After massive dip, foreign student arrivals up 14% | Bengaluru News – Times of India

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BENGALURU: After a massive dip of 72% in 2020 — a year that saw extraordinary measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 — the number of foreign students arriving in India has seen a 14% increase in 2021. Most are from the immediate neighbourhood.
Data from the ministry of external affairs (MEA) shows 23,439 foreigners arrived in India on student visas between January and December 2021, compared to 20,561 in 2020. To put that in context, the number was 74,689 in 2019.

Data from 2016 to 2021 shows more than 3.3 lakh foreigners from more than 160 countries came to India on student visas. The highest number of such visas were issued in 2019, followed by 2018 (72,268). The two other years also saw more than 70,000 people obtain such visas.
Vikram Shroff, an expert on immigration law with Nishith Desai Associates, said: “I expect the Centre to further ease Covid-19 travel restrictions in a phased manner. Given the importance of education, getting students back to Indian universities should be a priority. While online education has played a crucial role, research and networking opportunities are indispensable for higher education. India’s focus should be on attracting foreign students by promoting Indian universities and to exceed the 2018 and 2019 intake levels by next year.”
Students from Bangladesh (45,250) and Afghanistan (39,111) — together accounting for a quarter of such arrivals in the past six years — outnumber others by a huge margin. Among the top countries that exported students to India during the period are Malaysia (20,758), Sudan (15,126), Sri Lanka (14,635), Thailand (13,423), Yemen (11,437), Republic of Korea (10,135), Iran (9,960) and Iraq (7,113). These 10 countries account for more than 45% of overall arrivals.
In 2021, 47% of students came from Bangladesh (3,565), Afghanistan (3,431), Sri Lanka (1,599), Tanzania (1,426) and Sudan (1,088).
TV Mohandas Pai, chairman, Aavin Capital Funds, said: “While the increase is welcome, there is a lot to do. India has 7.5 lakh students studying outside the country but only a small number come here from abroad. We should identify the top 100 institutions and enable them to market education to ensure we get around 1 lakh or 1.5 lakh foreign students coming here.”
Another expert said it will take at least two years to reach 2019 levels.
“There is a need for globalisation of Indian education,” Pai said. “We need to give our top institutions freedom to get global students. There are about 3-4 million students globally and a lot of them are Indians, whose parents spend about $20 billion each year to educate them. This is more than the Union government’s budget for higher education. We cannot have global institutions without global students. Poor policy has depleted our resources, diminished our names and hurt us very badly.”

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