India predicts a jobless future
India predicts a jobless future
Saurabh Mukherjea, founder and chief investment officer of Marcellus Investment Managers line inThe Economic Times “get ready for a jobless future”should be reverberating through global higher education strategy rooms because if India cannot generate sufficient white collar work at home then the entire logic chain that underpinned the last fifteen years of global student mobility begins to break apart. The UK, Australia, Canada and the USA have all built major slices of their international student revenue strategy on the assumption that India would continue to supply volume in perpetuity. That infinite demand assumption is now colliding with labour market reality.
Canada operationalised that assumption most aggressively. The UK leveraged the Graduate Route to turn aspiration into conversion. Australia widened, then narrowed, post study access as a lever for volume. The US maintained the most structurally coherent posture through OPT and H1B even during political turbulence. Across the board, institutions and policymakers treated India not as a volatile market but as an inevitable one. That was the structural misread.
HolonIQ modelling shows international student numbers headingtowards seven to nine million globally by 2030. The sector repeats that figure endlessly as if it guarantees continued demand for the Anglosphere. It does not. HolonIQ is modelling total global potential — not a fixed funnel into the four big English-speaking countries. The competitive set is no longer four. It is at least fourteen.
Asia Careers Group longitudinal graduate outcomes data already shows that Indian families price destination choice through an earnings uplift filter rather than brand alone. If India is job tight at home and if graduate conversion into skilled work continues to tighten across the UK, Australia, Canada and the USA, then Indian households will not simply pivot to the next easiest visa regime. They will expand the option set. The next decade will not be a change from Canada to the UK or Australia or the USA. The next decade is a change from four to fourteen.
And once that change occurs, it will not reverse. If domestic white-collar opportunity is weakening and if the cost of studying in London, Sydney, Toronto or Boston cannot be justified by post-degree salary uplift then the market will not collapse — it will reroute. Because if the endpoint is not secure skilled employment, then the proposition of paying one hundred thousand pounds for a foreign credential becomes economically irrational.
Germany now hosts more than forty-two thousand Indian students and India is now Germany’s largest sending country. The UAE hosts more than one hundred thousand international students across Dubai and Abu Dhabi withIndian nationals consistently the largest cohort at 42%. Malaysia hosts around one hundred and sixty thousand international students with an official target of two hundred and fifty thousand by 2025. Singapore continues to attract Indian graduate students at master’s level because of market adjacency and clear salary signalling in business and tech.
Japan and South Korea are expanding English medium postgraduate provision in AI, robotics and advanced manufacturing and India is now a priority source market in both. Italy, Spain, Poland and the Netherlands remain attractive because costs are lower and political toxicity is lower. Ireland continues to benefit from tight alignment with skill shortages in tech and finance. The Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar, is using scholarship instruments and global campus imports to reverse flows.
The idea that the Anglosphere will automatically capture HolonIQ seven to nine million is a fantasy held by those who still believe history is destiny. It is not destiny. It is preference. And preference follows perceived return.
Indias NEP 2020 target of fifty percent higher education participation means that India is expanding domestic capacity, effectively doubling participation by 2035. Nine UK universities have already been approved to establish campuses in India, and several Australian institutions are following under UGC regulations. But this too rests on the same fragile assumption that a foreign degree automatically produces wage uplift in India. TNE is not immune to labour market risk. A UK or Australian branch campus in Bengaluru, Hyderabad or Delhi cannot count on brand alone if the graduates cannot convert that brand into materially better employment outcomes.
The sector likes to speak of TNE as a defensive hedge against tightening visa regimes in the UK, Australia and Canada. But a TNE hedge only works if the labour market sees the foreign delivered credential as economically superior to domestic alternatives. If India is structurally job constrained, then TNE becomes stranded capital. A branch campus can’t rise above weak employment demand just because it carries a foreign brand. If graduates struggle to find skilled work, the campus is pulled under by the same market forces. TNE doesn’t escape the demand curve; it is ruled by it.
Detailed Asia Careers Group analysis of more than twenty thousand international graduate outcomes relating to Malaysia shows this dynamic clearly and aligns directly with David FitzPatrick’s warning in Malaysia that only those who secure skilled work generate the salary premium and while the premium can be high, it is not guaranteed. The Nottingham Malaysia experience matters because it is evidence, not ideology.
The lesson is brutally simple: demand is only real if it converts into employability. HolonIQ seven to nine million is not demand. It is potential demand. Actual demand is conditional demand. It converts only if the Indian household can rationally expect return on investment in Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi or Dubai or Singapore or Frankfurt. Asia Careers Group outcome pipelines show that investing in international futures is possible for all major destinations now but only if institutions can evidence uplift rather than assert it. Indian families do not decide based on sentiment. They decide based on risk. And risk has just changed direction.
So the sector must now talk about outcomes, not destinations. The big question is no longer whether Canada or the UK or Australia will win share. The question is which universities, in any jurisdiction, can prove salary uplift, time to job, sector-specific outcomes and geographic mobility. Which institutions can demonstrate that their Indian graduates outperform domestic graduates in actual labour markets. Which institutions can show that the foreign degree accelerates wage progression, not merely produces an offer letter. This is the evidentiary test the sector has avoided for a decade because it was easier to chase volume than to prove value. But the labour market is now calling the bluff.
India’s outbound decade is not ending. It is becoming a risk adjusted ROI decade and Asia Careers Group sits directly in that space tracking real longitudinal return on investment for Indian graduates across the UK, Australia and Malaysia. There will still be Indian demand. There will not be unearned Indian demand. Families will not choose the UK simply because the Graduate Route exists. They will choose the UK only if the UK produces superior outcomes to Germany, Singapore, Malaysia or the UAE. They will not choose Australia because it is familiar. They will choose Australia only if the uplift justifies the cost of living in Melbourne or Sydney. They will not choose Canada simply because approvals were once high. They will choose Canada only if Canada can produce post-degree return, not merely post-degree presence. They will not choose a UK or Australian branch campus in India because it is closer to home. They will choose it only if its outcome profile outperforms high-end Indian private universities.
HolonIQ seven to nine million projection is not a comfort blanket for incumbents. It is a warning. The world will not lose Indian demand. The world will lose unearned Indian demand. The next decade belongs to universities and systems that can prove the return, not just sell the dream.
