UK universities are on course to recruit record numbers of international students during the global pandemic, defying predictions of financial disaster, the latest admissions figures reveal. The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) said UK universities enjoyed a 9% increase in the number of undergraduate students from outside the UK and the EU starting their studies this autumn, rising to a new record total of 44,300. The increase marks a remarkable turnaround from earlier this year, when vice-chancellors feared there would be a collapse in international student numbers and warned that a sector-wide financial crisis was likely to follow. Universities redoubled their efforts to recruit students from overseas, and may have been helped by negative sentiment towards the US, where the virus remains unchecked in parts of the country, and while potential rivals in New Zealand and Australia remain closed to international students. Ucas’s figures usually include fewer than half of the more than 100,000 international undergraduates coming to the UK, with the remainder and postgraduates applying directly to individual universities rather than through the admissions service. Admissions officers have also been celebrating record numbers of first-year students coming from disadvantaged areas in the UK, with 22.5% of students from areas with the lowest educational attainment now continuing on into higher education. The overall proportion of the UK’s 18-year-olds entering higher education will reach 36%, itself a new record. That will also come as a relief to many in higher education, after the bungled efforts to assess entry grades using statistical models to replace exams. In most cases the grades were replaced with school assessments, meaning more students are likely to have met entry requirements. “Overall demand for higher education has increased during the coronavirus pandemic, and there are currently a record 515,650 students with a confirmed place, up 4% on last year,” Ucas said, noting that the increase followed three years of falling enrolments. But the figures also show a drop in acceptances from new EU undergraduates, down 2% compared with 2019-20, to just under 30,000. Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said: “The data clearly tell a very positive story. It was always clear that domestic demand would be up, despite the reduction in 18-year olds, because the alternatives to more education are so poor this year. “It was also always likely that EU numbers would be down, given the Brexit uncertainties and shenanigans. No one predicted such a big increase in non-EU international students and we have to wait to see if they will all actually arrive and then stay the course. “But it is a great testament to the underlying strength of our higher education sector, as well as a reflection of the improved migration regime and rising geopolitical tensions between China and the US, that so many people still want to come and study at our fantastic institutions.” Fears that a significant proportion of students would defer entry because of campus restrictions on socialising have not been borne out: the figures showed only a slight uptick in the proportion of deferrals, 5.7% compared with 5.4% in 2019. Separately, the Student Loans Company said it had processed and distributed more than £1bn in maintenance loans to 414,877 students by this week, marking its biggest single payment date.