Graduate visa change puts pressure on UK employers as timeline tightens

More than half of international postgraduates are rethinking whether to study in the UK because of the proposed cut to the graduate visa from 24 to 18 months. A new survey of more than 400 international master’s students shows that 58% are concerned that the shorter window makes it harder for them to find skilled work, secure sponsorship and build a future in the UK. And this has direct implications for employers – it means less time to assess candidates, more pressure to sponsor early, and a real risk of losing valuable hires. We’ll speak to an immigration expert about that.

Under the current system, the Graduate Route allows international students who’ve completed a UK degree to stay and work for up to two years without sponsorship, or three years in the case of PhD graduates. It’s a popular and flexible route, giving employers time to assess performance before deciding whether to sponsor under the Skilled Worker route. But the government’s white paper proposes reducing that unsponsored period to just 18 months, citing concerns that only around 30% of graduates on this route are working in jobs at RFQ Level 6 or above, the level broadly equivalent to a UK bachelor’s degree. The Home Office says the route is being used too widely for low-skilled jobs, and that the system needs to ensure ‘skilled means skilled.’

The result for employers is a compressed timeline. HR teams will need to review graduate sponsorship much earlier, often halfway through a scheme, and build in time for internal approvals, Certificates of Sponsorship allocation, and visa applications. It’s a fundamental shift in how graduate recruitment and immigration strategy intersect.

So let’s get a view on this. Alex Wright is an immigration expert and earlier he joined me by video-link from Manchester to discuss it:

Alex Wright: “So we knew that the graduate route was going to be changing. There was a lot of speculation as to what we might be seeing. Some of the broadsheets had trailed stories that we might be seeing graduates only being able to work in certain jobs, or at certain salaries, and then, ultimately, what we got was none of that, and just this very small change from 24 to 18 months. When I first read that, I thought, well, that's not particularly significant, that seems to be a very minimal change and then spending a bit more time thinking about it and discussing it with the team we actually came to the conclusion it's probably a lot more significant than we thought. One of the reasons for that is most graduates, hopefully, are looking for graduate level jobs. Most graduate schemes are set up to be two-year courses and the whole benefit of the Graduate visa was it allowed people to move. You know, there's no specific thing that one has to do following a graduate visa. You can use it to do any level of work in the UK for any employer, but one of the more common things that people like to do with it to move on to move on to grad schemes, and it sort of leaves talented graduates in an unenviable position where they'll have finished their course and then find that they don't necessarily have enough time left on their ‘leave to remain’ to complete a full graduate scheme with some of the major accountancy, law, and other service firms.”

Joe Glavina: “So is the result of this, Alex, to put pressure on employers so they have less time to plan. Is that the point?”

Alex Wright: “I think that's a fair point. One of the conversations we always have is graduates are always very keen to move on to skilled worker visas, in our experience, and that's because the Graduate visa does not lead to settlement in the UK, whereas time spent on the Skilled Worker visa does so often graduates are very keen to move on to the Skilled Worker visa as soon as it's practically possible for them, which is completely understandable. But from the perspective of employers, one of the benefits of the Graduate visa is it's a non-sponsored role. It doesn't come with the additional costs of having a skilled worker, there's no Certificate of Sponsorship to pay for, there's no immigration skills charge to pay for. So a lot of them tend to like using that to see whether these young, talented, workers are a good fit for their company before offering sponsorship. What they're now going to have to do is to start planning in those additional costs of sponsorship and having those conversations about whether or not they want to sponsor these workers at a sooner stage. Another thing that's worth noting is that one of the changes that we're going to be seeing in the white paper anyway - we know that it's going to be coming up probably the next year - is a change to the skill level for sponsorship. So that's going to jump from RQF level three, which is approximately A-level, to RQF level six, approximately degree level. According to the current Home Office statistics, only around a third of people on Graduate visas are doing roles that already are RQF six level. So it may well be that there are currently people on Graduate visas who may, in the future, not be able to be sponsored for the roles that they're doing. So it's a conversation that sponsors might want to be having internally right now. If someone is doing a role that is below RQF level six, do you want to just sponsor them now and get out of the way before it might become impossible for you to do so in the future?”

Joe Glavina: “If there is one action point for employers to take from this, Alex, what would it be?”

Alex Wright: “I think if you are employing someone on a Graduate visa and they have an expectation, or have raised with you an expectation, that they would like to be sponsored by you in the future, I would keep regular check in dates and see if that's something that's realistic. Obviously, you don't want to run into any discrimination points so I would suggest taking employment law advice if you're going to be offering something to your graduates that you wouldn't necessarily be offering to your other workers. I think another point is to be careful where you have a role that simply cannot offer sponsorship. If the role that the person is doing is not of a sufficient skill or salary level, and it's not going to be, or they're not performing at a high enough level for you to want to offer sponsorship, those are conversations that you're going to want to be having with your workforce at an earlier stage so that the graduate can make an informed decision as to what they want to do with their future. Are they happy to just run out the clock and then depart the UK, or do they want to have the opportunity to seek alternative employment elsewhere?”

If you’d like to read more on this you can. The Immigration Team has produced an article called ‘UK graduate visa change requires careful thought from employers’ and that is available now from the Out-Law website. We’ve included a link to it in the transcript of this programme, along with a link to the government’s white paper. 

- Link to Out-Law article: ‘UK graduate visa change ‘requires careful thought’ from employers’

- Link to White Paper on immigration