PrepUni's sector findings come from Freedom of Information requests filed under the FOI Act 2000 to nine UK universities — a mix of Russell Group and post-92 institutions — covering Gulf student cohorts from 2021 to 2025. This page explains how the work was done and how we handle the data.
Cohort numbers by nationality, year-on-year sponsorship withdrawal counts, academic misconduct case counts where extractable, visa-related withdrawals, and Year 1 attrition rates. Each request was scoped to public-interest reporting under Section 1 of the Act.
Disclosure varied. Some universities returned complete five-year series. Others applied exemptions (S43 commercial interests was the most common) and were challenged through internal review where appropriate. One refusal was overturned on review.
Universities are anonymised in all public communications. We do not publish a named scoreboard. Specific institutional findings are shared only with prospective partners, sponsors, and the institutions themselves, under our research access framework.
Public scoreboards would damage the institutions we want to partner with, and they would not change the structural problem. The data is most useful when shared with the people who can act on it — international directors, compliance leads, and sponsor offices — not as a press story.
FOI response references and disclosure logs are held on file. Universities, government sponsor offices, and qualified researchers can request verified extracts of the underlying data. We do not share third-party institutional data with commercial competitors or press without a clear public-interest basis.
The summary version of our findings — the Sector Report 2026 — is free to university and government sponsor recipients.