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The enquiries from Indian students looking to study in the US have plunged by over 46 per cent in just one year, while interest in Canada has nosedived nearly 75 per cent over the past two years. A dramatic shift in global education preferences is underway, and the official statistics numbers speak volumes, claims Piyush Kumar, Regional Director, South Asia, Canada and Latin America (LATAM), IDP Education.
According to Open Doors data, Indians constitute the largest international student cohort in the US. In 2023-24, 3,31,602 students from India were enrolled across American universities, accounting for 29 per cent of all international students.
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In an interview with the news agency, PTI, Kumar said that the geopolitical situation has impacted students’ plans to go to the US and Canada.
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“If we talk about the geopolitical situation, I think primarily it concerns the US, and we have seen that in the last… 6 to 12 months, the situation has obviously impacted the plans of students who are planning to go to the US. It started actually before President Trump (came in), so we saw that after June onwards, we did see the visa approval rates go down,” Kumar said.
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“Typically, what happens is that during the election year, every time we see that visa approval rates go down for whatever reason. But after President Trump came, I think he is planning, or there is a lot of noise about some changes which are going to happen, which obviously is acting as a dampener,” he added.
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Speaking about Canada, he said, “In Canada, there have been a lot of changes in the last two years. It started when (former Canadian prime minister) Justin Trudeau and the Indian government got into a dispute. But over time, what has happened is that Canada has also been hit by the US tariffs, and 80 per cent of Canadian exports are to the US, so they are very badly hit.
“People think that this is not the right time to go to Canada because they have limited the post-study work right also to only six streams, and that is where a lot of students think that if they go and study something else, there is no post-study work, and they will have to come back,” he added.
Since the Canadian government said that the measures have been put in place till 2027, and after that they will re-examine this policy. So, the next two years are likely to be soft for Canada, Kumar explained.
“If you look at other destinations, big ones, which is the UK and Australia, by and large the demand remains intact, the number of students who are going is absolutely intact. “Australia in fact formally announced that this year they are going to increase the number of students by 9 per cent over last year, so they are talking about managed growth, so they will allow more students but in a managed way,” he said.
As per the official figures, over 2.6 lakh students went abroad for studies in 2020, which increased to 4.45 lakh in 2021, 7.52 lakh in 2022, and peaked at nearly 8.95 lakh in 2023, before slightly declining to 7.6 lakh in 2024.
