International students weigh fees, rank, visas and work
Updated Aug 13, 2026
What draws an international student to a university is not necessarily what persuades them to stay after graduation. Treating those decisions as one journey can hide where recruitment succeeds but retention breaks down. At Student Voice AI, we are interested in the evidence between those stages: what students value before they arrive and what they experience afterwards. Enzo Peeters and Kristof De Witte's new Studies in Higher Education paper, "International student mobility and retention: evidence from discrete choice experiments", gives UK Market Insights, International Recruitment and Student Experience teams a sharper way to separate the two. For universities using student voice to understand international students, the paper also shows why headline averages need context about cost, reputation, visas, work and everyday life.
Context and research question
International recruitment is under pressure from rising fees, changing migration rules and political uncertainty. At the same time, universities and governments want more international graduates to remain, work and contribute after study. The two aims are connected, but the factors that attract a student may not be the factors that persuade a graduate to stay. This matters for UK institutions because recruitment data can look healthy while later feedback reveals problems with employment, immigration processes, social integration or quality of life.
Peeters and De Witte ask two questions: what do international students value when choosing a university, and what shapes their decision to remain in the host country after graduation? They ran two discrete choice experiments at a large, multi-campus European university, alongside an information experiment and a detailed demographic questionnaire. The survey, administered in early 2025 across all faculties, yielded 748 observations.
Each experiment presented six sets of choices between two hypothetical alternatives, with five attributes varied across the options. One experiment focused on university choice; the other focused on staying after graduation. The authors used a conditional logit model and further sensitivity checks to estimate the relative importance of each attribute. This design is useful because it makes students trade priorities against one another instead of rating every desirable feature as important.
Key findings
Tuition fees were the strongest determinant of university choice, but institutional rank still carried substantial value. The authors estimate that students would trade off up to €8,597 in annual fees to attend a higher-ranked university. The practical point is not that rank cancels out cost. It is that students evaluate price alongside a visible signal of quality, and the balance will differ across financial circumstances.
"Tuition fees are the most important determinant of university choice."
The factors associated with staying after graduation were different. Gross salary had the largest influence, followed closely by the ease of obtaining a residence permit and quality of life. Easing immigration hurdles increased the probability of staying by 11.62 to 23.99 percentage points. Recruitment may begin with the university offer, but retention depends on a wider national and local environment that no single university controls.
Relevant work mattered, although students placed only modest weight on the number of job opportunities in the experiment. Students who were closer to the labour market showed a higher intention to stay, and master's students and those from outside the European Economic Area placed more emphasis on employment prospects. The gap between modest stated weight and the established importance of poor job prospects as a reason for leaving suggests that universities should test what students understand about the graduate labour market, not assume that prospectus information has landed.
Average preferences concealed important differences between groups. Students who required visas had an intention to stay that was nine percentage points higher. Those with their own income source also had an intention to stay between 4.6 and 6.2 percentage points higher. The analysis further suggests that students with part-time work valued social integration more and reacted more strongly to higher fees, which makes employment part of the student experience as well as a financial variable.
The fee result was not uniform. One group showed strong resistance to higher tuition fees, while another was largely indifferent. That split supports targeted financial aid rather than a single assumption about international students' willingness to pay. It also warns against interpreting a stable application total as evidence that affordability is not a problem, because an aggregate can hide which students have already been priced out.
Practical implications
UK universities should first separate attraction evidence from retention evidence. Rankings, fee levels and scholarships can shape initial choice, while visa processes, quality of life and work shape whether graduates stay. Tracking both stages gives International Recruitment and Student Experience teams a shared view of where the journey changes, which supports more coherent decisions than treating conversion and continuation as separate reporting problems.
Second, institutions should pair choice data with open comments about why an option feels viable. A discrete choice experiment estimates trade-offs well, but it cannot fully explain what students mean by quality, whether a visa process feels manageable, or why a job market appears accessible. Short follow-up prompts can reveal the practical barriers underneath the choice, much as research shows that international students often need earlier and clearer support than universities expect. This gives teams specific service and communication changes to test.
Third, universities should segment evidence before acting on the average. Visa status, level of study, income source and proximity to graduation changed the pattern of preferences. Institutions can apply the same discipline to survey comments by comparing themes across domicile, funding, programme level and year of study, while following a transparent NSS open-text analysis methodology. That makes targeted support more defensible and reduces the risk of designing for an international student who exists only in the aggregate.
Fourth, careers, immigration advice and belonging work should be treated as connected retention infrastructure. Students may hear about the Graduate Route or job opportunities during recruitment, but the value of that promise depends on the support they encounter after arrival. Feedback on employer access, work rights, local networks and community life should therefore sit alongside academic experience evidence, a connection reinforced by research on how everyday community contact shapes international student wellbeing. The benefit is earlier action on the conditions that influence both wellbeing and willingness to stay.
Finally, teams should distinguish stated intentions from observed behaviour. The experiments used hypothetical choices at one European university, so they identify preference structures rather than proving what every student will do. Local application, survey, comment and graduate-outcome data can test whether the same patterns appear in a UK institution. Student Voice Analytics can help group recurring open-text themes about cost, visas, employment and belonging, adding lived context to the numerical trade-offs without treating comments as a substitute for behavioural evidence.
FAQ
Q: How can a UK university apply these findings to its international student surveys?
A: Separate questions about choosing the university from questions about staying after graduation. Ask students to prioritise or trade off factors such as fees, reputation, visa processes, quality of life and relevant work, then add one open prompt asking why their highest priority matters. Analyse the results by visa status, level of study, funding and proximity to graduation so that a sector-wide average does not obscure a local barrier.
Q: What are the methodological limits of the paper?
A: Discrete choice experiments estimate preferences from hypothetical alternatives, not observed enrolment or migration decisions. The study was conducted at one large, multi-campus European university and yielded 748 observations, so UK teams should test its patterns against their own application, continuation, graduate-outcome and feedback data. Its strength is the forced trade-off design; its limit is that real decisions may change when policy, finances or personal circumstances change.
Q: What does this research change about international student voice?
A: It shows that international student voice should connect the whole journey, from choice and arrival to employment and post-study plans. Surveys become more useful when universities combine structured preference data with comments that explain how students experience affordability, institutional quality, immigration support, work and belonging. That produces a fuller account of why students come, what helps them remain engaged, and what makes staying after graduation feel possible.
References
[Paper Source]: Enzo Peeters and Kristof De Witte "International student mobility and retention: evidence from discrete choice experiments" DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2026.2692621
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