By Dr Ramakrishnan Raman
As India’s global education footprint expands, the journey of studying abroad is no longer shaped solely by individual ambition or national policy. Increasingly, state-level interventions are playing a defining role in widening access, reshaping aspirations, and enabling a more diverse cohort of students to pursue international education. This evolving landscape reflects a deeper structural shift, where opportunity is being decentralised and the pathways to global learning are becoming more inclusive and regionally driven.
Over 1.3 million Indian students are currently studying abroad. That number gets cited often. What gets discussed far less is the structural story sitting beneath it – one that has shifted considerably in the past three years, and that is being shaped as much by policy choices in state capitals as by individual ambition.
States as enablers
The Central Government’s overseas scholarship schemes and bilateral exchange fellowships are reasonably well documented. Less visible, yet arguably more consequential for a much larger section of students, is the scholarship architecture that has quietly taken shape at the state level.
The Telangana government offers overseas education scholarships of up to ₹20 lakh for eligible SC, ST, BC/EBC, and minority students pursuing studies at reputed universities abroad, along with one-way airfare and visa support. Kerala runs its own Overseas Scholarship Scheme for OBC students, providing assistance of up to ₹10 lakh for admission to institutions ranked within the Times Higher Education top 300. Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu have introduced complementary initiatives, including subsidised education loans at interest rates below four per cent.
Most state schemes follow a need-cum-merit framework, and that design choice matters more than it might appear. It is an implicit acknowledgement that a student from rural Nalgonda and one from an affluent Hyderabad neighbourhood do not begin from the same starting line. The policy architecture, at its best, is trying to account for that.
The tier-2 city surge
Perhaps the most structurally significant shift in India’s outbound education story is geographic.
In 2024, approximately 57 per cent of study-abroad aspirants came from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities – surpassing metros for the first time. Cities such as Warangal, Vadodara, Ludhiana, Kottayam, and Nagpur are now meaningful contributors to India’s global student mobility numbers, not footnotes to a larger metro-driven trend.
Financial data tells the same story. According to Prodigy Finance, education loan applications from Tier-2 cities rose by 53 per cent and from Tier-3 cities by 109 per cent in 2022 alone. These are not marginal movements. They represent a structural reorientation of where overseas education aspiration in India actually lives.
The causes are several and reinforcing. Rising household incomes among India’s non-metro middle class. The expansion of English-medium schooling and competitive exam coaching into smaller towns. And the rapid spread of digital access, which has reduced the information asymmetries that once made overseas education a largely metropolitan privilege. A student in Kottayam today can research universities, attend virtual open days, and connect with alumni abroad in ways that were simply not possible a decade ago.
International education comes home
One of the more consequential industry responses to this surge in aspiration is the growing availability of internationally affiliated programmes within India itself.
Under the UGC framework, twinning and dual-degree arrangements allow Indian students to begin their studies domestically and complete a portion abroad, ultimately earning a globally recognised qualification. Today, more than 400 foreign universities maintain active collaborations with Indian institutions – a number that has grown substantially since the National Education Policy 2020 formally invited global universities to establish a presence in India.
Co-credentialed degrees in management, engineering, and data science are expanding across cities including Hyderabad, Bhubaneswar, Jaipur, and Kochi. The opening of international branch campuses including Deakin University and the University of Wollongong at GIFT City – signals a trajectory that is likely to deepen further as regulatory confidence on both sides grows.
For a first-generation student in a Tier-2 city, these hybrid models are not a compromise. They represent, in many cases, the most financially realistic and academically credible gateway to a global qualification. The industry would do well to take them seriously as a distinct and growing segment, not as a consolation category.
Where the gaps remain
The democratisation of aspiration is real. The infrastructure to support it has not kept pace.
State scholarship schemes remain scattered across departmental portals with no single discovery window. A first-generation student in a small town who qualifies for multiple overlapping state, central, and institutional scholarships has no reliable way of knowing that. A unified national portal covering both central and state funding opportunities with eligibility filters, application deadlines, and counselling links is overdue.
The counselling gap is, if anything, more urgent. In smaller towns, quality guidance is genuinely hard to find. The vacuum has been partly filled by unregulated private consultancies operating with little accountability, and in too many cases, first-generation applicants are left worse informed than before they sought help. This is not a peripheral problem. It affects access at scale.
English readiness and university application literacy are no longer soft skills – they determine access. Treating them as foundational public investments, not afterthoughts in state education budgets, would do more to democratise overseas education outcomes than many better-publicised interventions.
The road ahead
India’s outbound education story has entered a new chapter. The students driving it are younger, from smaller cities, increasingly first-generation in their families, and navigating a more complex set of choices than their metro counterparts did a decade ago. The institutions, platforms, lenders, and governments that serve them need to be organised around that reality, not around the older, simpler version of the story.
The aspiration is genuinely broad. Whether it translates into opportunity at the same scale will depend on decisions being made right now – in state budgets, in regulatory frameworks, in the quality of counselling infrastructure, and in how seriously the industry takes the responsibility that comes with serving a generation of students for whom the stakes are particularly high.
– The author is the Vice Chancellor, Symbiosis International (Deemed) University, Pune
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETEducation does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETEducation will not be responsible for any damage caused to any person or organisation directly or indirectly.
