The post-pandemic era has witnessed remarkable growth in the number of Indian students going to study abroad. The Ministry of Education disclosed that during the pandemic years i.e. 2020 and 2021, a slowdown of 2.5 lakhs and 4.4 lakhs has been observed respectively. However, in the year 2022, the number of students again increased from 5.8 lakhs in 2019 to 7.5 lakhs in 2022 who are interested in studying abroad, witnessing a sharp rise of 68% from the previous year.

The post-pandemic world spotted diverse changes in the higher education system taught in universities and colleges globally prioritizing digital education and raising the education quality by introducing student-centric changes in the courses. The Ministry of External Affairs estimated that around 13 lakh students will be studying abroad by year-end, and approximately 35.7% of them will opt USA for the same.

In the international student enrollment segment, India attained the highest point whereas China maintained its position for sending the highest number of students to the USA in 2022-23 as per the Open Doors report for 2023 on International Educational Exchange. From India’s perspective, higher education from abroad is regarded as a viable contribution to the learning trajectory of students’ bright academic future in the long run.

International exposure enhances students’ cross-border wisdom, interaction with new cultures, learning global skills, and uplifting personal-cum-professional understanding to support the overall development of the student’s personality and perspective. Indian students prefer to study abroad for reasons like better job prospects, an advanced healthcare system, and a fascination with the Western lifestyle.

The educational hubs abroad offer future sustainable courses like Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence with Machine Learning, Digital Marketing, Cybersecurity, etc. that are in high demand and need skilled professionals to meet the job requirements in the global market. The pandemic has brought focus on the overall quality of life including economic stability claiming some of the majority of reasons to witness the rise of students enrolling for higher education abroad. This has also motivated students of Tier 2/3 cities of the country to study abroad with the hope of better livelihood opportunities to sustain a happy life for themselves.