– Sifra Lentin is Bombay History Fellow, Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations

Sifra Lentin

Over the past months, visa restrictions have been imposed on foreign students, especially Indian students, in higher education institutions in western destinations such as the US, UK, Canada and Australia. Most impacted is post-study work opportunity to acquire valuable industry experience. This is an opportune moment for India to step up to attract foreign students to our shores by introducing an ‘S’ visa that permits post-study work in India. This is the missing link in India’s fast internationalising higher education ecosystem.

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has made internationalisation a pivot for reforms of the country’s higher education sector. The new paradigm aims to raise standards of Indian tertiary education under several key parameters — overhaul of syllabi, campuses with foreign faculty, students, researchers, and joint and/or dual degrees conferred by Indian universities and colleges with their foreign counterparts.

Some of these mandates have begun to be implemented. Foreign universities have established campuses in Gujarat, Haryana, and elsewhere. As in China and West Asia, these will become popular over time. But they won’t succeed unless India can give foreign students a chance to work here after graduation.

This issue isn’t addressed in NEP 2020, nor by the education ministry. However, a 2023 paper by Gateway House, Internationalising Indian Education: Work Visas for Foreign Students (2023), recommends grant of work visas to foreign students graduating from universities in India, contending that it will help trade negotiations and reciprocate work opportunities that Indian students enjoy in the Anglosphere, Europe and even Brazil, China, and Singapore. It would also infuse Indian companies expanding overseas with foreign talent that understands Indian corporate and business culture.

Currently, India hosts 62,000 higher education institutions (HEIs) with an aggregate enrolment of 43.3 million students. And although new private HEIs are mushrooming in India, that’s not enough for a country with a huge youth population bulge. Consequently a large and growing number of school-leavers and graduates venture abroad for higher education.

In 2024, 7.5 lakh students from India signed up to study abroad. At home, although some of the new HEIs have succeeded in attracting international faculty, the challenge of attracting foreign students to Indian HEIs to create cosmopolitan campuses hasn’t been successful. The Union ministry of education’s goal was to attract 2 lakh foreign students by 2023-24. Against this, a mere 50,000 foreign students are enrolled in Indian HEIs.

Issuance of ‘S’ visas to foreign students graduating from Indian HEIs can correct this anomaly. This would require inputs from several ministries. First, from the ministry of home affairs (MHA), which should issue a notification permitting paid employment under ‘S’ category visas. Next, the ministry of finance which will determine the applicability of India’s tax laws and double taxation treaties on income earned by foreign students. The ministry of education, through the UGC and AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education), will be required to frame guidelines for on-campus recruitment of foreign students.

According to the latest All India Survey of Higher Education Report (2021-22), there were 46,878 foreign students from 170 countries enrolled in Indian HEIs. This number must have increased as the Study in India website received 72,000 plus applications from foreign students from 200 nations for the academic year 2024-25.

It’s noteworthy that India’s population growth has dipped below the replacement rate of 2.1 percent, and the country will begin ageing soon, like China, according to the UN Population Fund. The number of elderly citizens will double from 149 million in 2022 to 347 million in 2050, eventually overtaking the number of youth.

Economic growth cannot be sustained with a dwindling working population — as is being witnessed by Japan, Germany, and China. The US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada have offset this by providing post-study student work visas. Likewise, European nations have chosen the migration route to make good their worker deficits and this is strongly impacting their domestic politics. India needs to learn from these experiences. It can offer work experience which is unlikely to result in significant migration.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has identified higher education as a champion export sector for promotion abroad. Elite Indian institutions such as the IIMs and IITs have already established campuses abroad. Most recently IIT-Madras began degree courses in Zanzibar, Tanzania, and IIT-Bombay is planning a campus in Japan. Private universities including Manipal set up campuses in the Caribbean and Malaysia long ago, and now newer Sharda and Amity universities have established campuses in Uzbekistan.

These are notable outcomes of the five-year-old NEP, 2020. Against this backdrop, a post-study ‘S’ visa for foreign graduates of Indian universities is overdue. It will attract more international students looking for work experience in what will soon be the third largest economy worldwide.