India’s outbound student caravan is no longer a trickle but a full-blown migration pattern, and the destinations are becoming strikingly predictable. Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom now account for the lion’s share of the exodus, pulling in record numbers of young Indians as states like Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Maharashtra and Gujarat cement their place as the country’s biggest exporters of talent. 

A new NITI Aayog working paper tracking mobility between 2016 and 2024 paints the movement in sharp, uneven strokes — a handful of states sending disproportionate numbers abroad, a narrow club of host countries absorbing nearly all the demand, and a few career streams dominating choices with near mechanical regularity.

Canada sits at the top of the heap, drawing an extraordinary 4.27 lakh Indian students in 2024, a surge of nearly 350% in eight years. The country’s mix of relatively lower tuition, lenient work routes and popular applied programs in IT, business and engineering has turned it into the first choice for countless families looking for a high-return overseas degree. The United States, after a brief pandemic dip, rebounded to 3.38 lakh Indian students in 2024, driven heavily by STEM graduate programs, high-end research tracks and the booming demand for computer science, AI and analytics. Together, the U.S. and Canada now swallow more than 7.6 lakh Indians, nearly 60% of all outbound students. 

The UK, which once barely registered in the Indian imagination, has become the fastest climber — growing from just 16,559 students in 2016 to 1.85 lakh in 2024, riding the post-study work visa wave and an aggressive recruitment push. Australia remains steady at 1.22 lakh, Germany at 42,997, while Russia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and the Philippines continue to draw the steady “medical migration” crowd with cheaper MBBS-equivalent degrees and lower entry barriers.

But the story is not national; it is intensely regional. Andhra Pradesh has been India’s biggest supplier of foreign-bound students for years — 46,818 in 2016, 62,771 in 2018, and even during the pandemic slowdown, 35,614 in 2020. A deep-rooted culture of overseas STEM aspiration, a powerful coaching ecosystem and long-standing pathways to U.S. and Canadian universities keep AP firmly at the top. Punjab follows close behind, sending 60,331 students in 2018 and 33,412 in 2020, its young flocking overwhelmingly to Canada for business, IT and diploma programs backed by strong migration networks and the promise of part-time work.

Maharashtra’s steady stream of 30,000–45,000 students each year splits across engineering-heavy U.S. programs, Canada’s applied IT options and the UK’s post-2020 comeback. Gujarat, too, has risen sharply, with more than 23,000 students in 2020, and its students now fanning out to Canada for business and hospitality, the UK for analytics, and Russia or Georgia for medicine.

Beyond the top four, Tamil Nadu continues to send strong contingents into U.S. and German engineering pathways; Delhi, Karnataka and Kerala remain among the top contributors thanks to strong urban schooling systems; and Uttar Pradesh, despite its population weight, lags with only 8,618 outbound students in 2020 due to weaker mobility networks and lower institutional support.

The academic choices mirror the destinations with laser-like clarity. Engineering remains the default aspiration for most outbound Indians, accounting for 16.4% of enrolments — from mechanical and electrical to robotics and aerospace — with AP, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra dominating this STEM corridor to the U.S. and Germany. Math and computer science, now the fastest-growing category at 15.7%, is fueled by the global appetite for AI, cybersecurity, data science and software, drawing huge numbers from Punjab and Gujarat into Canada’s IT-heavy colleges. 

Business and management, about 12.6%, split neatly across regions: Punjab to Canadian colleges, Maharashtra and Delhi to the UK, and southern states to U.S. and Canadian MBAs. Medicine continues to send waves to Russia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and the Philippines, driven largely by students from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal escaping high domestic fees and restrictive entrance barriers. Humanities, social sciences and arts remain niche — less than 10% — usually among metro students heading to the UK, Australia or the U.S.

What emerges is a national pattern defined by clear regional signatures: southern states gravitating toward high-end STEM programs in the West; Punjab funneling into Canada’s work-linked diplomas; western India splitting between engineering, business and medical degrees; and Kerala and West Bengal sustaining the long-standing medical-outbound tradition. In the end, the NITI paper’s numbers reveal a marketplace driven not just by academic ambition but by housing costs, visa certainty, work-permit opportunities and program affordability — a competitive global race in which Indian students are increasingly choosing the fastest, smoothest and most reliable routes out.

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