"Countries such as Germany, Ireland, Italy and several other European destinations are attracting increasing interest from Indian students because of lower tuition costs" [Germany]
"We are retreating from the gains we made in promoting higher education as one of our most influential and profitable forms of soft power" [soft power]
The article documents a structural shift: a combination of currency depreciation (35–47% since 2019), visa crackdowns, and bleak post-study job markets in the US and UK is making the traditional 'big four' destinations economically unviable for middle-class students from a large emerging economy. This dynamic is not India-specific — any major student-sending country whose currency weakens against USD/GBP/AUD faces the same calculus, and any destination that raises immigration barriers accelerates the diversion. The result is a redistribution of human capital flows and tuition revenue that undermines decades of soft-power investment by anglophone nations.
The article frames declining Indian student enrolments not merely as a revenue problem for universities but as a strategic self-inflicted wound: the US and UK built globally competitive higher education sectors partly as instruments of influence, and restrictive visa and immigration policies are now reversing that investment. This generalizes beyond India — the same mechanism applies whenever a major sending country's students face hostile post-study conditions, turning a goodwill-generating pipeline into a deterrent and pushing future elites toward rival destination countries.