangkok with the support of King Power, the Thailand-based travel retail group that is run by the same owners as the club.

He said he was keen that the partnership was not ¡°just sponsorship of a local sports club, but is multivalent. If you take the football club, we¡¯re going to get 100 internships for our students; they¡¯ll be working up at [Leicester City¡¯s] King Power [Stadium] and actually in the King Power company in Thailand.

¡°We [also] teach the international components of Leicester City¡¯s team English. So Shinji Okazaki, Leicester¡¯s Japanese striker, passed his English exam three weeks ago, and we drove him to Birmingham to do that.¡±

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john.elmes@tesglobal.com