What’s driving Indian, international students to Ireland?
In a chat with The PIE News, Wendy Dsouza, senior VP, Enterprise Ireland, and Anam Hamid, South Asia advisor, Education in Ireland, discuss rising undergraduate demand, industry-led learning, emerging disciplines, and Ireland’s appeal as an English-speaking study hub in Europe.
Australia is set to welcome 160,000 overseas students next year after the education minister revealed which universities will get the largest number of international enrolments.
Please login below to view content or subscribe now.
Ireland is quickly becoming one of the world’s most attractive destinations for international students. The changing global landscape, coupled with a shift in focus away from the big four, has allowed Ireland to come to the fore as an exciting option for those considering studying overseas.
With its thriving tech ecosystem, progressive visa policies, and competitive education costs, Ireland is positioning itself as a smart and strategic alternative to traditional study hubs like the US and the UK.
Leading in tech-focused growth
Ireland’s reputation as Europe’s Silicon Valley is drawing growing numbers of students seeking cutting-edge degrees in technology, science, and innovation. As digital transformation accelerates, Ireland’s universities have evolved their programmes to meet future job market demands. For students aspiring to work in AI, cybersecurity, or data science, Ireland’s blend of academic excellence and industry access has become a clear competitive advantage.
Visa and immigration: the competitive edge
While traditional destinations such as the US and UK experience policy slowdowns and increased visa scrutiny, Ireland is seizing the opportunity to attract globally mobile talent.
Ireland has the upper hand on the UK, as recent policy shifts, such as restrictions on student dependents, proposed 6% levy being passed onto international students and reduction of the Graduate Visa from two years to 18 months, have cast uncertainty on whether the UK will provide accessible opportunities and pathways into employment after graduation.
A recent example of this in action came last week, as many international students had been accepted on courses provided by University College London but were left in limbo for nearly a week, having paid thousands of pounds in costs and sought visa and immigration expertise to manage their application as the number of places available had reached capacity.
While the Home Office granted expedited approval of the visas, caps on international student numbers and additional layers of uncertainty and complication elsewhere could be contributing to Ireland recording the highest ever enrolment level of international students in 2024.
Ireland has the upper hand on the UK, as recent policy shifts, such as restrictions on student dependents… have cast uncertainty on whether the UK will provide accessible opportunities and pathways into employment after graduation
Attesting to this, in 2024, the number of international students from India fell in Canada, the US and by approximately 30% in the UK. Conversely, Ireland has gone from strength to strength, with enrolment figures growing by nearly 50% between 2023 and 2024, making it one of the fastest-growing destinations for Indian students to gain a degree overseas.
As an outlier in the context of the traditional big four study destinations, Ireland offers a streamlined and accessible visa system. Students who complete their degrees can apply for a two-year post-study work visa, allowing them to gain valuable professional experience and explore long-term career opportunities.
Equally appealing is Ireland’s open approach to international enrolment; there are no restrictive quotas or caps on overseas student numbers, meaning that those with the right qualifications have a genuine opportunity to study and build their future in Ireland.
Career opportunities and cost-effective education
According to the 2025 Report on Studying in Ireland, students from mainland China now make up 10.9% of Ireland’s international student body, making China the third-largest source country. The report credited Ireland with being preferential to Chinese students, its university diplomas are globally recognised, while 55% are drawn by strong work visa policies and a thriving job market.
Adding to its appeal, Ireland offers a more cost-effective pathway to a world-class education. With average tuition and living expenses ranging between €30,000–€40,000 per year, roughly 30-40% lower than in the US or UK, Ireland provides access to prestigious universities and globally recognised qualifications without the financial barriers often associated with other leading destinations.
What is next for Ireland? Expanding Ireland’s global footprint
There has been a clear pursuit over the past 18 months from UK universities towards setting up international hubs and campuses across Asia and Middle East to recuperate costs from the fall of international students, a bid to develop new global partnerships and retain prestige.
While demand from international students is not waning in Ireland, will institutions embrace similar strategic moves to explore ways to strengthen their global? UK universities such as the University of Southampton have opened a campus in Delhi, and earlier in 2025, Northern Ireland’s Queen’s University Belfast was approved by regulators to open a branch campus in India.
Ireland has begun to make moves in this area, with the Technological University of the Shannon opening student liaison offices in Asia, Africa, and Latin America in 2021 to increase student recruitment.
As Ireland strengthens its position as a destination for global talent, the natural next step may be for its institutions to expand their presence overseas, ensuring the country’s influence in higher education continues to grow well beyond its borders.
The PIE Live Ireland is being held on October 14. Secure your tickets now.
Aiesha Zafar, assistant deputy minister for migration integrity at IRCC, told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration that 8% of international students reviewed were potentially “non-compliant”, meaning they were not attending classes as required by the terms of their study visa.
“In terms of the total number of students we asked for compliance information from, that results in potentially 47,175. We have not yet determined whether they are fully non-compliant, these are initial results provided to us by institutions,” stated Zafar, who was questioned by Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner about where these students are currently, if they are not complying with their visa terms.
Determining full non-compliance of the international students, however, is not straightforward, as institutions report data at varying intervals, and students may change schools, graduate, or take authorized leaves.
Zafar noted that IRCC shares all the data it continually collects with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), which is responsible for locating and removing non-compliant visa holders.
“Any foreign national in Canada would be under the purview of the CBSA, so they have an inland investigation team,” Zafar told the committee when Garner questioned how the IRCC is able to track and remove students who are in violation of their visas.
The 47,000 non-compliance cases are a backlog, evidence that fraud detection is strengthening, not weakening, Canadian standards
Maria Mathai, M.M Advisory Services
According to Maria Mathai, founder of M.M Advisory Services, which supports Canadian universities in the South Asian market, the figure of over 47,000 students who could be non-compliant being portrayed as a “crisis” misses the real story — that Canada’s immigration system is actively adapting.
“Front-end Provincial Attestation Letter (PAL) screening now blocks thousands who would have entered before, and ongoing oversight is catching legacy issues. The 47,000 non-compliance cases are a backlog, evidence that fraud detection is strengthening, not weakening, Canadian standards,” Mathai told The PIE News.
Mathai acknowledged that past PAL allocations contributed to compliance challenges, with regions like Ontario, which hosts the largest share of international students, directing most of its PALs to colleges with higher default rates.
However, the situation is expected to change with IRCC now imposing strict provincial caps on the number of study permits each province can issue.
“By surfacing these imbalances now, the new framework is encouraging provinces and institutions to adapt entry practices based on evidence and learning,” stated Mathai.
Canada’s international student compliance regime, in effect since 2014, was established to identify potentially non-genuine students.
It includes twice-yearly compliance reporting conducted in partnership with Designated Learning Institutions (DLIs), Canadian colleges, institutes, and universities authorised to host international students.
While IRCC’s 2024 report noted no recourse against non-reporting DLIs, new rules now allow such institutions to be suspended for up to a year.
Moreover, Canada’s struggle with international students not showing up for classes is not new, with reports earlier this year indicating nearly 50,000 instances of “no-shows”, international students who failed to enrol at their institutions, in the spring of 2024.
While the “no-show” cohort included 4,279 Chinese students, 3,902 Nigerian students, and 2,712 Ghanaian students, Indian students accounted for the largest share at 19,582. It highlights a broader issue of immigration fraud originating from India, which Zafar identified as one of the top countries for such cases during her September 23 committee testimony.
Over a quarter of international students seeking asylum in Canada also came from India and Nigeria.
According to Pranav Rathi, associate director of international recruitment at Fanshawe College, which hosts one of the largest numbers of Indian students in Ontario, a “rigorous approach” has led to about 20% of Indian applications being declined to ensure only qualified candidates proceed.
“Each application is carefully reviewed, and checked for aggregate scores, backlogs, and authenticity of mark sheets. We keep ourselves updated with the recognised institution list published by UGC,” stated Rathi.
“It is mandatory for a student to provide English language tests approved by IRCC and we also verify English proficiency through IELTS or equivalent test reports to confirm readiness for study in Canada.”
Rathi suggested that one reason Indian students often appear among potentially non-compliant or “no-show” cases is a systemic issue that previously allowed them to change institutions after receiving a study permit.
He added that schools now need to take a more active role, particularly when students apply through education agents.
“Institutions should ensure that their representatives are transparent, well-trained, and follow ethical recruitment practices that align with institutional and regulatory standards,” stated Rathi.
“Ongoing collaboration between institutions and government bodies to monitor market trends and share insights can help build a more transparent and sustainable international education system.”
Many Canadian institutions are now facing headwinds, with course offerings and research funding being cut as Canada’s study permit refusal rate has climbed to its highest level in over a decade.
Canadian politicians have also intensified scrutiny of institutions across the country.
Just days after the IRCC testimony on non-compliant students, a federal committee hearing led by MP Garner saw Conestoga College president John Tibbits questioned on issues ranging from his $600,000 salary to allegations of “juicing foreign student permits” amid growing concerns that healthcare, housing, and jobs that “don’t have capacity” in Ontario.
“Colleges, including Conestoga, have been subject to scrutiny about the role international [students] play in housing, affordability and community pressures. I welcome the opportunity to reaffirm that Conestoga’s approach has always been about service. Our mission has always been to ensure the communities we serve have access to the skilled labour force they need to survive,” stated Tibbits, while addressing the committee on Thursday.
“Looking ahead, we believe this is the time to stabilize the system to build an international student program that is sustainable, fair, globally competitive and focused on Canada’s economic priorities,” he added, as reported by CTV News.
Over the summer, Statistics Canda put out a few papers on higher education and immigration which got zero press but nevertheless are interesting enough that I thought you might all want to hear about them. Below are my précis:
The first paper, Recent trends in immigration from Canada to the United States by Feng Hou, Milly Yang and Yao Lu, is a very general look at outbound migration to the United States, looking specifically at the characteristics of Canadian citizens who applying for labour certification in the United States in 2015 and in 2024. I found the three top-line results all somewhat surprising.
In other words, brain drain to the US changed significantly over the space of a decade: fewer Canadians headed south, and among those who did, declining proportions were Canadian-born or held advance degrees. All somewhat surprising.
The second paper, Fields of study and occupations of immigrants who were international students in Canada before immigration by Youjin Choi and Li Xu, divides out two recent cohorts (2011-15 and 2016-21) of immigrants and starts to tease out various aspects of their current status in Canada. Here the key findings were:
In other words, former international students are a rising proportion of all immigrants, a high proportion are STEM graduates, and a high proportion of them go on to work in STEM fields. All signs that policy is pushing results in the intended direction.
The final paper, Retention of science, technology, engineering, mathematics and computer science graduates in Canada by Youjin Choi and Feng Hou, follows three cohorts of both domestic and international student graduates to see whether they stayed in the country (technically, it measures the proportion of graduates who file tax returns in Canada, which is a pretty good proxy for residency). The results are summed up in one incredibly ugly chart (seriously, why is StatsCan dataviz so awful?), which I reproduce below:
So, in the chart the Y-axis is the percentage of STEM graduates who stay in Canada (measured by the proxy of tax filing) and the X-axis is years since graduation. Since they are following three different cohorts of graduates, the lines don’t all extend to the same length (the earliest cohort could be followed for ten years, the middle for seven and the most recent for just three). The red set of lines represents outcomes for Canadian-born students and the blue set of lines does the same for international students.
So, the trivial things this graph shows are that: i) both Canadian and international students leave Canada but ii) international students do so more frequently and iii) leaving the country is something that happens gradually over time. The interesting thing it shows, though, is that the most recent cohort (class of 2018) of STEM graduates are more likely to stay than earlier ones, and that this is especially true for international students: the retention rate of international graduates from the class of 2018 was almost fifteen percentage points higher than for the class of 2015.
Was it a more welcoming economy? Maybe. But you’d have to think that our system of offering international students a path to citizenship had something to do with it too.
Two other nuggets in the paper:
You are now fully up to date on the latest data on domestic and international graduates and their immigration pathways. Enjoy your day.
According to reports, a brief note issued by the Department of Home Affairs through the Provider Registration and International Student Management System (PRISMS), which oversees international student data, confirms that evidence levels have been updated.
“The September 2025 evidence level update for countries and education providers (based on student visa outcome data from 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025) has taken place, effective for applications lodged on or after 30 September 2025,” read a statement by the DHA on the PRISMS website.
Consultants and universities in Australia are able to work out these levels through the government’s document checklist tool, which reveals a provider’s risk standing based on the requirements triggered when paired with a student’s country of origin.
Reports suggest that level 1 (lowest risk) includes Bangladesh and Sri Lanka; level 2 (moderate risk) includes India, Bhutan, Vietnam, China, and Nepal; and level 3 (highest risk) includes Fiji, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Colombia.
Although India and Vietnam, both prominent source markets for Australia, improved from level 3 to level 2 on the back of stronger grant rates, China slipped from level 1 to level 2, possibly due to a surge in asylum applications from Chinese nationals, particularly students, as some reports suggest.
While education providers in Australia registered under CRICOS (Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students) are assigned an evidence level, each country is also given one based on its past performance with student visas, particularly visa refusals, asylum applications, and breaches of conditions.
Are there not more Indians applying for protection visas? Hasn’t Nepal followed Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in political turmoil, where the economy has suffered? This has raised concerns around students meeting GS requirements
Ravi Lochan Singh, Global Reach
The combination of provider and country levels determines the documents required for an international student’s visa application.
Stakeholders have highlighted the lack of transparency in assessing country risk levels, particularly as students from countries with reduced risk ratings may still arrive in Australia under precarious conditions.
“Are there not more Indians applying for protection visas? Hasn’t Nepal followed Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in political turmoil, where the economy has suffered? This has raised concerns around students meeting GS requirements. There are also whispers that certain operators may encourage students to apply for protection visas,” stated Ravi Lochan Singh, managing director, Global Reach.
Visa prioritisation is already tied to intended caps, with applications processed on a first-in, first-out basis until a provider reaches 80% of its allocation, explained Singh.
With almost all universities now streamlined for visas and the majority promoted from level 2 to level 1, lowest risk, and almost none remaining in level 3, the evidence-level system appears unnecessary to some.
“The concept of ‘streamlining’ (and then the development later of the SSVF) took place at a time where there was a whole-of-government focus on growing international student numbers and increasing the value, while maintaining integrity, of the highly important international education sector,” shared Mike Ferguson, pro vice-chancellor of Charles Sturt University.
According to Ferguson, a former DHA official, “English and financial requirements were streamlined as part of the visa process, based on a risk assessment, given the other safeguards in place – obligations enforced by TEQSA and ASQA in terms of providers ensuring students have sufficient English proficiency and the use of the GTE requirement to consider a student’s holistic economic circumstances.”
However, with international student numbers rising since the early 2010s, “times have changed” and the focus has shifted to managing enrolments and ensuring sustainable growth, explained Ferguson.
“My view is that all students should provide evidence of funds and English with the visa process. That would align with community expectations, support enhanced integrity and potentially help to some degree with some of the course hopping behaviour we are seeing (though the latter requires a range of measures),” he contineud.
“DHA could still determine the degree to which they scrutinise the funds submitted but that would be based on a more holistic and granular risk assessment – not just based on country and provider.”
Singh further stated that concerns around visa hopping and attrition could be exacerbated, as international students may now enter Australia through universities and then transition to higher-risk, non-university sectors without needing new visa applications, especially since Australia has yet to mandate linking study visas to the institution of initial enrolment, unlike neighbouring New Zealand.
Moreover, Singh pointed out that when students arrive without adequate financial backing, it can increase visa misuse, which may lead authorities to tighten risk classifications again.
“The document checklist tool provides a clear framework for assessing the risk level of a university. However, it raises concerns about the recent trend of promoting the application of visas without financial funds, as suggested by the document checklist tools. While these visas may be approved, this approach could potentially lead to the return of the country to risk level 3 in the future,” stated Singh.
“For instance, if a country’s risk level is 3 (such as Pakistan), and Home Affairs requires financial and English requirements to be attached to the visa application, the university’s risk level is inferred to be 2. If the Home Affairs tool waives this requirement, the risk level is reduced to 1.”
The PIE has requested comment from the DHA and is awaiting a response.
Australia’s reported changes to country evidence levels come just a month after the government announced an additional 25,000 international student places for next year, raising the cap to 295,000.
Some equity student retention rates are trending upwards even though one in four students still drop out of university, new Department of Education data has revealed.
Please login below to view content or subscribe now.
An international education framework will shape the “next phase of maturity” of the Albanese government’s vision of a quality-first, managed-growth tertiary education sector.
Please login below to view content or subscribe now.
Global student satisfaction has remained steady in 2025, but pressures on inclusivity, affordability and the quality of student life are beginning to show, according to the Global Student Satisfaction Awards: Summary Report 2025.
Studyportals’ 2025 Student Satisfaction survey tracked responses from over 102,000 students around the world, with the US, Belgium and Austria leading the charge in overall satisfaction, ranked at 4.32, 4.29 and 4.28 stars out of five respectively.
The biannual survey looked at reviews from students of 180 nationalities studying at institutions in 124 countries, recording an average satisfaction score of 4.18 out of 5. While stable compared to 2023 (when the last survey was published), this represents a slight dip of 0.71%.
Meanwhile Pakistan, France, Ireland and Türkiye saw some of the steepest declines in satisfaction. The UK and India bucked the trend with improved scores, both climbing above the global average.
Pakistan recorded the most significant drop since 2023’s survey (-11.3%), moving significantly further below the global benchmark. France also fell by -3.2%, Ireland by -2.4%, and Türkiye by -1.2%.
By contrast, Finland (+3.3%) and the Netherlands (+0.2%) registered modest improvements, though both remain below the global average. The report warns that unless these downward trends are addressed, strong challengers like India and the UK could capture greater student interest.
Students are more confident about career prospects, but increasingly concerned about diversity and their quality of life
Edwin van Rest, Studyportals
The report also tracked other factors such as admissions processes, career development, student diversity and student life.
Winners were honoured across seven categories at an awards ceremony hosted by Studyportals in collaboration with Uni-Life and IELTS at a fringe event during last week’s European Association for International Education (EAIE) conference in Gothenburg.
Key indicators revealed a mixed picture. Student diversity (-5.03%) and student life (-4.39%) suffered the largest declines, reflecting growing concerns around integration, housing shortages and rising costs in popular destinations. Admissions processes also weakened (-3.85%), with students calling for clearer communication, smoother transitions and more user-friendly digital systems.
On the positive side, career development (+1.23%) recorded notable gains, with the US, India and Switzerland leading thanks to stronger links with employers, internships and industry engagement. Online classroom experience, long the weakest category, also improved modestly (+1.30%), particularly in the US, India and South Africa.
Studyportals said the findings underline shifting student priorities. Employability outcomes and structured cross-cultural experiences are increasingly valued, while inclusivity and transparency remain pressing challenges.
“These results show where universities are winning student trust, and where they risk losing it,” noted Edwin van Rest, CEO & co-founder of Studyportals. “Students are more confident about career prospects, but increasingly concerned about diversity and their quality of life.”
Caps on international student places, set at 270,000 for 2025 and rising to 295,000 in 2026, are intended to manage growth and safeguard integrity in the sector.
Please login below to view content or subscribe now.
