Tory war on overseas students is all about saving their own skins

A key turning point in British politics was Tony Blair's famous priorities: "education, education, education".

- Polly Toynbee

A giant step was his 1999 conference speech: "Today I set a target of 50% of young adults going into higher education in the next century." By 2017-18 that threshold had been crossed in England, with more than half of young people taking that leap forward. In 1980 it was just 15%.

But universities are falling into severe financial crisis.
Unsurprisingly, the Tories are not unduly bothered.

They attack universities all the time, calling for cuts in student numbers. Now they are plunging the knife into vital funding from foreign students. They ignore pleas from major companies, which wrote to the government last week, to stop a migration policy that is threatening investment in the UK by blocking foreign students.

Tories and their pollsters see clearly that the growth in highly educated citizens is a social and political revolution not in their favour: the more educated people are, the less likely they are to vote for what John Stuart Mill called "the stupidest party". Graduates outnumber school leavers among those aged under 50, Prof Rob Ford's research shows, and education has become a strong predictor of vote choice and political values.