At 2:13 AM, Aarav was in his room in Indore, looking at the I-20 from a U.S. university he had been trying to get into for three years. GRE done, IELTS passed, admission granted, and loan pre-approved. He had practised saying goodbye at the airport so many times that it felt like it had been scripted. He folded the letter and told his parents he wasn’t going. Surely his parents didn’t expect this from their son, after all the efforts he had put in to get this. 

There are thousands of others like him. According to data from the Bureau of Immigration, 9.08 lakh Indians went abroad to study in 2023. In 2024, it dropped to 7.7 lakh, and in 2025, it dropped to 6.26 lakh, a 31% drop in two years. 

That means there are 2,82,000 fewer students at the gates of departure. This number might not show how big the deal is, but it’s the same as the number of people who live in big cities in India, like Shimla. 

Union Minister Sukanta Majumdar put these numbers on record in the Rajya Sabha. This is information about leaving the airport. Real departures left the country.

This changes the field you’re playing on if you’re 22. When movement drops this quickly, it usually means that costs are going up, getting a visa is harder, or post-study outcomes are worse. Three lakh people don’t change their plans just because they want to look good.

Why Are They Staying?

1. The money is heavier than it looks

Raghav from Lucknow scored 7.5 on IELTS and was accepted by a university in Canada. His dad had begun to check the exchange rates in the morning over chai. Then Canada hits its study permit limit in 2024. Raghav did not panic, but he simply allowed the loan process to die and the offer to expire. A U.S. or UK master’s degree costs ₹35-55 lakh in tuition alone, not to mention rent in Boston or London. The EMI begins prior to the very first paycheck.

2. The truth about visa

The U.S. still has the OPT scheme, but the H-1B is still a lottery with a limited number of spots. Not only is approval based on merit, but also on chance. The UK only allowed dependent visas for a few master’s programs.

When post-study work rights seem conditional, the degree is no longer just an academic choice. It turns into a gamble for immigrants

3. The question of ROI

Ten years ago, “foreign degree” was like a brand name. Employers today ask more specific questions, like what skills do you have, what internships have you done, and what market experience do you have?

In the meantime, salaries in Indian tech, consulting, and startups have gone up enough that they can now offer packages worth ₹20–30 lakh without a ₹50 lakh loan. Add worries about safety in some host countries and changing work rules, and the math changes.

Students are not less driven; they are less likely to take risks.

How This Looks in Real Life

Raghav from Lucknow got a 7.5 on the IELTS and was accepted to a school in Canada. His father had started looking at exchange rates every day. After that, the limit on study permits for 2024 was reached. Telegram groups are full of people who said no or deferred. Raghav, in response, did not overreact, but he simply stopped the loan process and let the offer run out.

Megha in Hyderabad saw three seniors come back from the U.S. just a few months after they graduated. They had degrees but no jobs that matched their field before work authorization got stricter. Her parents had already sold off some of their investments to help her apply. She opened her Excel sheet again and did the math again.

Arjun’s plan for the UK was clear: get a master’s degree in one year, a post-study work visa for two years, and switch jobs by the third year. The math was wrong because of dependent visa restrictions and rising living costs. His five-year forecast showed that savings would stay negative for longer than he thought. He put it off.

This is what decline looks like: spreadsheets are opened again, timelines are pushed back, and plans are quietly put on hold.

Can India take the place of the Exit?

Aarav even checked the options before he shut down the laptop. He found out that fourteen foreign universities are currently authorized to establish campuses in India, with five being in GIFT City, Gujarat. The New Education Policy (NEP 2020) will guarantee credit to banks and research funding. Theoretically, the domestic choice is as good as it has ever been.

Aarav was not simply purchasing a degree. He was buying a zip code — the chance to intern in the same city as the companies he wanted to work for, to build a network in the market he wanted to enter. A branch campus in Gandhinagar can give him the syllabus. It can’t give him that.

Whether employers will come one day to take an Indian campus degree just as they do in the home university in overseas countries? Nobody knows yet. The answer to that question will not be government announcements, but that of hiring managers.

The Question We’re Not Answering

Aarav’s admission is still good for a year. The PDF is in a folder called “Fall.” There was no explosion. Not a single email saying no. After recalculating debt against odds, a decision was made at 2:13 a.m.

Scale that moment up to 282,000 homes.

Is this proof that domestic opportunity has gotten strong enough to compete? Or is it proof that rising costs and stricter borders are making it too expensive for a generation that was told the world was open?

Ambition hasn’t gotten any less. The runway has.

And a shorter runway makes it harder to take off at a higher altitude.