There were 269 million students enrolled in higher education in 2025 according to UNESCO, which estimates in its latest report that among them, 7.3 million were engaged in international mobility. More than half of this contingent (53.5%) originates from an Asian country, which amounts to, still in 2023-2024: 3,900,304.
It is well known that the common stereotype about students from Asia is that they are drawn primarily by the American dream (including the United States and Canada), the historical prestige of the United Kingdom, and, to a lesser extent, by the employment prospects and pathways to citizenship offered by a country like Australia. This traditional image is partly true, but the picture drawn by the UIS (UNESCO) for the year 2023-2024 offers a more complex view of the structure of this Asian mobility, in the post‑COVID pandemic context on the one hand, and just before the major reshuffling of the cards set in motion in August 2025 by American visa policy, followed by the abrupt withdrawal of the 3 other main host countries for international mobility: Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
