Asia helps to redraw the map of international HE – Report

Asia helps to redraw the map of international HE – Report

With more than 20,000 English language programmes offered across the region, China, India, Malaysia, Japan and lately Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia are attracting overseas students, particularly from the Asian region itself, according to a new report by Studyportals and the British Council.

The report on emerging student mobility trends in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa noted that Asia is leading both in the number of Transnational Education (TNE) institutions and ranked universities in absolute terms, having risen from 200 a decade ago to nearly 600 world-ranked institutions by 2025.

Asian universities have also doubled their numbers in the top 100-ranked universities during this period.

“A handful of dominant destinations no longer defines international higher education,” noted the report in reference to the traditional English-speaking study destination countries of the United Kingdom, United States, Australia and Canada.

“Today, the competition for globally mobile students is being reshaped by regions that were once seen primarily as sources of outbound demand but are now positioning themselves as destinations in their own right.”

Rising appeal of China, Japan

Comparing demand over the last 12 months (July 2024 to June 2025) against the previous 12 months, Japan and China stand out with the highest levels of student demand overall. Japan leads in attracting masters-level students, while China shows the strongest relative growth for undergraduate degrees.

“This suggests the rising appeal of Chinese institutions, particularly at the undergraduate level. Other major hubs such as Malaysia, India and Taiwan have shown modest yet positive growth in demand, especially for masters, reflecting steady competitiveness in their respective subregions,” according to the report.

However, South Korea and Singapore show significant declines at both undergraduate and masters levels, “indicating waning short-term interest despite being traditionally popular destinations”.

Thailand and Hong Kong have also seen mild to moderate declines or stagnation.

Smaller and emerging Asian destinations provide a more mixed picture of Asia as an inbound destination. Notably, Indonesia and Vietnam experienced sharp increases in demand at the undergraduate level.

This suggests “Southeast Asian countries may be gaining visibility and appeal, possibly due to regional mobility agreements, affordability, or improvements in ETP [English-taught programme] provision,” the report noted.

Several destinations experienced substantial declines over the one-year period, including Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Kyrgyzstan, which the report suggested may be due to “lack of marketing reach”. Other experts have said student unrest in some of these countries may also be a factor.

On Asia, the report concludes: “While Northeast and Southeast Asia have anchored the region’s competitiveness as a destination region, the landscape is shifting.

“Demand is consolidating around a few dominant countries, but emerging destinations like Vietnam and Indonesia are gaining traction, particularly at the undergraduate level. Meanwhile, destinations like Singapore, South Korea, and Sri Lanka may need to recalibrate their positioning to address factors contributing to falling demand.”

Established study destinations thrive

Asia’s more established study destinations, such as China, India, Malaysia and South Korea, continue to show they can attract large numbers of students.

“In particular, India stands out with a notable expansion” at both undergraduate and masters levels, which the report said was “a strong signal of the country’s ambition to grow its role as a global education hub and aligns well with the concurrent rise in demand, particularly for masters study”.

Singapore also recorded significant supply growth, “although this comes against the backdrop of declining student demand, suggesting possible oversupply or market saturation”, the report said.

Conversely, institutions in China, Japan and South Korea have either reduced or maintained the number of English-taught programmes.

“Rather than signalling a lack of student interest, this shift may reflect a more strategic recalibration by Chinese institutions, potentially focusing on offers with clearer international appeal or stronger enrolment prospects,” the report noted.

The report highlights that students are increasingly considering value for money, online and blended learning, and clear career pathways in their decision-making. South Asia still dominates outbound flows within Asia, with India, Pakistan and Bangladesh generating the majority of demand.

But their destinations are not predominantly English-speaking countries. The report noted that there is a rising appeal for Chinese institutions.

“In the current times, China is welcoming students from all over the world to live and experience it firsthand for academic collaboration, language exchange, and cultural understanding,” said Fariha, a Pakistani masters degree student at Wuhan University.

“I chose China for my masters study because I think it is a very decisive time in modern history, and it is important to understand China in such times when the world order is changing its course,” said Fariha, who has been studying environmental communication and global development for the past year.

“Growing up with a Western influence and now getting a chance to live in China opens my mind to so many possibilities. Seeing the world through a Chinese lens is just so different and unique.”

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), its global development strategy launched in 2013 to connect Asia with Africa and Europe through maritime and land-based networks, is driving the flow of students across the region, with young people eager to tap into the opportunities this is creating as transport, trade and business links expand across Asia.

Writing for McKinsey and Company, global strategy advisor Parag Khanna argued that the BRI is just the beginning of the next phase of Asia’s integration through infrastructure developments, trade agreements, rising volumes of foreign investment and local currency debt, and growing cross-border liquidity.

“We live in a globalised world, and yet we have a great intellectual divergence underway between the slow-growing, inward-looking, xenophobic, pessimistic, anti-trade and globalisation West and the optimistic, forward-looking, ‘the world’s getting better’ thinking, pro-globalisation Asia,” he said.

Outbound from Asia

At the undergraduate level, outbound students from Asia dominate. With Bangladesh accounting for 28.6% of the share of outbound demand from Asia – an 8.3% increase from July 2023 to June 2025 – Pakistan accounting for a 20% share, and India 17.6%.

Collectively, these countries account for over two-thirds of all Asian interest. “This concentration highlights how structural factors are pushing students in these markets to look abroad at scale,” the report noted.

The share of outbound students from India and Sri Lanka at the undergraduate level fell by 3.4 percentage points and 3.2 percentage points, respectively.

“In India’s case, this may reflect tightening visa pathways in the United Kingdom and Australia or a growing diversion of interest to local international campuses and domestic expansion,” the report stated.

At masters level, India remains a dominant source of student demand, accounting for nearly one-third (32.7%) of all regional demand. However, its share has dropped sharply by 8.1 percentage points over the past year.

“This notable drop may hint at the impact that tighter post-study work rights, more stringent visa scrutiny, and possibly the emergence of alternative destinations in Europe may have had in the last two years.”

The report noted that these trends show that “while the large shares of demand from South Asia [offer] institutions scale and stability, [they] also [raise] questions around over-reliance. There is a risk that the outsized presence of a few major markets may drown out the strategic importance of smaller but equally promising countries across East and Southeast Asia.”

A bright spot in India

While the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have been climbing in global rankings and their graduates are finding employment in some of the world’s biggest corporations, the Studyportals and British Council report highlighted a largely unknown township of Udupi as a particularly bright spot in India’s TNE expansion, with its Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) expanding its portfolio to 400 programmes within the last year.

“MAHE has been attracting students for a long time to its programmes in medicine, dentistry, allied health and engineering,” Dr Padma Rani, a professor at the Manipal Institute of Communication at MAHE, told University World News.

“In medicine, students took basic courses here at MAHE for two years and then completed their clinical subjects in Malaysia or Antigua, a Caribbean island where MAHE has established its own university.”

She said they have a large number of students joining courses from neighbouring countries, such as Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka, as well as from the Middle East and African countries, such as Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

“The university also has an exchange programme and an observership programme with universities in the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Sweden and Belgium,” she said.

The report acknowledges such developments and says that universities in the Asian region are not simply peripheral to the global education system but are actively shaping it.

“The dominance of Anglophone destinations remains, but it is no longer uncontested, as Asia is establishing itself as the clearest, dominant leader. With the largest portfolio of English-taught programmes, rapid growth in its TNE landscape, and rising institutional visibility in global rankings,” it states.