标签： Asia

For nearly a decade, India has held the title of the world’s largest sender of international students, with more than 1.2 million Indian students enrolled in overseas higher education institutions as of 2025. But a confluence of economic pressures, shifting immigration policies, and dimmed post-graduation job prospects is upending this long-standing trend, forcing hundreds of thousands of aspirational middle-class students to rethink their dreams of studying abroad.

Pragati Priya, a 29-year-old content creator from Jharkhand in eastern India, spent years planning to pursue a master’s degree overseas. This September, she will finally depart for Rome to study global economic affairs, a step she hopes will unlock high-value professional opportunities across Europe. But her excitement for the adventure ahead is tempered by sharp anxiety, sparked by the Indian rupee’s steep, sustained depreciation against major global currencies including the euro.

The plummeting rupee has pushed her required student loan balance far higher than she originally projected, leaving her questioning whether she made the right choice. “It has kept me up at night. I don’t want to burden myself with a student loan that I will never finish repaying,” Priya shared in an interview with the BBC. “I considered dropping my plans, but my parents and sister promised to support me. That’s the only reason I’m able to take this risk.”

Priya’s dilemma is far from unique. It reflects a growing crisis across India’s middle class, where studying abroad has long been viewed as a ticket to upward social and economic mobility. Today, a weakening rupee, bleak post-graduation job outlooks in traditional study destinations like the U.S. and UK, stricter visa rules, and hardened immigration policies have combined to make the cost of an overseas degree far too high for many to bear. Unlike Priya, most aspirants do not have a family safety net to absorb the rising costs, and that shift is already showing up in official enrolment data for the popular September intake at global universities.

Sushil Sukhwani, founder of Edwise International — one of India’s leading student placement firms that sends thousands of Indian students to overseas universities annually — says the slowdown in demand for traditional destinations is unmistakable. “We’ve already seen enrolments to the UK and US fall by 20% over the last two years, and I expect another 10-15% decline from those levels going forward,” he said.

Tougher visa requirements have already driven significant declines: 76% of UK universities reported drops in Indian student enrolment for the 2026 January intake, while U.S. institutions saw a nearly 7% fall in Indian student enrolment between February 2025 and February 2026. The rupee’s decline has only compounded these challenges, for both new applicants and students already studying overseas. Since 2019, the rupee has depreciated between 35% and 47% against the currencies of the world’s top study destinations, including a more than 10% drop against the U.S. dollar in just the last 12 months. “Many students who are already abroad have paid part of their tuition fees, but are now having to refinance loans and arrange additional funding to cover future instalments,” Sukhwani explained.

Beyond rising upfront costs, post-graduation prospects have dimmed dramatically for many Indian students. While a small share of graduates have secured well-paying jobs and built stable careers overseas, climbing into professional roles in trained fields has become increasingly difficult. Sudhanshu Kaushik, founder of the North America Association of Indian Students in Washington, says many graduates now end up working full-time in the gig economy just to make ends meet — a shift that was once only a temporary side gig to fund education. This reality has eroded willingness among Indian families to take on the massive risk of taking on debt for an overseas degree, particularly as the weaker rupee has pushed total costs to record highs.

Even with these headwinds, overall demand for foreign education among Indian students remains strong. What is shifting dramatically is where students are choosing to go. Forecasts from the 2026 Global Student Flows Report predict that Indian student enrolment in the U.S., UK, Canada, and Australia — the “big four” traditional destinations — will decline by an average of 0.5% annually through 2030. At the same time, demand for alternative European destinations has surged.

“Countries such as Germany, Ireland, Italy and several other European destinations are attracting increasing interest from Indian students because of lower tuition costs, favourable post-study work pathways, strong employment prospects and a more attractive overall value proposition,” said Mayank Maheshwari, co-founder and COO of student accommodation platform University Living. Edwise International has already shifted its operational focus to these emerging destinations to match growing student interest, and the cost advantage is a major draw for students like Priya, who chose Italy specifically because its tuition costs are roughly half of what she would have paid in the UK, while the U.S. was entirely out of reach due to longer program lengths and far higher price tags.

For the U.S. and UK, which have built decades of global influence around their world-leading higher education sectors, this trend carries significant long-term risks. India remains one of the largest single sources of international students for both nations, even as enrolment from China has slowed in recent years. Kaushik argues that a perfect storm of overlapping factors — the depreciating rupee, post-pandemic job market weakness, AI disruption to entry-level roles, visa restrictions, and the current U.S. administration’s restrictive immigration policies — has created a lose-lose situation for all parties.

“No one wins,” Kaushik said. “The students suffer, the universities suffer, college towns suffer and the broader economy suffers. For the U.S. especially, this trend risks undermining one of its most successful sources of influence abroad. We are retreating from the gains we made in promoting higher education as one of our most influential and profitable forms of soft power.”

Across professional sectors in France, a pressing question lingers: do education, professional status and institutional integration shield veiled Muslim women from rising Islamophobia? For Paris Court of Appeal lawyer Slim Ben Achour, a leading expert in equality and anti-discrimination law, the answer is a firm no. Ben Achour, who has represented dozens of Muslim women targeted for workplace discrimination over their headscarves, argues that higher education and greater public visibility actually make educated, professional veiled women more vulnerable to racist targeting.

EDINBURGH — Scottish counter-terrorism policing units have launched a formal investigation into a string of coordinated violent attacks that left five Muslim men injured across the city Friday, in assaults that top UK officials have confirmed were driven by overt anti-Muslim bigotry.

Five men between the ages of 22 and 36, all targeted because of their Muslim identity, were hurt in the linked incidents, authorities confirmed. Three of the victims were taken to local hospitals for treatment of injuries that are not considered life-threatening.

Shortly after the attacks, police took a 36-year-old white Scottish man into custody. He faces multiple charges including making threats, committing robbery, and vandalism related to the violent incidents. Witnesses and arresting officers allege that during his detainment, the suspect shouted explicit anti-Muslim slurs, claiming he was “protecting” the country from what he falsely framed as a threat to children from Muslim communities. Unconfirmed social media footage circulating after the arrest also appears to show the suspect carrying a weapon during the attacks.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer publicly condemned the violence in a post on the social platform X, calling the attacks “absolutely appalling.” Starmer emphasized that the suspected hate motive was clear, stating, “I will not tolerate this — he will face the full force of the law.” Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney echoed the condemnation, saying he was “deeply concerned” by the incidents, adding that “there is no place for violence, racism or intolerance in our country.”

Muslim advocacy groups across the UK have gone further, calling for authorities to explicitly classify the attacks as far-right Islamistophobic terrorism, arguing that the suspect’s publicly stated motive leaves no room for ambiguity. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said the attacks were not an isolated incident, tracing them to a broader culture of divisive political rhetoric that demonizes entire Muslim communities. The organization noted the attacks came just weeks after targeted anti-minity violence in Belfast, warning that escalating bigotry is directly enabled by dehumanizing political discourse.

A spokesperson for UK-based non-profit Muslim Engagement and Development stressed that authorities must acknowledge the clear hate motive behind the attacks. “To investigate these attacks while ignoring a motive shouted aloud at the point of arrest would tell every Muslim in Scotland that the law does not see the hatred aimed at them,” the group said.

The Edinburgh attacks align with a documented recent surge in anti-Muslim hate crime across the UK, newly released data shows. Metropolitan Police statistics published in early June reveal that Islamophobic hate offenses jumped 33 percent between April and May this year, rising from 135 reported cases to 179 — the highest monthly count recorded since August 2024. The sharp upward trend followed a period of decline in late 2025 and early 2026, but began spiking in March shortly after the UK government implemented a revised official definition of anti-Muslim hostility, a change that advocacy groups say has emboldened bigots.

Millions of aspiring medical students across India sat for a high-stakes do-over entrance exam on Sunday, with authorities rolling out sweeping, unprecedented security measures to prevent a repeat of the paper leak scandal that forced the cancellation of the original test in May.

The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate), better known as NEET-UG, is the mandatory gateway for admission to all government and private medical colleges across India. For the millions of test-takers that compete annually, only a tiny fraction earn one of the extremely coveted spots at top institutions. The notoriously tough exam requires months, and often years, of intensive preparation, making the May cancellation a devastating blow for the 2.28 million candidates who had already sat the initial test.

Allegations that the original exam paper had been illegally leaked and sold to test-takers sparked mass public protests across the country, with widespread calls for Indian Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to step down. Pradhan rejected the demands and addressed candidates ahead of Sunday’s retest, urging them: “Sit fearlessly, without worry, and you will definitely do well.”

This time around, authorities left no room for security gaps, deploying a multi-layered defense against cheating across 5,440 test centers nationwide, which contain more than 95,000 individual exam rooms. To eliminate the risk of tampering during transit, the Indian Air Force was tasked with flying new question papers to remote and high-risk regions. Uniformed police and paramilitary personnel were posted at every center, with drone patrols and specialized canine squads scanning perimeters for unauthorized activity.

Upon arrival, every candidate underwent biometric identity verification, full body frisking, and searches by security personnel that included inspections of hair, jewelry, and clothing. In a controversial policy, strict dress codes were enforced: enclosed shoes were banned, and many women candidates were required to remove nose pins, earrings, and traditional sacred wrist threads to avoid any risk of hiding electronic cheating devices. A total of nearly 39,000 screening staff were hired nationwide, with 40 to 50 security personnel stationed at each individual center.

Inside exam rooms, every space was covered by closed-circuit television, adding up to more than 1.3 million security cameras across the country. 51,311 signal jammers were activated at all centers to block mobile phone signals and prevent electronic interference that could aid cheating. As an additional precaution, the popular messaging platform Telegram was temporarily blocked nationwide through Monday, over concerns that the app had been used to coordinate illegal paper sharing in the May leak. Officials also warned candidates to ignore false paper leak rumors circulating on social media, which they said were designed to cause unnecessary stress and mislead test-takers.

Despite the unprecedented security deployment, many candidates remained anxious about the repeat exam, recalling that this is not India’s first high-profile exam cheating scandal. One student, Diksha, told reporters: “There is fear because the exam paper has leaked once already. This is not a one-off thing, it happens every year. This time the authorities got to know about it and are holding the exam again, which is in a way a good thing because the students who worked hard should get fair results. But to study and prepare again in one month… to stay consistent is difficult.”

NEET-UG is a 3-hour-and-15-minute multiple-choice exam covering physics, chemistry, and biology, with intense competition that pushes many candidates to pay for expensive private tutoring to boost their chances. The high stakes have created a profitable black market for organized crime networks that run exam fraud schemes, selling leaked question papers to well-funded candidates for large sums.

The investigation into the May paper leak has been handed over to India’s top federal law enforcement agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). This incident also comes amid a string of recent testing controversies in the country: in 2024, NEET-UG was already roiled by allegations of paper leaks, fraud, and irregularities in grace mark awarding that sparked nationwide protests after thousands of candidates received unusually high scores. Earlier this year, thousands of 12th-grade students – the equivalent of UK A-level candidates – raised complaints of widespread marking errors after the rollout of a new digital grading system.