Just 0.52% of US students going abroad chose India

INdia attracts simply 0.52% of US students studying overseas, with the list of American students in the rural area falling acutely over the past decade, according to data from the Institute of International Education (IIE), a non-profit that receives funding from the US State Department, reviewed by HT.Just 1,578 US students chose to study in India out of 298,180 Americans studying abroad in 2023-24, the latest year for which data is available. The figure marks a 65.6% drop from 2013-14 levels, when 4,583 US students came to India. By contrast, more than 360,000 Indian students are currently studying in the US, accounting for 30.8% of the international student population. India is the largest source of foreign students in America.IIE data shows that US student numbers in India began falling before the COVID-19 pandemic, plunged during the crisis, and have yet to recover. India now attracts fewer American students than Belize, a country of about 441,000 people, and only slightly more than Vietnam and Ghana. The low numbers represent a significant reversal from an earlier period where India was emerging as a popular destination for American students.Also read: CBSE may penalise vendor over OSM flaws, blacklisting unlikelyIn 2004-05, 1,767 US students came to India, placing the country among the top 25 study-abroad destinations for Americans. Interest grew steadily thereafter. By 2011-12, the number had more than doubled to 4,593 students, making India the 12th most popular destination, just behind countries such as Japan and Argentina.Numbers continued to rise until 2016-17 before entering a prolonged decline that was made worse by the pandemic. The number of US students in India fell by half in 2019-20 dropped to just 16 in 2020-21. While numbers have recovered since, they remain below those of comparable countries such as Brazil, which attracted fewer American students than India before the pandemic.Also read: 'Youth will end up following cockroach': Vice President CP Radhakrishnan warns mediaEducation consultants told HT that the relatively low ranking of Indian universities, differences in academic systems and inadequate infrastructure for international students are among the factors limiting India’s appeal.“Indian universities don’t appear very high in global rankings. If someone has access to colleges that are top ranked in the world, why would they leave that and come to India? Secondly, I think most of the time our curriculum is very clearly laid out and can be very rigid,” said Mrinalini Batra, who runs education consultancy International Education Exchange.Practical concerns such as transferring academic credits to home universities and the inability of many colleges to provide on-campus housing for foreign students could also contributing factors, Batra added.“We are still navigating a prolonged post-pandemic lag. Study abroad programs to Asia have taken significantly longer to recover than those to Europe due to extended travel restrictions. Because student word of mouth is a critical driver for these programs, that multi-year disruption severely fractured the enrolment pipeline to India,” said Raj Echambadi, president of Illinois Institute of Technology.“Historically, India’s appeal has centered on language immersion, cultural agility, and the liberal arts. However, with US higher education increasingly driven by technology disciplines and immediate career outcomes, India must position itself to offer high-value, competitive opportunities in cutting-edge technology, including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and other emerging fields,” he added.Meanwhile, the flow of Indian students to the US has continued to grow. In 2023-24, India overtook China as the largest source of international students in the US, with 331,602 students. That figure rose 9.5% in 2024-25 to 363,019, even as the number of Chinese students in America declined.