Where Have All the International Students Gone?

December 8, 2025

Where Have All the International Students Gone?

“Where have all the flowers gone?” asked Pete Seeger in 1955. Today, the question could just as easily be: where have all the international students gone? For decades, they flowed into the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, lured by the implicit promise of high-quality education, post-study work and a path to settlement. That promise has fractured, and the flows are re-routing.

Across much of the West, rhetoric around international students has curdled into suspicion. Politicians increasingly frame them as a migration risk or a strain on housing. Governments have responded with tighter caps, higher fees and tougher visa rules. Unsurprisingly, students are looking elsewhere, to Asia, continental Europe and the Middle East. “Long time passing” indeed.

From America with love — to America with walls

For Indian students, the US ladder—study → H-1B → green card—once felt dependable. That ladder is now shaky. President Trump’s announcement of a US$100,000 fee for each new H-1B visa sent a blunt signal to employers and students alike.

Early market indicators suggest the pipeline is already weakening: July 2025 arrivals of international students to the US fell 28.5% year-on-year, according to immigration data, and sector modelling warns that a 30–40% drop in new international enrolments could translate into an overall 15% decline and US$7bn revenue loss if conditions persist.

As I argued in University World News (“Students have been sold a dream by agents and universities”, 5 Feb 2025), the US long sold an implicit “study here, work here, stay here” story. When that pathway narrows, confidence collapses.

And the US is not alone.

The UK: Graduate Route déjà vu

The UK faces the same dilemma. Study-visa applications in August 2025 fell 1.5% year-on-year and 18% versus August 2023, right in peak admissions season. Over the year to June 2025, study-visa grants dipped just over 4%, even as the first half of 2025 showed a temporary rebound, underscoring volatility amid policy churn on salary thresholds, levies and Graduate Route changes.

The UK’s post-study work rights have long swung between openness and restriction—a pendulum that continues to shape its competitiveness. From Theresa May’s 2012 abolition to Boris Johnson’s 2019 reinstatement, international education has been recast as immigration policy in disguise. The Financial Times’s recent deep dive into the “shadow economy” of agents and fee dependence revealed how fragile the UK’s reliance on international tuition has become, especially when visas wobble.

Australia: the end of visa hopping

Australia has closed the era of “visa hopping,” tightened switching rules and raised fees. The signal shows in the data: offshore higher-ed visa grants for Jan–May 2025 were down ~40% year-on-year; by July, overall enrolments across all sectors were 1% lower than the same period in 2024 (with HE up 9% but big falls elsewhere, especially ELICOS). In practice, this means fewer international students can move between visa types to stay longer in Australia, reducing flexibility and dampening interest.

Even with a higher national planning level for 2025/26, targets remain below pre-tightening ambitions and may be difficult to reach. As I noted back in 2023, Australia’s recruitment (over 75% via agents) marketed the country as a migration pathway as much as an educational destination. With the pathway narrowing, students will vote with their feet.

Canada: from safe haven to uncertainty

Canada’s reversal has been starkest. After capping study permits in 2024, IRCC confirmed new study permits fell to ~268,000 in 2024—about a 48% drop year-on-year—and set a 2025 cap allocation of 437,000, a further 10% decrease on the 2024 ceiling.

The sudden cap reflected growing political pressure over housing and affordability, forcing Ottawa to cool a system that had expanded too fast for public comfort. Colleges on the front-line report dramatic permit collapses (some above 90%) as the new regime bites.

In UWN (“Canada’s international education reset,” 14 Dec 2024) I flagged the growing political unease. That unease is now policy, and the once-reliable PR pathway can no longer be assumed.

“Staying put or going beyond”

As traditional destinations tighten, students are charting new paths. If the Anglosphere is losing share, where are students going? Increasingly, to emerging markets closer to home:

Asia: China, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore—strong institutions, competitive costs, more English-medium courses and vibrant hubs (especially Singapore).
Middle East: The UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are rapidly scaling HE ecosystems and branch campuses appealing to South Asian and African students seeking quality without Western migration politics.
Europe: Germany, France, the Nordics and parts of continental Europe remain attractive for lower fees and high quality, even as the Netherlands trims English-medium supply.

This is the multi-polar mobility shift. As the OECD’s latest outlook shows, a growing share of students are selecting non-traditional destinations outside the “big four” Anglophone markets.

The silence of employability

Here is the core problem I keep returning to. As I argued in UWN (“Employability must be the differentiator,” 10 Jan 2024; “The graduate outcomes gap in Asia,” 15 Jun 2024) and expanded in my HEPI essay “International Graduates and the New Employability Challenge” (28 Jul 2025), the sector has marketed visas, not value. For too long, international education has sold the migration pathway rather than the long-term career value of the degree. We continue to see painfully low support reported by international students: only a tiny share say university careers services helped them find a job. Unless universities act on return-home employability, the value proposition will keep eroding—wherever students study.

At Asia Careers Group SDN BHD, our longitudinal tracking of 120,000+ graduates across China, India and ASEAN shows the pattern clearly: when institutions provide cross-border employer connections, market insight and transparent outcomes, graduates thrive; when they don’t, international degrees risk being devalued in crowded local markets. (ACG analysis referenced in prior UWN pieces.)

Consolidation as the last verse

In my Feb 2024 UWN article “The anti-immigration agenda is here: Universities must adapt,” I predicted consolidation across agents, pathways and universities. That prediction is now reality.

Aggregators are faltering; mega-agents (IDP, AECC, etc.) are strengthening; and UK institutions are turning to mergers as a survival strategy. The FT and others have documented the structural deficits and fee dependence driving such moves; Kent–Greenwich being the emblematic “super-university” case everyone is watching.

A new refrain: employability, not immigration

So, where have all the international students gone? To Asia, Europe and the Middle East—closer to home, less politicised, increasingly high-quality. Universities can’t rewrite geopolitics, but they can rewrite their proposition:

Publish transparent international graduate outcomes—by market, by programme.
Build employability support that spans borders, not just the host country.
Partner with employers in source countries aligned with alumni destinations.

Because in the end, as I argued in HEPI and UWN, the true ROI of international study is not the visa you hold but the career you build—in London, Kuala Lumpur, Brisbane, Beijing, Bangalore, New York or Toronto. Until the sector makes that pivot, students and families will keep asking our updated Seeger refrain: Where have all the international students gone?

References (selection)

Nicol, L. (2025). Students have been sold a dream by agents and universities. University World News, 5 Feb 2025.
Nicol, L. (2024). The anti-immigration agenda is here: Universities must adapt. University World News, 24 Feb 2024.
Nicol, L. (2024). Employability must be the differentiator. University World News, 10 Jan 2024.
Nicol, L. (2024). The graduate outcomes gap in Asia. University World News, 15 Jun 2024.
Nicol, L. (2024). Canada’s international education reset. University World News, 14 Dec 2024.
Nicol, L. (2025). International Graduates and the New Employability Challenge. HEPI, 28 Jul 2025.