For the first time in four years, all three of the most popular countries for Indian students — Canada, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States of America (USA) — have recorded a simultaneous decline in incoming Indian students. This marks a major shift after nearly a decade of consistent growth in outbound mobility, The Indian Express reports.
The reversal has been linked to policy changes, especially in Canada and the UK, where authorities have tightened immigration rules. These include new limits on the number of international students, as well as restrictions on allowing dependents to accompany them. Canada has been particularly assertive, introducing a cap on study permits that led to a 35% fall in 2024, with another 10% cut planned for 2025.
The country has also ended its fast-track Student Direct Stream programme and plans to reduce the number of temporary residents to 5% of its population by 2026.
As a result, Canada granted 1.89 lakh study permits to Indian students in 2024 — down from 2.78 lakh in 2023, a sharp 32% decline. Meanwhile, the number of Chinese students saw only a marginal drop of 3% over the same period. Despite this, Indian students continued to outnumber their Chinese counterparts in Canada in 2024.
The UK had already shown signs of a slowdown earlier. Indian student visa numbers declined by 13% in 2023 — from 1,38,980 to 1,19,738 — and fell a further 26% in 2024. The UK Home Office attributed this partly to restrictions on dependents accompanying foreign students. After overtaking Chinese students in 2022 and 2023, Indian numbers slipped behind again in 2024, according to The Indian Express.
In contrast, the USA saw a steady rise until 2023, with the number of Indian students nearly doubling over the decade — from 74,831 in 2015 to 1,30,730 in 2023. However, 2024 marked the first decline there as well.
The shift in numbers also reflects changing academic patterns. In Canada, Indian students primarily opt for college-level diploma and certificate programmes. Bachelor's degree permits were slightly higher than postgraduate ones in 2023 — about 16,000 versus 15,640.
In the USA, Indian students tend to pursue postgraduate studies, especially in Mathematics and Computer Science, which overtook Engineering as the top field post-2017–18. Similarly, the UK sees a strong tilt towards master’s courses — 80% of Indian students were enrolled at that level in 2024, while the share of undergraduates dropped from 50% in 2014 to just 20% this year, as per data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.
