UK universities join forces to support refugees amid US hostility

A dozen British universities and organisations have formed a coalition to support displaced students as it becomes increasingly untenable for people impacted by humanitarian crises to travel to the US to continue their studies.

A new Global Response Platform, led by the non-governmental organisation Mosaik Education, aims to enable universities to coordinate their responses to crises affecting students and academics overseas, learning from the more haphazard reactions to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza in recent years.

The platform “will provide a practical mechanism for universities to collaborate on crisis response through shared learning, joint planning, coordinated delivery and cost-sharing across multiple contexts”, Mosaik Education said in a statement.

“This model aims to enable impact at scale while sharing burdens between individual institutions at a time of financial pressure for higher education.”

Institutions that have already joined include the universities of London, Leeds and Warwick as well as the University of the Arts London, Birkbeck, University of London and Cardiff and Abertay universities. 

Universities UK, the British Council and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees are also part of the new group.

It comes amid increasing wariness about hosting at-risk students and academics in the US – a traditionally welcoming destination for refugee students. 

The latest travel ban enacted by president Donald Trump includes countries such as Afghanistan, Sudan and Yemen – all regions experiencing humanitarian crises and where scholars may be at risk of persecution.

At the same time, international students have faced increasing hostility, with 8,000 visas revoked since the start of Trump’s second term. 

Scholars at Risk, a US-based organisation that coordinates protection for threatened academics, said it is “seeing less hosting of at-risk scholars in the US right now due to an increasingly uncertain visa environment and heightened budgetary pressures faced by US host institutions”. 

“For scholars newly applying to SAR for temporary academic placements, we are increasingly turning to opportunities within our global network of institutions.”

Similarly, the Duolingo English Test, which runs a programme supporting refugee students to study at international institutions, has stopped sending the students it works with to the US. 

The organisation is instead focusing on recruiting UK and Australian institutions to offer scholarships to these students, with the University of Exeter and Royal Holloway, University of London among those engaging with the initiative. 

“We would love to see many more UK institutions take part,” said Michael Lynas, Duolingo UK and Europe director. “Our priority is to work with institutions worldwide to ensure that every student, regardless of circumstance, can pursue their education and thrive.”

A key concern has been how much capacity British institutions have to respond to crises abroad given the financial pressures they face at home. 

“If you get the right partners and narrow your [university’s] focus to delivering particular things in areas and modalities of strength, it is amazing what you can achieve with comparatively little resource,” said Sally Wheeler, vice-chancellor of Birkbeck.

The sudden Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 highlighted that it can be difficult for institutions to know how to respond effectively to a new crisis. 

The UK–Ukraine Twinning Initiative was launched later that year, providing a coordinated way for British universities to support their Ukrainian counterparts by partnering with an institution affected by the war. 

Charles Cormack, chairman of Cormack Consultancy Group and founder of the twinning initiative, said the Ukraine programme “showed that UK higher education has the greatest impact when institutions work together”. 

He said the new initiative would “build on the legacy” of the twinning programme “and support UK universities who want to react effectively to international crises”.

One of the coalition’s first projects will be on refugee inclusion in overseas branch campuses.

The UK’s latest international education strategy, published in January, focuses on the expansion of these transnational education ventures overseas.

“Whether in refugee camps in Jordan or displaced communities in Egypt, talented learners are too often left without viable pathways to higher education,” said Ben Webster, CEO of Mosaik Education.

He said the platform would change that by “expanding access for people affected by crisis and displacement through online provision, transnational education, twinning partnerships and other collaborative models”.