UK's curbs on international students, foreign workers will backfire, thinks a top hedge fund founder
UK higher education institutions and setting back the country’s ambitions to be a leader in science and technology, according to an influential British entrepreneur.
Recent steps by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to make the UK less attractive for overseas students will lead to a university funding shortfall and a reduced pool of talent for British employers, Ewan Kirk, founder of quantitative hedge fund Cantab Capital Partners and a former entrepreneur-in-residence at the University of Cambridge said. The measures will chafe against the premier’s ambition to make Britain a hub for high-growth industries such as biotechnology and artificial intelligence, he said
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“For all the guff and bloviation about making the UK a scientific superpower, you’ve actually got to do something that’s going to make that happen,” Kirk, also a non-executive director at defense firm BAE Systems, said in an interview. “The corollary of being a scientific superpower is presumably that you need a lot of scientists,” he said. “We’re not going to grow them all internally, so would it not be good to get some from outside?”
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The prime minister is under growing pressure from the right wing of his ruling Conservatives to clamp down on both legal and illegal immigration after total net migration to the UK hit a record 745,000 in 2022. Facing an election that’s likely in the second half of this year, Sunak’s government last year announced a
