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Goodbye Bangalore, Hello Punjab: Foreign students shift their choices
India hosted just 46,878 foreign students in 2021–22, barely 0.10 percent of total enrollment. The NITI paper bluntly calls India a “semi-peripheral” host.
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R Suryamurthy - Thu, 20, Nov 2025
- 11:51 EST
- 18
Representative image / Pexels
India’s map of foreign-student inflows is shifting faster than policymakers admit. A new NITI Aayog working paper shows that Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and Andhra Pradesh are rapidly emerging as the country’s biggest magnets for international students, while Karnataka and Tamil Nadu—once the pillars of India’s inbound ecosystem—are seeing their dominance crumble.
Karnataka’s slump is the starkest indicator of the churn. In 2012–13, the state enrolled 13,182 foreign students. By 2021–22, that number had collapsed to 5,954, a stunning 55 percent fall for what was once India’s default destination for engineering and management aspirants.
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