By Hemant Verma
Each year, India sends more students abroad than any other country. As of 2025, over 1.8 million Indian students are studying overseas, up from 1.3 million in 2023. Families spent a huge Rs 75,000 crore on foreign education for just a year, mostly raised through loans, savings, and long-term debt. Then, what do we get in return?
A widening gap between the aspirations of our youth and the capability of our education system. A disconnect between Indian talent and Indian institutions. And worse, an increasing number of students stuck in immigration limbo as countries like Canada, the UK, and even Australia tighten visa rules and dependent permits.
Brain drain
Critics may point to the Indian student migration story towards the lack of world-class options at home. Yes, we have IITs, IIMs, and a few reputed private universities. For the million students currently in higher education in India, that isn’t enough. The system is overstretched, uneven, and in many cases, outdated. Students from these universities complain there is little global exposure and interdisciplinary learning, or a kind of research needed for this fast-moving world.
Hence, students and their parents look abroad, not because they want to leave India, but because they feel forced to. This is the crux of the problem.
Global excellence
We must ask: Why should academic credibility come with a foreign stamp? Why can’t we build our own Harvards – Indian universities, built with Indian capital, shaped by Indian needs, and respected globally? That’s not a pipe dream.
The Vedanta Group’s recent Rs 15,000 crore announcement to build a next-generation Education City, including a multidisciplinary university, research hubs, and medical institutions, is a step in that direction. Structured as a non-profit, it revives the group’s vision from 2009, when the Odisha Assembly passed the Vedanta University Bill aimed at creating one of Asia’s most advanced campuses.
We need 15 such efforts. Private universities like Ashoka, OP Jindal Global, Shiv Nadar, and Plaksha are trying to create world-class campuses with international faculty, global linkages, and strong research orientation. But they alone can’t shift the needle.
Foreign universities
India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 offers a roadmap. It encourages multidisciplinary campuses, skill-based learning, and aims to increase our gross enrolment ratio in higher education to 50% by 2035.
It opens the door for top global universities to set up campuses in India, and we’ve already many such coming.
These are welcome steps, but not enough.
As someone who has worked with NEP implementation at the state level, policy by itself cannot build institutions. That takes leadership, capital, and most importantly, trust in Indian students, Indian ideas, and Indian ambition.
Strategic infrastructure
We don’t see airports or expressways as profit-first businesses. We build them because the country needs them. We should look at higher education the same way.
India wants to lead in semiconductors, AI, clean energy, and deep tech. But we cannot do that with institutions that treat education as a mechanical process of degrees and placements. We need universities that are centres of invention, debate, and creation. That takes serious investment, not just in buildings, but in people, curriculum, and purpose.
It also takes inclusion. These institutions must not be elite silos. They must provide access across regions, income levels, and backgrounds, so that India’s next big innovator doesn’t get missed because they didn’t have the money or the language fluency to make it abroad.
Talent needs platform
Indian students shine globally. They’re at the top of their classes at Stanford and Oxford. They’re running labs at NASA and companies in Silicon Valley. Our problem is the lack of Indian institutions where this talent feels challenged, supported, and excited.
That’s a failure we must fix, because if we don’t, we will keep losing our best minds – at the very time we need them most.
Brain gain
The next two decades will determine whether India remains a source of global talent or becomes a destination for it. We can’t get there with branding. We can’t get there with slogans. We’ll only get there by building world-class universities that earn global respect. Let’s stop celebrating how many students we send abroad. Let’s start measuring success by how many choose to stay, not because they have to, but because they truly want to. India must build at least 10 global-standard universities in the next five years, backed by government policy, private capital, and philanthropic courage. The future of India’s knowledge economy depends on it..
The author is vice-chancellor at SGT University.
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