Around a quarter of Cambridge students are international, drawn from more than 90 countries. On paper, the University appears strikingly global. But that internationalism is not evenly distributed across disciplines. In many humanities subjects, the student body remains noticeably closer to home.

At first glance, the difference looks small. In 2024, 70.4% of admitted students in the arts, humanities and social sciences were home students, compared to about 73.7% in the sciences. But those similar-looking percentages obscure an important detail: the size of the cohorts themselves. Humanities subjects tend to admit larger numbers of home students overall. In that same year, Cambridge accepted 2,673 home students in total, 1,436 of which went to the arts, humanities and social sciences, compared to 1,237 in the sciences. Even where the proportions appear similar, the humanities still actually draw more heavily from the domestic pool.

Once ethnicity is taken into account, the contrast becomes clearer still. In the three-year period between 2022 and 2024, the arts, humanities and social sciences admitted a cohort that was 29.1% non-white. In the sciences, that figure rises to around 40%, and in some subjects far higher: medicine, for example, reached 63.9% non-white. Several humanities subjects remain strikingly homogeneous. That same period saw ASNAC admit a cohort that was just 8.2% non-white, while History (my own degree), and the perspective that inevitably colours much of this article, sits somewhere in the middle at 23.3%.

“Humanities classrooms remain less ethnically diverse than many scientific disciplines”

Taken together, these patterns point in the same direction. Humanities classrooms remain both more heavily home-student and less ethnically diverse than many scientific disciplines. The students least represented in these spaces are therefore often those who sit at the intersection of both categories: international and non-white. In a university that prides itself on global reach, the humanities can sometimes feel like one of the institution’s more archaic spaces.

One explanation for this is pragmatism. Studying at Cambridge as an international student is an enormous financial investment, often exceeding £150,000 once tuition and living costs are taken into account. When that level of spending or borrowing is involved, the question of return on investment becomes unavoidable. STEM degrees tend to offer clearer and more predictable career pathways, often with higher starting salaries and progression. In that sense, choosing a humanities degree can feel like a risk. In the broader socioeconomic context shaping these decisions, white households on average have higher incomes than many minority ethnic households. Statistically, this means that more white families have the financial flexibility to support children pursuing careers with less certain financial outcomes, including many artistic or humanities fields. For families who have invested heavily in an international education, the calculation is often sharper: stability and employability matter.

“When education itself has required such a significant financial and personal leap, the idea of pursuing a degree with uncertain employment prospects can feel difficult to justify”

For international students, that calculation is shaped even further by immigration policy. As my own Cambridge-sponsored visa begins to run out after nearly five years in the UK, the issue has become less abstract and more personal. Recent policy changes have tightened the conditions under which international graduates can remain in the country. Since 2024 most international students have not been allowed to bring dependents, and recent government proposals have suggested reducing the graduate visa from 24 months to 18. Once that period ends, staying in the UK usually requires securing a job that meets the skilled worker salary threshold of £41,700. For many humanities graduates that threshold is difficult to reach immediately after finishing university. The result is that certain career paths begin to feel less like options and more like necessities: a law conversion, consulting, finance, or postgraduate study as a way of buying time. Having built much of my life here over the past few years, the prospect that remaining in the country depends so directly on securing the ‘right’ kind of job can make the future feel unusually narrow.

Beyond these structural pressures, there are also smaller but noticeable differences in the experience of studying the humanities as an international student. Cultural expectations also play a role in shaping degree choices. In many immigrant families, whether first generation or several generations removed, stable careers in medicine, engineering or finance are often prioritised over careers associated with the arts or culture. This is not unique to minority communities; many lower-income families feel similar pressures. But migration tends to sharpen that focus on security. When education itself has required such a significant financial and personal leap, the idea of pursuing a degree with uncertain employment prospects can feel difficult to justify.

For those of us who do end up in the humanities, that presence can sometimes feel quietly meaningful. As an international student and a person of colour studying History, I occasionally think of it as a small act of resistance against the assumption that intellectual curiosity should always follow the most practical route. At the same time, representation brings its own complications. There is often an unspoken expectation that students from particular backgrounds will study or write about their own realities. If taken too far, that expectation risks becoming tokenistic. By that logic I might be confined to writing about Spanish colonisation, drug wars or contemporary Latin American politics simply because those topics relate to where I come from.

The irony is that, despite thinking this way for a long time, I have still ended up spending much of my dissertation working on Latin American knowledge production. Part of that is probably unavoidable. Yet there is also something particular about the position international students occupy. We move between contexts, at once insiders and outsiders. That distance allows a different perspective, while familiarity creates a sense of responsibility to represent experiences that might otherwise be simplified or misunderstood. Perhaps there is a slightly romantic element to this impulse, the idea that telling your own people’s history matters in some small way. But in a university where structural and economic pressures often push students in more predictable directions, choosing to remain in the humanities can itself feel like a form of resistance, both intellectually and personally.