For years, India’s education conversation has revolved around one dominant aspiration: getting out of the country. From middle-class families stretching finances to pay overseas tuition, to record-breaking visa numbers every year, studying abroad has become both a dream and a perceived necessity and status symbol for millions of Indian students and their families.
But the latest NITI Aayog report on the internationalisation of higher education forces an uncomfortable question into the open: while India sends some of the largest numbers of students abroad in the world, why does it attract so few in return?
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In 2021, for every student that came to India to study, around 24 left to study abroad. The contrast in inbound vs outbound numbers is even more striking because the same NITI Aayog report sets a bold target of 11 lakh international students in India by 2047, even as current data shows the country attracts only a fraction of that number today.
Buried in student mobility data, the answer to why India fails to import enough students reveals a growing imbalance that carries reputational, economic and strategic consequences for India’s higher education system.
INDIA AS A GLOBAL EXPORTER OF STUDENTS
The report shows that India
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