Indian Students opting for higher education abroad are rapidly increasing and their growth outpaced domestic student growth by 6x in the last three years to reach |770k in 2019. This is further expected to grow 2x till 2024 to reach |1.8 million students who would be spending $75-85 billion overseas, according to the latest report “Higher Education Abroad” released by homegrown consulting firm RedSeer.
The report adds that most of the students are opting for Postgraduate courses in Anglophone destinations and are expected to maintain the trend in the near future. Canada has emerged as the most preferred country for Indian students abroad replacing the USA over the last 3-5 years.
Furthermore, destinations such as Australia, Canada, UK and US have a higher concentration of institutions, which attract students from across the world. The US, which has over 4,000 universities across the country, offers the highest average salary levels followed by the UK and then Canada.
According to the report, the significant increase in outflow of students over the recent years is driven by better educational quality and outcomes abroad; higher standards of living ; gaps in the Indian education system leading to supply-demand imbalance and upward income mobility of Indian households.
There has been a massive increase in incomes in India over the past two decades that has translated into growing spends on post K-12 education. Additionally, the populace is becoming more aware of the benefits of studying abroad and Indians have a rising diaspora in popular destination countries which is leading to more applications abroad and student outflows.
The report also finds that the majority of the student outflow is from states like Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Maharashtra which are amongst the richest states in India with possibly high awareness of the educational benefits.
Additionally, the report says that online channels emerged as the most popular mode for availing external support, driven partly by Covid-induced lockdowns. There is also a growing interest from students in the Tier 2 and 3 cities with the rise in incomes and aspirations
With the advent of Covid many online companies have reported 5-10X in user base and revenues for their services. However, online platforms have room for improvement in providing better quality services. As the ecosystem evolves with more integrated offerings, online is expected to dominate in the forecast period with higher quality services and greater student awareness of their outcomes.
“Student outflow abroad for higher education is expected to grow at an accelerated pace. The current journey of these students remains fairly fragmented. Thus, there exists a white space for online first players to provide an integrated solution at scale,” said Anil Kumar, Founder & CEO at RedSeer.
