India could host 1.1 million int’l students by 2047, but concerns persist: NITI Aayog
India could host as many as 1.1 million international students by 2047, provided major reforms are implemented, according to a report released by NITI Aayog on Monday.
The report, Internationalisation of Higher Education in India: Prospects, Potential and Policy Recommendations, highlighted both the opportunities and challenges in making India a global higher education hub. “India requires a substantial increase in the inflow of international students to emerge as a global destination for higher education and research,” the report states.
The South Asian country currently hosts around 47,000 international students — with some estimates putting the number at 72,000 — while over 1.3m Indians study abroad. The report notes that for every international student coming in, nearly 28 Indians leave, highlighting a persistent brain drain.
The report notes that since 2001, the number of international students coming to India has increased by 518% but outbound mobility has grown at a far faster pace. “The current trend of internationalisation in Indian higher education is largely skewed towards outbound student mobility. This has contributed significantly to brain drain,” it added.
The study, conducted over the past year in collaboration with IIT Madras, the Association of Indian Universities, and Acumen, drew on surveys of 160 Indian institutions, interviews with 30 institutions across 16 countries, and international workshops and roundtables, including one in the UK.
If India can align policy, infrastructure, and institutional capacity, it has the potential to emerge as a globally competitive higher education hub, one that not only attracts international students but also retains talent and strengthens its global academic standing
NITI Aayog report
Outward remittances for education under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) have risen sharply, as per the report, from Rs 975 crore (around £93m) in 2013/14 to nearly Rs 29,000 crore (about £2.75bn) in 2023/24, accounting for over half of the Union government’s annual higher education budget.
Projected tuition and living expenses abroad are expected to reach Rs 6.2 lakh crore (roughly £59bn) by 2025, roughly 2% of India’s GDP, the report adds. “The continued outflow of skilled students reduces the pool of talent available to drive India’s development,” it stated.
To address these challenges, the report has suggested a comprehensive set of policy interventions. Central among them being the introduction of a “Vishwa Bandhu Scholarship” for international students pursuing postgraduate programs, covering their tuition, stipends, research grants, accommodation, travel, health insurance, and study-linked internships. A complementary “Vishwa Bandhu Fellowship” has also been proposed to attract top international researchers and faculty to India.
The report also calls for easing regulatory frameworks to allow more international campuses, including “campus-in-campus” models, and establishing a national research fund, the Bharat Vidya Kosh, with a suggested corpus of US $10bn contributed by the Indian diaspora worldwide and matched by the government.
Additionally, the creation of an Alumni Ambassador Network, or Bharat ki AAN, is recommended to leverage Indian alumni abroad as ambassadors for Indian higher education.
A multilateral academic mobility framework, modelled on Europe’s Erasmus+ Programme, is proposed to encouraged exchanges with ASEAN, BRICS, and BIMSTEC countries. The report also recommends expanding the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), a ranking methodology by the Ministry of Education, to include measures such as global engagement, outreach, and inclusivity, providing a clearer picture of internationalisation efforts.
Structural and operational challenges continue to limit India’s appeal to international students. Survey findings cited in the report show that 41% of Indian institutions view limited scholarships and financial aid as a major barrier, while 30% report concerns about the global perception of Indian education. Other obstacles include visa and regulatory work, insufficient campus infrastructure, limited student support services, and language and cultural adaptation challenges.
The report also highlighted that India has an opportunity to reverse this trend through strategic internationalisation. It noted that internationalisation should go beyond student mobility, incorporating faculty exchanges, joint research programmes, globally aligned curricula, and culturally rooted pedagogy.
According to the report, this approach will allow India to retain talent, build knowledge capital, and reduce dependency on international systems, positioning the country as a “serious player” in global higher education.
While recent reforms, including the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines allowing international universities to set up campuses in India, are acknowledged in the report, it stresses that effective implementation is critical.
“If India can align policy, infrastructure, and institutional capacity, it has the potential to emerge as a globally competitive higher education hub, one that not only attracts international students but also retains talent and strengthens its global academic standing,” the report added.
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