LONDON: The UK has suffered a 50 per cent drop in the number of Indian students studying in the country during the last five years owing to an "increasingly unwelcoming policy", a leading NRI entrepreneur said.

"An increasingly unwelcoming policy agenda sees teenagers opting instead to study at new and competitive universities in Canberra and Melbourne, neglecting the UK institutions that have been formative for many of the world's minds," Lord Bilimoria wrote in The Daily Telegraph.

"For example, in five years, Britain has suffered a 50 per cent drop in the number of Indian students studying in Britain, some of whom presumably sense that the international communities in Britain's universities - who are still wrongfully included in net migration statistics - have a diminished voice," said Bilimoria who is also the Chancellor of the University of Birmingham.

He said "the less we stimulate growth in the higher education sector, particularly through public expenditure, the less productive and influential Britain will be".

"As a university Chancellor myself, this raises concerns for my colleagues and I," he added.

Recent estimates from the Department of Business, Industry and Skills place the value of selling British education to those from overseas at 14 billion pounds.

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