This line graph takes into account the oversea student enrollment in UK tertiary education. It is clear that the scale of foreign students is ascending over the period between 1996/1997 and 2002/2003.

If we look closer at the three lines we can discern that the quantity of total oversea students starts to rise from 200,000 and reaches the highest level at 280,000 today. Notwithstanding, in terms of the two groups: other EU students and non-EU students, the dynamos of the growth are different before and after 1999/2000. Before this point, the student numbers of the two groups both climb in a relatively small degree. While after this point, the growth of non-EU students accelerates, which is actually the driving force of the increase of the total quantity, with the amount mounting up from 120,000 to 190,000 in 2002/2003. On the contrary, there is a gradual decline in the number of students from other EU nations seeking to pursue their higher education in UK, exactly returning from the summit of around 100,000 to only the initial level 80,000 at the end of the whole period.