Raising fees by similar amount "not an option" as it would damage student intake quality, Imperial President affirmsImperial College President Hugh Brady ruled out any increase to international students’ tuition fees to cover a proposed 6% levy recently put forward by the Home Office. “The quality of our intake would drop,” Brady added, as he explained that high fees were already one of the main reasons brilliant overseas applicants turned their offers down. In the immigration policy paper published in early May, the Home Office floated plans for “introducing a levy on higher education provider income from international students, to be reinvested into the higher education and skills system”. A report from the Higher Education Policy Institute found that the policy would come at a cost of £621 million across the higher education sector, with Imperial paying the fourth-highest levy cost, at £21 million. The Home Office itself estimated the policy would immediately result in a yearly reduction of around 14,000 overseas students nationwide.