When attacks on Indian students in America have risen in the recent past and the UK’s economy is still struggling to recover from the mild recession it was reeling under — it is perhaps the time for Indian students to reassess the conventional study destinations of America, UK and Canada.

Overall, there are 13.2 lakh Indian students currently studying abroad out of which 4.6 lakh are in the USA and 1.83 lakh students in Canada, World Bank blog data shows.

Popular study destinations for Indian students:

Germany

There are a total of 423 higher education institutions in Germany, including 108 universities, 211 universities of applied sciences and 52 colleges of art and music.

As of now, there are 42,997 students from India studying in Germany. The popular courses among international students are engineering, law management and mathematics.

The DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) data shows that the number of Indian students in Germany has doubled in the last five years, making them the largest international community on the German campuses.

Netherlands

There are more than 30 universities and colleges in the Netherlands and the majority of them are located in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Groningen and Delft.

The data from the Indian embassy in Netherlands shows that over 3,500 Indian students are studying in the Netherlands presently.

There are now 115,000 international students in the Netherlands, representing 3.5 times the number that were in the country as of 2005. Roughly 40 percent of first-year students at universities now come from outside the Netherlands.

Poland

There are nearly 457 universities and collegiate-level institutions of higher education in Poland. There are around 2,500 Indian students in Poland, second only to Turkish students.

Hungary

Hungary has a total of around 65 universities, several of them are based in Budapest. These include Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Central European University and ESSCA School of Management.

There are nearly 1,000 Indian students studying at Hungarian universities, shows the 2022 data released by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

Belgium

Belgium has some of the oldest and the most renowned Universities of Europe, in particular the Katholic University of Leuven (KUL), University of Ghent, Université Catholique de Louvain, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels (VUB), University of Antwerp and others.

Most Indian students are based in Belgium, while a few are in Luxembourg as well.

Moreover, there are around 24,732 members of the Indian Diaspora in Belgium, as per the latest estimates.

New Zealand

New Zealand has eight universities, out of which The University of Auckland is the highest-ranked global university. A number of Indian students go to New Zealand to pursue their MBA or for academic research.

The island nation has nearly 15,000 Indian students, second highest international community after China.