The Home Office has tightened Graduate Route eligibility and your overseas agent network has just been named in a visa abuse investigation. You are the Vice-Chancellor of Ashworth Metropolitan University — a post-92 whose financial model rests on home UG recruitment from a shrinking city catchment and international PGT students recruited through agents. You have 6 turns to navigate what comes next.
Ashworth Metropolitan has very few Chinese students. Its international income comes from South Asian and West African taught postgraduate recruits. Its home undergraduate base is predominantly local, working-class, and first-generation. The university has deep civic ties to the city — the LEP, NHS trusts, local employers — but those relationships bring obligations as well as assets. Across town, the University of Ashworth is navigating its own crisis. A merger has been floated. There is no single right answer.
Home UG share
61%
Of all fee income
Intl PGT share
28%
Mostly South Asia & W. Africa
Year-1 loss projected
£31m
If agent network collapses
Ashworth Metropolitan University · VC Crisis Scenario