As an international student, I hope to help you make an informed choice on taking the plunge. I will take this as a dichotomy between studying locally and studying abroad.
Cost
You do not have the cover of government subsidy, which studying within your home country would avail you to. Oxford claims to pay £100,000 per student from a low-income area. Since the government imposes a cap on tuition for local students, the fees for international students is set artificially high as a way to subsidise the education of local students.
While every government must look out for the rights of its citizens first, do realise that the cost of your education, as a minority group of international students, will partially be spent on enhancing the educational experience of the majority of local students.
Perspective
It’s been eye-opening coming to Oxford, for sure. Being surrounded by people who have so much passion, love, and deep expertise around their fields is an inspiring experience. The UK also has a rich history and an entertaining political scene.
London is a wonderfully dynamic place. The rich culture and arts scene means musicals and shows are just a stone’s throw away. Some of the most picturesque parks combined with beautiful architecture preserved through zoning laws
Career Prospects
This is the greatest drawback to moving to the UK for me. Both as a corporate drone and a budding entrepreneur.
The entrepreneurship scene in UK, and the rest of Europe, lags far behind the USA. This is not for lack of founders, given the depth of technical knowledge in the population – indeed, the numbers of DPhils I have chatted with at Oxford is testament to the potential of the startup ecosystem.
Unfortunately, byzantine laws plague Europe and the UK, stymieing efforts to create a Silicon Valley equivalent. Germany has a law that mandates that a notary has to be hired to read out the entire contract. If you’ve ever been sat in a lecture, you can only imagine how difficult it would be to focus on key clauses in the contract. For an agreement that involves hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of pounds, would it not make more sense to have lawyers look over the papers?
In addition, the demands of university for royalties and ownership stake in the UK is immensely onerous. Today, spinouts give the University of Oxford 20% of their equity. This was a recent change in September 2021, from a previous system that saw the university take 50% of equity. Meanwhile, Colombia University takes 5% equity, while Stanford asks for the right to purchase up to 10%.
Founders in the US are also boosted by access to easier venture capital. While OpenAI took the world by storm and was a major boost to Silicon Valley’s reputation as the place to be for startups, few realise that the original AI startup, DeepMind, had its origins at University College London. Yet, the company moved to the USA for easier access to funding.
As for salaried workers, the general impression is that the UK lags behind the USA in salary, and leads in income tax rates. The Telegraph ran an article that highlighted how workers in Britain have lower real wages compared to almost 20 years ago in 2008.
At the same time, UK income tax:
Source: https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates
US Federal income tax:
Source: https://www.irs.gov/filing/federal-income-tax-rates-and-brackets
While the US does have the illusion of state taxes, the combined tax burden in the US is lower than that in the UK.
The elevated tax rates do result in better social services though. Healthcare is free in the UK, compared to the USA where the uninsured probably lack proper medical coverage. However, I think the NHS faces a difficult moral hazard problem. As someone whose corporate insurance covered multiple travel vaccinations, I took the chance to take different lifetime vaccines. After all, these were free, and had low risk of side effects. Never mind that the insurance company probably shelled out £2,000 for the bill of these vaccinations. When healthcare is free, people have no limit to consume these services, even if the societal marginal rate of return has diminished to a tiny degree. Because of the sheer volume of patients, most of my friends – internationals who have moved to London, end up relying on private healthcare instead.
Meanwhile, the cost of hosting migrants in hotels went up to £8 million a day, with 46,000 landing in the UK via small boats in 2022. That’s £173 a day for each migrant, assuming they all land on the first day of the year. That’s about 8 times my college accommodation cost! While it is admirable that the UK is spending so much on migrants, the state of their accommodations seems pretty dismal.
When you are deciding whether you want to work in the UK, remember that your income taxes are going towards subsidising such instances of government spending.
Consider your option set
With this, you should develop a list of schools that you would go overseas for. Personally, I restricted my choice-set to only Oxbridge. I do encourage you to base your choice off your individual financial situation and projected return on education investment – many of my friends from home went to schools like LSE and UCL, and similarly found great
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