Indians sent Rs 1.76 lakh crore abroad over a decade for overseas education: Report

Indians have sent a staggering Rs 1.76 lakh crore abroad over the last decade for overseas education, according to data shared by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in response to a Right to Information (RTI) query filed by India Today. In 2023–24 alone, students remitted Rs 29,000 crore, slightly below the previous year’s peak.

To put this in perspective, a 2014 estimate placed the cost of setting up an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Rs 1,750 crore, rising to Rs 2,823 crore in 2025 after adjusting for inflation. By this measure, the decade-long outflow could have funded roughly 62 IITs, while last year’s remittance alone could have covered more than 10.

The annual remittance for education has surged nearly 1,200% over the last ten years, starting from Rs 2,429 crore a decade ago and peaking at Rs 29,171 crore in 2022–23. The RBI figures were originally in US dollars and have been converted to rupees using current exchange rates.

Despite a 15% decline in the number of Indians travelling abroad for studies in 2024 due to tighter visa rules, 7,59,064 students left the country, according to Bureau of Immigration data. This is down from 8,92,989 in 2023 but still above the pre-pandemic level of 5,86,337 in 2019.

By comparison, the Union government’s budget allocation to the Department of Higher Education in 2025–26 is Rs 50,077.95 crore, less than double last year’s outflow for overseas studies and dwarfed by the Rs 1.76 lakh crore spent over the past decade.

The RBI did not have data on several finer aspects, including the share of banks versus non-bank platforms in remittance processing, average exchange rate markups, hidden charges, or audits on losses incurred by families.

Data from 2018–19 onwards shows a steep rise in the number of education-related remittance transactions, from 3.63 lakh in 2018–19 to 9.43 lakh in 2023–24, peaking at nearly 10 lakh in 2022–23. The slight dip during 2020–21 reflects pandemic-related disruptions.

The figures highlight the scale of Indian families investing in overseas education, raising questions about domestic higher education capacity, affordability, and quality.