About UK Student Sponsors
UK Student Sponsors is an independent website about one narrow thing: the Home Office register of licensed student sponsors, and the rules that hang on it. It is for international students and their families who need to know whether a university, college or school can sponsor a UK Student visa, what its licence status means, and whether that has changed.
What you will find here that GOV.UK does not publish
The Home Office publishes the register as a single file showing who holds a licence today. When a sponsor is added, removed or changes status, the old version is replaced and the change leaves no trace.
We have kept every version we have seen since 30 November 2024. From that archive we publish:
- The register change log — 398 dated changes so far: licences added and removed, status changes, and sponsors placed on or released from a Home Office action plan. The full log is free to download.
- A licence history on each provider profile, so you can see whether a sponsor’s status has been stable.
- Analysis of what the changes add up to, twice a week.
Alongside that we maintain a searchable copy of the current register, plain-English guides to the Student, Child Student and Graduate routes, and a fee calculator.
Who is behind it
The site is built and published by Salih Enes Metin, a software developer, as an independent project. It is not run by a university, a recruitment agent or an immigration firm, and nobody can pay to be listed, ranked or described favourably.
Articles appear under two desk bylines, Elif Karaman (register analysis) and Daniel Hartley (visa rules). Our editorial policy explains how articles are written, checked and corrected.
How it is funded
The site is paid for by its publisher. Some guide pages may carry advertising; the register, the change log and provider profiles do not. There is a free companion app for searching the register on a phone. We do not take commission from any institution or agent.
What this site is not
We are not affiliated with the Home Office, UK Visas and Immigration or any education provider, and nothing here is immigration advice. In the UK, immigration advice may only be given by a regulated adviser. We describe what the rules and the register say and link to the source; your own circumstances may need someone qualified to look at them.
The register data is reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Provider matching is automatic and has limits, which are set out in our methodology. The official register on GOV.UK is always the authority.
Get in touch
Corrections are the most useful thing you can send us: contact us with the page and the source that shows we are wrong. Every correction we make is recorded in the corrections log.