The United Kingdoms government is finalising plans to cut annual student visa figures by nearly half, from the current 300,000 to 170,000, a media report said today amid a sharp fall in students coming to the country from outside Europe including India.

Some university chiefs are also warning that many Indian students are already being denied visas on minor grounds as part of a wider move to cut immigration into the UK.

They are telling some students there is exactly the same quality of course available in India so why are you coming here. That is outrageous, a UK vice-chancellor was quoted as saying by the Guardian newspaper.

The move comes despite recent UK Office of National Statistics figures indicating there has been a drastic drop in students coming to the UK from outside Europe.

There was a statistically significant decline in the number of non-EU citizens migrating to the UK to study, from 134,000 in the previous year to 111,000...there was a statistically significant decline in citizens of South Asia, with the number coming to study having almost halved, ONS said in its Migration Statistics Quarterly Report: August 2016.

India is the third-largest category in terms of student visa applications after the United States and China, with 10,664 granted between June 2015 and 2016.