With 1.83 lakh Indian students pursuing education at various levels in the country, Canada is the second most popular destination for Indians pursuing academic degrees at foreign shores.
The large presence of the Indian student community in Canada assumes significance against the backdrop of New Delhi’s advisory urging Indians to remain vigilant in view of a “sharp rise” in hate crimes in the country.
The United States of America, with 4.65 lakh Indian students, remains the most popular destination, show data maintained by the Ministry of External Affairs. The third place is occupied by the United Arab Emirates, which has 1.64 lakh Indian students enrolled in its educational institutions.
In many ways, the growth in the number of Indian students in Canada nearly mirrors the situation in the USA. MEA data show that in the first six months of 2022, as many as 64,667 Indians going abroad for education named the USA as their destination, followed closely by Canada (60,258).
Before the pandemic, in 2019, 1,32,620 Indian students had chosen Canada. In 2020, after Covid-19 broke out, the number dipped to 43,624, before rising sharply to 1,02,688 in 2021, according to the MEA.
According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) data analysed by Canadian edtech firm ApplyBoard, the number of Indian students studying in Canada grew by nearly 220% between 2016 and 2021.
And most are choosing business programs as their area of study, with the number of Indian students approved to study business and management in Canada growing from a little over 10,000 in 2016 to nearly 50,000 in 2021, states ApplyBoard.
No of Indians going to Canada for education (MEA)
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘444470064056909’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
