After largely plateauing from 2014/15 to 2019/20, enrolments in UK TNE in East Asia surged for the second straight year in 2021/22, rising by 8.3%. This growth followed an 8.6% increase in TNE enrolments in East Asia in 2020/21. Overall, enrolments in the region are up nearly 18% from before the pandemic struck, after having risen only 4% over the five years before the arrival of Covid-19 (2014-19).

Enrolments in UK transnational education (TNE) in East Asia during the pandemic were remarkable both for what changed and what did not. Overall demand for UK TNE, for example, continued to surge in 2021/22 even as mobility to the UK rebounded. TNE enrolments in the region grew more in the two years since 2019/20 than during the seven years that preceded Covid-19.

At the same time, many of the long-term trends in UK TNE enrolments in East Asia remained fundamentally unchanged during Covid-19. For example, the region’s share of global TNE enrolments continued to fall as countries in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia grew faster. However, China’s share of UK TNE enrolments in the region continued to rise, with China remaining the world’s largest TNE market by some measure.

Despite the pandemic, demand for in-person TNE instruction grew faster than fully remote options in the region. Yet enrolment at UK branch campuses in East Asia was also relatively unchanged over this period, with the vast majority of students registered at UK providers without branch campuses or else directly at their in-country partners. Meanwhile, fewer than half of UK HEIs have reported increases in TNE enrolments alongside decreases in student mobility since 2019/20, meaning that growth in TNE enrolments did not come at the expense of student mobility. 

This report examines key trends in TNE enrolment in East Asia, identifying both how the pandemic changed UK TNE in East Asia, and just as importantly, how it did not.