The huge change is psychological: stop thinking of foreign students as mugs to be overcharged to subsidise poor Britons. That has never worked in any business and it is not going to work in this one. Rather concentrate on making British universities as good as possible. That above all means allowing them to charge domestic students something close to the real cost of their education.
This is fair:the average value of an education to the recipient exceeds the direst estimates of the fees involved. It also creates a virtuous circle. Better-funded universities can hire more good professors and build more modern laboratories. Britons will get a better education, and it will attract more foreign students too—who can help pay for more.
The man with the chequebook is your student
With their famous names and skilled workers, Britain’s universities are in the same state as its motorbike-makers and banks were half a century ago. One clung to state handouts and the idea that people had no choice: it disappeared. The other decided to sell to the world and deregulated. For all the City of London’s recent travails, it is surely a better model for Oxford, Cambridge et al than the likes of the BSA Triumph.