The India student outflow has reached alarming levels, exposing structural weaknesses in the country’s higher education system. India is experiencing a growing gap between the number of international students arriving in India and Indian students leaving India for study abroad. According to NITI Aayog, the ratio of Indian students who went abroad versus the number of international students who arrived in India in 2021-22 was approximately 25 to 1. As a result, the India student outflow has led to increasing concern among policymakers about long-term brain drain risks.
Less than 50,000 international students were enrolled at Indian higher education institutions during this time period. During the same academic year, more than 1.1 million Indian students were enrolled in institutions outside of India. In contrast, by 2024, that number is expected to increase by over 1.3 million Indian students.
Although there have been numerous initiatives announced by the government aimed at improving the attractiveness of Indian campuses on a global scale, the trend towards increased outbound Indian student mobility continues. NITI Aayog identified the lack of global competitiveness of Indian campuses as the primary reason for the imbalance between inbound and outbound student mobility.
As a consequence of the high rate of outflow of Indian talent, there is an increased likelihood that India will remain highly dependent on foreign-based innovation sources due to the inability to develop indigenous capacity for innovation.
Preferred destinations reveal scale and cost of India student outflow
In 2024, Canada became the most popular place for Indian students to go to college or university. Approximately 427,000 Indians studied in Canada in 2024. The United States was the second most popular country for Indian students, with over 337,000 studying there. The United Kingdom was the third most popular place for Indian students to study, with nearly 185,000 Indian students attending school in the U.K. Australia and Germany ranked fourth and fifth in terms of the number of Indian students studying in those countries. These five countries accounted for a significant amount of the total number of college and university students from India who studied abroad.
International students studying abroad incur high costs to India’s economy, according to the Reserve Bank of India. Over the last ten years, the amount of money sent back to India from international students has increased significantly. The amount of money sent from India to pay for education abroad was less than Rs 1,000 crore in the past. In the financial year 2023-24, the total amount sent by students to pay for their education abroad had risen to nearly Rs 29,000 crore annually, which represents more than half of the annual higher education funding for India. Thus, there is increasing pressure on policymakers to retain the academic talent produced in India.
Policy reforms push internationalisation at home to retain talent
The findings of this report parallel the reform recommendations of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 recommends that foreign universities open up their campuses in India; whereas, on the flip side, Indian institutions can further collaborate and establish their campuses in other countries. As such, the report emphasizes that Outbound mobility cannot be the only measure of internationalization. Instead, India should set global standards in its Indian universities, thus creating an opportunity to achieve Systematic Transformation via Internationalization at Home.
The recommendations in this report include attracting International Faculty, creating more opportunities for the development of Joint Research Programs with Universities worldwide, etc. Additionally, the report emphasizes the need for a better Credit Transfer and the Development of Globally Aligned Curricula, as well as the barriers to internationalization, such as Visa Delays, Weak Infrastructure, and Limited Availability of Scholarships. Therefore, reforming regulations, student services, and the promotion of Global Visibility at the same time is necessary for the successful implementation of Internationalization at Home. Another recommendation by the report is the establishment of a Vishwa Bandhu Scholarship, which is intended to attract International Postgraduate Students to India.
Another recommendation of the report is to create an International Summer School Program to attract and retain talented International Students at the World’s Top Indian Universities. In addition, the report presents examples from the Chinese and Korean experiences of similar initiatives, i.e., China’s Thousand Talents Program and South Korea’s Brain Return Programs, to demonstrate how these programs can enhance Global Competitiveness. In conclusion, the experts who prepared this report believe that India has the potential to convert its demographic advantage into a Knowledge Capital. If India continues to allow its students to leave this country, it will greatly weaken India’s long-term Global Competitiveness.
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