A 29-year-old Jharkhand woman spent years preparing for her master’s degree in Rome. The admission is hers. She is partially funded. She did not anticipate seeing the rupee gradually decline, almost silently, until the loan she had calculated months earlier was no longer sufficient to cover the program’s actual costs. It kept her up at night, she recently told a reporter. Although it is a minor detail, it seems to be the most accurate description of the current situation facing Indian students.
In 2025, more than a million Indian students were studying overseas. Even though that figure is impressive on its own, the currency has lost about 6% of its value against the US dollar so far this year, making it one of the worst-performing currencies in Asia. Currently, the rupee is worth more than 90 USD. The value of the euro is approximately ₹106. The pound has increased to almost ₹122. Those figures appeared significantly different a year ago.
This is not a discussion of abstract monetary policy when it comes to families financing their children’s education abroad. There is a discrepancy between their current debt and their budget. At ₹83 per dollar, a program costing $50,000 annually was equivalent to about ₹41.5 lakh. That same program costs more than ₹45.5 lakh at ₹91. This discrepancy—more than four lakh rupees—is not the result of a rounding error. It can mean the difference between a loan that is manageable and one that seems unachievable for a middle-class Indian family.
The fact that the currency shift is only one aspect of the issue makes this more difficult. Over the past few years, living expenses in the UK, Europe, and North America have increased significantly. The cost of a visa has increased. Stricter immigration regulations have been implemented in some places, increasing the process’s uncertainty and expense. Students are paying more because everything has suddenly become more expensive on both ends, not just because the rupee is weaker.
The pressure is starting to manifest itself in loan applications, according to banks. Even months after their initial approval, families who had previously received sanctioned education loans are coming back to request top-ups. Events have simply surpassed the initial calculation, which was meticulously done using spreadsheets and estimates of school fees. Doing everything correctly, making careful plans, and then discovering that the ground has changed is a subtly draining experience.
According to some estimates, enrollments in the US and the UK have already decreased by about 20% over the past two years, and an additional 10 to 15% decline is anticipated. The human complexity of what that means—the students who applied, were accepted, and then discreetly left—is not adequately represented by those figures. The families postponed for a year in the hopes that things would get better.
Whether this is a short-term fix or something more structural is still unknown. Global forces that are difficult to reverse, such as a strong dollar, rising crude oil prices, and geopolitical unrest in West Asia, are responsible for the rupee’s decline. Students in India are unable to wait out those forces.
There is no doubt that the calculus surrounding studying overseas is evolving. Families that used to approach the decision with quiet confidence are now doing so with “greater financial scrutiny,” according to one education consultant. He pointed out that the dream still exists. However, people are now pursuing it with greater caution, deliberateness, and uncertainty in many situations. That change from aspiration to calculation may be the best indicator of the current situation.
