Is Your Study Abroad Consultant Working for You? What Indian Families Learn Too Late

Last updated: 29 September 2026.

Walk down the main road of a town in central Kerala and count the boards. They hang between the jewellers and the bakeries, study abroad consultants naming the same few countries, the same English test and, as often as not, the visa before the university. Ernakulam district alone had 43,990 students living abroad in 2023, the Kerala Migration Survey 2023 found, and the state as a whole about 2.5 lakh, nearly twice the 1,29,763 of 2018.

Of the 13.35 lakh Indian students abroad that the Ministry of External Affairs counted in 2024, Kerala’s are the ones whose story shows its ending first, which is why they lead this piece. The boards themselves hang a long way from Kerala. Bathinda’s Ajit Road, in Punjab’s Malwa belt, gathered more than 200 immigration and IELTS centres in a decade, The Tribune reported in 2024. Similar boards line streets in Hyderabad, Vijayawada and Mehsana.

This is written for families who are sending a child abroad to study, and who want to know whether the adviser across the desk is working for them, in whichever state they live. Our view has not changed since we began with Kerala. Going abroad to study is not the problem; many who go to strong universities for real courses do well. The trouble is a trade that sells migration dressed up as education, paid by the university rather than the family, to parents who are buying hope because there is too little of it at home.

The other states sharpen that view in three ways. Punjab shows that regulation helps only when it is enforced, and that even enforced it leaves the commission untouched. Canada and the United States show that when one door shuts the traffic moves to another, and some of it moves to doors that are not legal. Gujarat, with almost no unemployment, shows that jobs alone do not explain who leaves. If you are about to sign, the six questions near the end are the practical core; everything before them explains why each one matters.

It began with a Malayalam explainer on YouTube, ‘A Deeper analysis of Kerala Migration’, which follows a student’s imagined journey from Kerala and asks questions every family in the state should be asking. Because families may act on its numbers, we traced each one to its source. Most hold up; a few need updating or a finer point, and we set them out below in that spirit.

The Malayalam video that started this

The claim	What the sources show	What we found
About 2.5 lakh Kerala students abroad	Kerala Migration Survey 2023: about 2,50,000, up from 1,29,763 in 2018	Holds
‘There is no opportunity here’	Kerala’s youth unemployment was 29.9% in 2023-24, the highest of any state	Borne out by the data
No licence is needed to open a consultancy	True in Kerala; Punjab has licensed consultancies and IELTS centres under a 2014 Act	True in Kerala; Punjab is the exception
Agents earn about 25% per student	UK: typically 10 to 30% of first-year fees; an Ontario audit found 15 to 32%	Within the range, at its upper end
About 4,000 unregulated agencies in Kerala	We could not trace a published source for the number	Source not found
Tax ‘above 45%’ for those who stay and work	The 45% rate starts above £125,140; a graduate on £26,000 pays 20% income tax plus 8% National Insurance above the thresholds	Lower for most graduates
‘Every study shows’ worse mental health abroad	A 2024 review of 35 studies found no more anxiety, and fewer depression and stress symptoms in the better studies, but lower wellbeing	The research is more mixed

The video’s central argument stands, and Kerala’s own data bears it out. That data is also where the national story starts.

Begin with work. In the Periodic Labour Force Survey for July 2023 to June 2024, Kerala’s unemployment rate for people aged 15 to 29 was 29.9%, nearly three times India’s 10.2%, the government’s broadcaster reported; for young women it was about 47%. The state government of the day disputed what that meant. K N Balagopal, then Finance Minister, told the Assembly that most 15- to 22-year-olds in Kerala are students rather than job-seekers and that the PLFS figures had ‘no value’, Onmanorama reported, and R Bindu, then Higher Education Minister, was quoted in 2023 calling the talk of mass student migration ‘a bit exaggerated’. There is something in the first point, since a graduate who holds out for work that matches the degree shows up in the survey as unemployed. The families have answered the argument with their loans.

The colleges feel it next. About four in ten undergraduate seats in Kerala’s main universities stood empty in 2024-25, the Higher Education Minister told the Assembly in October 2024; at Mahatma Gandhi University the figure was 30,353 of 55,644. Migration is one cause among several. It remains an odd sight: seats at home left empty by young people who borrow lakhs to fill seats in Britain and Canada.

Kerala is also India’s oldest state. In 2021, 16.5% of its people were 60 or over, against 10.1% for India, and the UNFPA’s India Ageing Report 2023 projects 22.8% by 2036. Small families and long lives explain most of that; migration adds to it. For a couple in their fifties whose only child has gone, the projection has already arrived.

The money has turned round too. Remittances into Kerala rose from ₹85,092 crore in 2018 to ₹2,16,893 crore in 2023, up 155%, even as the Gulf’s share of Kerala’s emigrants fell from 89.2% to 80.5%. The same survey estimated, for the first time, an outward flow of ₹43,378 crore, about a fifth of what came in. It does not say what that money paid for, and not all of it went on fees and rent abroad. Still, a state that lived for fifty years on money sent home now sends a large sum the other way.

How many Indian students abroad, and from which states?

Somewhere between 13 and 18 lakh, depending on which answer from the same ministry you take. The Ministry of External Affairs told the Rajya Sabha on 2 August 2024 that 13,35,878 Indian students were abroad that year, about 4.27 lakh of them in Canada, 3,37,630 in the United States, 1.85 lakh in Britain and 1,22,202 in Australia (The PIE News; the figures are repeated in a NITI Aayog working paper of November 2025). The same ministry had told Parliament’s Standing Committee on External Affairs that about 17.8 lakh were studying abroad as of January 2024, according to PRS Legislative Research’s summary of the committee’s report. A country that sends this many of its young abroad counts them loosely.

Which states they come from is harder to say, and the difficulty is itself revealing. When Shafi Parambil, an MP from Kerala, asked the Ministry of External Affairs for the figures state by state in December 2024, the ministry replied that it did not hold them (Lok Sabha, unstarred question 4166, 20 December 2024). The last state-wise count is an answer the same ministry gave the Lok Sabha in March 2021, which counted students leaving each year by the place their passport was issued (MEA, Lok Sabha question 4709). Its last full year before Covid was 2019.

State (by passport office)	Students leaving, 2018	Students leaving, 2019
Punjab	60,331	73,574
Andhra Pradesh (Telangana appears to be counted here)	62,771	69,465
Maharashtra	58,850	64,653
Gujarat	41,413	48,051
Tamil Nadu	38,983	41,488
Delhi	35,844	40,934
Kerala	26,456	30,948
Karnataka	26,918	29,314
All India	5,20,342	5,88,931

Read the table with care. It counts a year’s departures, not the number living abroad, which is why Kerala’s 30,948 looks small beside the survey’s 2.5 lakh. Telangana barely appears, with 433 in 2019, so its students seem to have been recorded under Andhra Pradesh. Even so, it holds a surprise for anyone who has read only about Kerala. In 2019 Punjab sent the most students, 73,574, ahead of Andhra Pradesh with 69,465 and Maharashtra with 64,653, and Kerala came seventh. Private reports that hand each state a percentage of the national total are estimates, and we have not used them.

Since then the flow has risen and turned. Departures of Indian students leapt from 4.44 lakh in 2021, a pandemic year, to 7.5 lakh in 2022 and a peak of 9.08 lakh in 2023, then fell to 7.7 lakh in 2024 and 6.26 lakh in 2025, down 31% in two years, by Bureau of Immigration figures the Education Ministry gave the Rajya Sabha in February 2026 (Business Standard). Money sent abroad for study under the Reserve Bank’s Liberalised Remittance Scheme fell from a peak of $5.17 billion in 2021-22 (Business Standard) to $2.92 billion in 2024-25 (Business Standard). Fewer are going. Those who still go face harder odds, and in two states in particular the trade has shown what it does when the legal route narrows.

Punjab and Haryana: licensed, raided and still leaving

In rural Punjab the money often comes from a loan, or from land. A Punjab Agricultural University survey of about 9,500 rural households, carried out between 2021 and 2023, found that 13.34% had sent at least one member abroad, 42% of them to Canada. More than 56% of those families had borrowed to do it, and more than 19% had sold something: land, gold, a house. The survey priced a study visa at ₹18 to 25 lakh, and an illegal route at ₹25 to 33 lakh (ThePrint, January 2024).

The two price ranges almost meet.

Punjab was the first state to try to license the whole trade. A law first passed as the Punjab Prevention of Human Smuggling Act 2012, and renamed the Punjab Travel Professionals (Regulation) Act in 2014, requires a licence for education and visa consultancies, IELTS coaching, emigration seminars and advertisements, and even for arranging marriages for the purpose of emigration, with penalties of up to seven years in prison and a fine of up to ₹5 lakh (the Act, via PRS). It has been used. In March 2023 Jalandhar suspended 495 licences and then cancelled 263 held by consultancies and IELTS centres that ignored show-cause notices. In February 2025 police across the state carried out 1,274 raids, registered 24 FIRs and made seven arrests, The Tribune reported.

The licence did not stop Brijesh Mishra. The Jalandhar agent supplied forged admission letters to students applying to Canada between 2016 and 2020, pleaded guilty in Vancouver and was sentenced to three years in May 2024 (The Tribune). A figure of 700 students facing deportation had circulated widely in India in 2023. Canada’s own count was smaller and more useful. A task force took on 285 cases, 89% of them Indian, and of the 108 it had reviewed by 22 February 2024 it found 67 people to be genuine students and 40 not. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada described cases that ‘may involve unauthorized consultants providing their clients fraudulent letters of acceptance’ (IRCC). Punjab’s licensing law was in force throughout.

Canada’s retreat did the rest. Study permits issued to Indians fell from 188,715 in 2024 to 94,605 in 2025, according to IRCC figures reported by The Tribune, and in August 2025 Canada refused 74% of Indian study-permit applications, against 32% two years earlier, Reuters reported. Indian applications fell from 20,900 in August 2023 to 4,515 in August 2025. Canada has cut its 2026 target for new international students to 155,000.

Along Ajit Road the fall showed quickly. The industry’s IELTS coaching volumes fell by almost 80%, The Tribune reported in November 2024, and centres closed. ‘I had to shut down my centre last month due to the lack of applications,’ Baljeet Singh, who ran a small consultancy in Bathinda, told the paper. Punjab’s colleges had emptied first: in 2023 about 55% of the roughly one lakh seats in its technical colleges were vacant, and IK Gujral Punjab Technical University filled 40,000 of 80,000, with the colleges blaming emigration (The Tribune). The pressure behind it all has not eased. Punjab’s unemployment rate in the 2025 labour force survey was 6.7%, against 5.3% nationally, and about one graduate in five was without work, The Tribune reported.

When a legal door narrows, some of the traffic finds another. Three American military flights landed at Amritsar in February 2025 carrying 333 deported Indians. Between 20 January and 22 July 2025, 1,703 Indians were deported from the United States, 620 of them from Punjab, 604 from Haryana and 245 from Gujarat, the government told the Lok Sabha (Business Standard); by late November the year’s total was 3,258, the highest since 2009, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told Parliament (The Tribune). These are not student figures, and the government has given no breakdown by visa. Read beside the halving of Canadian study permits, they suggest that the demand from these states did not disappear when the student route narrowed.

Haryana, which sent almost as many deportees as Punjab, offers two answers that did not work. A law reserving 75% of private-sector jobs for local residents was struck down by the Punjab and Haryana High Court on 17 November 2023 (The Week); Haryana appealed, and the Supreme Court issued notice in February 2024 (Bar and Bench); we found no final ruling. A state drive to recruit construction workers for Israel drew 8,199 applicants, of whom 219 were selected (ThePrint). A government cannot order good jobs into existence, and it cannot export its way out of not having them. In March 2025 Haryana’s Assembly passed a travel agents law aimed at smuggling and the ‘dunki’ routes, with prison terms of seven to ten years for human smuggling and forged documents (The Tribune). It also requires anyone advising on study visas to register (the Act, via PRS), which makes Haryana the second state to reach for the whole trade. The state amended the law in 2026 and, as far as we could find, has yet to notify the rules that would make it work (The Tribune).

Why do Telugu families look to America?

Because for a generation America looked back. In March 2021 Joel Reifman, then the US Consul General in Hyderabad, said the two Telugu states sent more students to the United States than any other region, and that ‘one in four Telugu families’ had a connection there, Telangana Today reported. By January 2024 the US Mission in India could say that Mumbai, New Delhi, Hyderabad and Chennai were the four busiest student-visa posts in the world, after a record of more than 140,000 student visas in 2023 (Business Standard). The Institute of International Education’s Open Doors 2025 counted 363,019 Indian students in the US in 2024/25, more than from any other country. Andhra Pradesh’s non-resident Telugu society, APNRTS, has estimated that about 80,000 Telugu students went to the US in the few years after Covid, Careers360 reported; that is the society’s own estimate. A claim that 56% of Indian students in America are Telugu, repeated in some Telugu media, has no published source that we could find.

The year 2025 broke the rhythm. The State Department paused student-visa interviews in late May and resumed them on 18 June with checks on applicants’ social media. F-1 visas issued to Indians between May and August, the months that matter for an autumn start, fell to 22,149 from 58,694 a year earlier, down 62%, according to a Center for Immigration Studies analysis of State Department data reported by Business Standard; over the full year, student visas issued to Indians fell 56.6%, Inside Higher Ed reported. New international enrolment at American universities fell 17% in autumn 2025, Open Doors found. For students already there, the American Immigration Lawyers Association counted 4,736 student records terminated in the government’s SEVIS database after 20 January 2025, and about half of the 327 cases it documented involved Indians (Careers360). F-1 duration of status article

The job the loan was sized against moved as well. A presidential proclamation of 19 September 2025 imposed a $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions, about ₹96 lakh at ₹96 to the dollar (Trading Economics, 28 September 2026). USCIS has said the fee does not apply when a student already in the US changes status from F-1 to H-1B (Yale OISS), so it falls mainly on hires from abroad: a graduate who has come home, or never found a job before the OPT clock ran out, would cost an American employer far more to bring back. A federal court in Massachusetts vacated the policy on 8 June 2026, and the First Circuit refused to pause that ruling on 24 July. A further proclamation of 18 September 2026 extended the policy on paper, but the fee remains blocked by the court’s order (Yale OISS; Federal Register). The case continues and the position could change again, which is the kind of uncertainty an EMI schedule has no room for.

Some of the damage was done at home. In August 2023, 21 Indian students were turned back on arrival in the United States, nine of them from Andhra Pradesh and three from Telangana, and APNRTS blamed consultants for their paperwork, including temporary deposits placed in bank accounts to show funds, Careers360 reported. In June 2025 Cyberabad police arrested a deported student from Nalgonda who had used a forged BSc to win a place on an American master’s, along with the head of a consultancy who, police said, admitted sending 15 students abroad on fake credentials (The Tribune).

Neither Telugu state, as far as we could find, licenses education consultants. The state bodies we found, Andhra Pradesh’s OMCAP and Telangana’s TOMCOM, deal with overseas job recruitment. What Andhra Pradesh has offered instead is cheaper money: in October 2025 Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu proposed state-guaranteed loans for study abroad at 4% interest, repayable over 14 years, Deccan Chronicle reported, and in December he said the loans would come under a scheme called Kalalaku Rekkalu, at a lower rate still (Careers360). We found no sign that it has opened. A cheaper loan makes the course cheaper. It does nothing to make the course better chosen, the visa likelier or the job surer, unless the state also checks who is advising the borrower. The need at home is plain enough in the numbers: Telangana’s youth unemployment was 16.6% in 2023-24, and 30.7% among young women in its towns and cities, Telangana Today reported.

Two states that break the pattern

If joblessness explained everything, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat would be quiet. In the 2023-24 labour force survey, on the usual-status measure for all ages, unemployment was 3.5% in Tamil Nadu and 1.1% in Gujarat, against 7.2% in Kerala and 3.2% for India (DeshGujarat, from the PLFS tables). Both still send large numbers of students abroad.

Tamil Nadu’s medical detour

In Tamil Nadu the pull is one profession. India had 88,120 medical seats in 2021-22, and about 16 lakh candidates applied for them through NEET, The Federal reported in March 2022. Applications for the eligibility certificate needed to study medicine abroad rose from 10,555 in 2016-17 to 18,383 in 2017-18, according to Medical Council of India data released under the Right to Information Act. Those are national figures; we found no official count for Tamil Nadu alone. The same report told of Shanmugavalli Kasthuri, who scored 483 on her second NEET attempt, could not get a seat in India and won a place at Uzhhorod National University in Ukraine in December 2021. Her classes began on 14 February 2022.

Ten days later Russia invaded Ukraine. Tamil Nadu had 1,921 students there; 1,890 had been brought home by 12 March 2022, at a cost to the state of ₹3.5 crore, PTI reported, and months later many were still waiting to learn how, or whether, they could finish their degrees. Ukraine is the extreme case, but the lesson travels. A degree bought abroad because the home system has too few seats carries a risk that no consultant’s brochure prices in. We found no Tamil Nadu rules on study-abroad agents.

Gujarat, where the jobs are and the young still go

Gujarat is where the story stops being about jobs. On 19 January 2022 Jagdish Patel, his wife Vaishaliben and their children Vihangi, 11, and Dharmik, 3, from the village of Dingucha, froze to death near the border between Manitoba and Minnesota. Prosecutors in the smuggling case said the ring behind their crossing had brought people into Canada on student visas, and on 28 May 2025 a US court sentenced Harshkumar Patel to ten years in prison for his part (CBS News). The Patels themselves had flown to Canada on visitor visas (ThePrint); the route they died on was one that, prosecutors said, used Canadian student visas as the way in for others.

Most of Gujarat’s students leave legally, more than 48,000 of them in 2019 by the passport-office count in the table above. The cases that follow are the minority that ends in court, but they show what the trade does at its edges. In 2022 six young men, four of them from Mehsana, were caught after a boat began to sink on the St Regis River at Akwesasne, near the US-Canada border. The four from Mehsana had flown to Canada on student visas with IELTS scores of 6.5 to 7, yet the American court needed a Hindi interpreter to question them (The Tribune). Gujarat police later booked 45 people, among them a coaching-class owner and the head of an education firm, over a racket in IELTS scores (ThePrint). In December 2023 France halted a charter flight bound for Nicaragua; 66 of its passengers were from Gujarat, and each had agreed to pay agents ₹60 to 80 lakh to reach the United States, Gujarat CID officials said, The Tribune reported.

An unemployment rate of 1.1% explains none of this. What pulls young people out of north Gujarat is harder to measure: relatives already abroad, the pull of a network that has made the journey before, and work at home that pays less than the family has watched others earn elsewhere. We do not think these families foolish. They are rational given what they are told and what they have seen happen to their neighbours. The danger is what the same hope does when the legal door narrows. It pays a smuggler instead, at ₹60 lakh and up, and the family learns the real price last.

Who pays the adviser, and what the family is buying

In every one of these states, the person across the desk is usually paid by someone else. Many consultancies call their advice free because the money comes from the university, as a commission on each student who enrols: in Britain typically 10% to 30% of the first year’s tuition, according to the Big Issue, and 15% to 32% at the four colleges the Auditor General of Ontario examined in 2021. On a one-year master’s priced at £19,500, that is £1,950 to £5,850, or about ₹2.5 lakh to ₹7.4 lakh at ₹127 to the pound (28 September 2026). Three researchers writing on Wonkhe estimated that British universities spent over £500 million on agent commissions in a single year, a figure the sector does not publish.

The office on your road is often the last link in a longer chain. Large aggregators hold the contracts with universities and pass students, and a share of the commission, down to smaller sub-agents, so the adviser across the desk may stand two or three links away from the university that pays. The chain itself is legal, and many in it do honest work. It simply means the person advising your child is, in the end, paid by the seller.

None of this makes an adviser dishonest, and some will tell a student not to go. But an adviser paid by the seat has a shortlist, and the shortlist is the contract list. Britain’s Migration Advisory Committee said much the same in its 2024 review of the Graduate route: graduates had relied on agents to choose their course, some described being mis-sold, and ‘agents simply do not have the same incentives as universities’. The countries receiving the students have begun to act on that. Since April 2026 Home Office guidance has required British universities that use agents to manage them in line with the Agent Quality Framework and to record the recruiting agent on each student’s Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies, ICEF Monitor reported, and Australia banned commissions on onshore student transfers from 31 March 2026. India, which sends the students, has a licence in Punjab, a registration law in Haryana that is not yet working, a draft in Kerala, and nothing that we could find in the Telugu states or Tamil Nadu.

What the trade sells most, at least in Britain, is easy to name. The Migration Advisory Committee found that postgraduate courses at universities outside the Russell Group accounted for 66% of all Graduate visas, and that Indians held 42% of Graduate visas against 26% of Student visas. In the year to June 2026 Indian nationals received 64,495 of the 157,356 Graduate route grants, Home Office figures show. The visa attached to that course is shrinking: a Graduate visa applied for on or before 31 December 2026 lasts two years, and one applied for on or after 1 January 2027 lasts 18 months (gov.uk). A student starting a one-year master’s this autumn will finish after that date. UK Graduate Route deadline article

The work, when it comes, pays less than the brochures suggest. The Home Office’s own analysis of tax records found that Graduate visa holders who worked at least one month in 2022-23 had median earnings of £17,815 for the year, and the 27% who worked the whole year had a median of £26,460; for Indian graduates the medians were £17,120 and £25,465. The government’s 2025 immigration white paper said under a third of Graduate visa holders were in jobs it could confidently call graduate-level. In fairness, the same committee found no evidence of significant abuse of the route and recommended keeping it, and plenty of universities outside the Russell Group teach well. The trouble lies with the course chosen because a visa is attached, by an adviser paid to fill that seat. A ranking, however useful, measures a university, not the course a family is paying for.

A year in Britain, in rupees

We work the sum for Britain because it publishes the figures a family needs; the logic carries to Canada or the United States. The fee is illustrative, £19,500 for the year, of the order English universities publish for a one-year taught master’s in 2026-27; check the exact fee for the course you are offered. The other inputs come from official pages. The living money is what the Home Office asks a student outside London to show: £1,171 a month for nine months, rising to £1,203 for applications made on or after 30 November 2026 (HC 584). Rupees are at ₹127 to the pound (Pound Sterling Live, 28 September 2026).

Item	Pounds	Rupees (approx.)
Tuition for the year	£19,500	₹24.8 lakh
Living money shown for the visa (9 months)	£10,539	₹13.4 lakh
First year, before flights, visa fee and health surcharge	£30,039	₹38.1 lakh
Best case from part-time work: 20 hours a week at £12.71, all 52 weeks	£13,218	₹16.8 lakh
The Home Office’s living figure for a full year outside London	£14,052	₹17.8 lakh

Look hardest at the last two rows. Degree-level students may work 20 hours a week in term time, and the National Living Wage has been £12.71 an hour since 1 April 2026: £254 a week, about ₹32,000. Even with those hours every week of the year, the job covers rent and food and little else. It pays nothing towards the fee or the loan.

The loan is the other half. SBI’s Global Ed-Vantage scheme charged 8.90% with collateral on its rate card effective 9 June 2026, and SBI adds interest during the course and the six months after it to the principal. Borrow ₹35 lakh and, by our calculation, the balance is close to ₹39.7 lakh when repayment starts; over 15 years the EMI is about ₹40,000 a month, and the family repays roughly ₹72 lakh in all. On the Home Office’s full-year median of £26,460, a graduate outside London would keep about £710 a month after tax and living costs, around ₹90,000, which covers that EMI. On a patchy year nearer £15,000 it does not, and the EMI goes back to the parents in Thrissur, Bathinda or Guntur, with the house or the land as security.

The banks, for their part, have learnt to lend safely. Gross non-performing assets on public-sector banks’ education loans fell from 7% in 2020-21 to 2% in 2024-25, the government told Parliament in December 2025, and the Reserve Bank keeps no state-wise data (PIB). A repaid loan is a success for the bank. It says nothing about whether it was repaid from a graduate’s salary or from a father’s pension.

Two more costs belong in the sum. A refusal is not refunded: Indians lost about ₹257 crore to refused US visas, ₹116 crore to refused UK visas and ₹93 crore to refused Australian ones in 2024, across all visa types, by Business Standard’s count. Refusals have also risen in most of the places the trade sends students. Australia refused about 40% of Indian student applicants in February 2026, Business Standard reported. Britain, since 1 June 2026, has required every university that sponsors students to keep its visa refusal rate below 5% or risk its licence (Home Office sponsor guidance), and Canada checked more than 368,000 acceptance letters in 2025, flagging about 4,900 that did not match (IRCC). Every forged bank statement raises the bar for the next applicant from the same country.

The cost no table shows

In the five years to July 2024, 633 Indian students died in 41 countries, the Ministry of External Affairs told the Lok Sabha: 172 in Canada, 108 in the United States, 58 in Britain and 57 in Australia. Most died of natural causes, accidents or illness; 19 were killed in attacks. Each is a family’s worst day. The figure is no evidence that studying abroad is dangerous, and it should not be used to frighten anyone.

The evidence on the mind is mixed. A 2024 systematic review covering 283,412 students found international students no more anxious than local ones, and in the better studies less depressed and less stressed, yet reporting lower wellbeing. A 20-year-old working nights to meet an EMI does not appear in any study we could find, and we would not pretend to know how many there are. The parents at home in Kottayam or Doaba appear in none of the tables either.

Six questions to ask a study abroad consultant before you sign

Is study abroad worth it for your child? Sometimes, clearly yes. A strong course at a university that fits the student, paid for in a way the family could survive losing, can change the shape of a life, and many Indian students abroad have proved it. The test is this student, this course and this family’s balance sheet. The questions below are the ones a commission gives an adviser little reason to raise, in Kochi, Jalandhar, Hyderabad or Mehsana. Ask them before you sign anything.

1. Who pays you, and how much? Ask in those words, and ask for the answer in writing: which universities pay you, and roughly what share of the first year’s fee.
2. Which universities are you contracted with, and what would you recommend if none of them paid you? The answer tells you whether you are choosing from the world or from a list.
3. What happened to last year’s graduates of this exact course? Ask the university itself how many found work, in what, at what pay, and how many were from India. A university that will not say has answered.
4. Is the institution on the official list? In the UK that is the register of licensed student sponsors; in Canada, the designated learning institutions list; in the US, the government’s school search for SEVP-certified schools.
5. What must my child earn to meet the EMI? Do the sum yourself with the work-hour cap, the official living figures and the earnings data. The agent’s worked example was written to sell.
6. If the visa is refused, or the job does not come, does the family keep the house or the land? If the answer is no, the plan is too big.

The choice that serves the student is sometimes the less glamorous one: a good master’s in India, or two years of work first and then a scholarship application made from strength. Chevening, for instance, asks for about two years of work experience before it will consider you. Chevening Scholarship 2027 article If you are weighing an offer now, ask us for a free second opinion before you sign with an agent.

What we have written is general information as of 29 September 2026; visa rules, fees and exchange rates move, so check the official pages before you commit. For a loan secured on your home, or a visa question about your own child, speak to your bank and to a regulated adviser in the destination country, such as one registered with Britain’s Immigration Advice Authority, a licensed RCIC in Canada or a US immigration attorney.

What would make staying a real choice?

Start with the easy part, which is regulation. The states that send the students have done strikingly different amounts of it.

Where	The rule	What we found
Punjab	Licence needed for consultancies, IELTS centres and emigration adverts (2014 Act)	Enforced in bursts: 263 licences cancelled in Jalandhar (2023); 1,274 raids (2025)
Haryana	Registration of travel agents, including study-visa consultancies, under a 2025 Act (amended 2026)	Rules not yet notified, as far as we could find
Kerala	Task force (2024); a draft bill from a Higher Education Council committee	Not enacted, as far as we could find
Andhra Pradesh and Telangana	No licensing of education consultants found	State bodies handle job recruitment only
Tamil Nadu	No rules on study-abroad agents found	Nothing aimed at this trade in our search
The Centre	No law on education agents; a draft Overseas Mobility Bill (October 2025) framed around jobs	A Parliamentary committee said student migration ‘is not presently covered’

Punjab’s decade of licensing is the lesson. A licence gives the state a list and a way to punish the worst, which is more than Kerala or Telangana has, but it did not stop the Mishra letters and it leaves the commission exactly where it was. Kerala formed a task force in October 2024, after police registered 795 visa-fraud cases in 2023, and a Higher Education Council committee produced a draft bill; we could find no sign that it has become law. At the Centre, the Ministry of External Affairs released a draft Overseas Mobility (Facilitation and Welfare) Bill in October 2025 to replace the Emigration Act of 1983, built around safe overseas employment (Deccan Chronicle). Parliament’s Standing Committee on External Affairs had already noted, in its report of 1 April 2025, that ‘student migration is not presently covered under the proposed Emigration Bill’, and recommended a safety net for Indian students abroad (PRS). As far as we could find, no law yet does what the committee asked. Education guide

Some fixes would cost a state very little. It could license every study-abroad consultancy, as Punjab does, and publish the licences and the complaints, so a parent in Kasaragod or Karimnagar can check a consultancy as easily as a doctor’s registration. It could require every consultancy to tell a family in writing, before any fee is paid, which institutions pay it and how much, the disclosure Britain’s own advisers wanted from universities. The Centre could count students by state every year, so that the next MP who asks gets an answer, and the next piece like this one does not have to rely on a count from before Covid. None of that stops a single student from leaving. It makes sure the one who leaves has been told the truth.

The harder task is the one no licence can do. Young people stay where the work matches what they studied, where the pay covers a life and where the future looks larger than the past. Kerala built schools, hospitals and one of the most educated generations in India, and has not yet built enough reasons for that generation to stay; Punjab’s farms and Telangana’s towns face the same arithmetic. Gujarat asks a different question, since its young leave with work at home. There, the task is to make sure that a family choosing to leave knows the legal price, the illegal price and the difference between them before the agent names a figure.

Every state capital asks how to keep its young from leaving. The families in Kochi, Bathinda, Guntur and Mehsana have put a better question with their loans and their land, and it is one a signboard cannot answer: what would it take, here, for a 21-year-old to stay because staying is the better life?

Sources

1. Credit: ‘A Deeper analysis of Kerala Migration’ (Malayalam, YouTube). Accessed 28 September 2026 (via machine transcript).
2. International Institute of Migration and Development, Kerala Migration Survey 2023 report. Accessed 28 September 2026.
3. Migration Advisory Committee, Rapid Review of the Graduate Route (May 2024). Accessed 28 September 2026.
4. Home Office, Analysis of migrants’ use of the Graduate route. Accessed 28 September 2026.
5. Home Office, Immigration system statistics, year ending June 2026: Why do people come to the UK? Study. Accessed 28 September 2026.
6. Home Office, Restoring control over the immigration system (white paper, May 2025). Accessed 28 September 2026.
7. gov.uk, Graduate visa. Accessed 28 September 2026.
8. gov.uk, Student visa: money. Accessed 28 September 2026.
9. gov.uk, National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates. Accessed 28 September 2026.
10. Home Office, Student sponsor guidance: compliance (version 06/2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
11. Home Office, Register of licensed sponsors: students (updated 25 September 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
12. Laura Devine Immigration, on HC 584 (3 September 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
13. ICEF Monitor, UK Home Office publishes updated visa sponsor guidance for agents and third parties (15 April 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
14. Study Australia, New rules on agent commissions for onshore student transfers. Accessed 28 September 2026.
15. Auditor General of Ontario, Annual Report 2021: Public Colleges Oversight. Accessed 28 September 2026.
16. Big Issue, Education agents: inside the murky and ‘unchecked’ £500m industry (20 September 2023). Accessed 28 September 2026.
17. Wonkhe, Clamping down on unscrupulous student recruitment agents (Raimo, Nikula, West, 12 July 2023). Accessed 28 September 2026.
18. The Tribune, Licences of 263 immigration firms, IELTS centres revoked (10 March 2023). Accessed 28 September 2026.
19. Business Standard, Visa fraud: Kerala govt forms task force (22 October 2024). Accessed 28 September 2026.
20. The South First, Kerala’s migration paradox (10 April 2025). Accessed 28 September 2026.
21. SBI, Education loan scheme interest rates (effective 9 June 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
22. SBI, Global Ed-Vantage scheme. Accessed 28 September 2026.
23. Pound Sterling Live, GBP/INR. Accessed 28 September 2026.
24. Business Standard, Indians lose Rs 662 cr to visa refusals (17 January 2025). Accessed 28 September 2026.
25. Reuters via Malay Mail, Fearing fraud, Canada rejects 74pc of Indian student visas (3 November 2025). Accessed 28 September 2026.
26. IRCC, CIMM briefing: International students (4 May 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
27. Business Standard, Australia student visa: 40% Indians rejected (7 April 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
28. Onmanorama, 633 Indian students died abroad in 5 years (27 July 2024). Accessed 28 September 2026.
29. Xiong et al., Comparing the mental health and wellbeing of domestic and international tertiary students, Journal of International Students (2024). Accessed 28 September 2026.
30. All India Radio News, Pradhan on youth unemployment, PLFS 2023-24 (26 September 2024). Accessed 28 September 2026.
31. Onmanorama, Is unemployment highest in Kerala? (10 October 2024). Accessed 28 September 2026.
32. The News Minute, Why Kerala sees a large number of students going abroad (20 March 2023). Accessed 28 September 2026.
33. Onmanorama, With 40% of UG seats vacant in Kerala (27 February 2025). Accessed 28 September 2026.
34. Business Standard, Advanced economies overtake Gulf nations in share of remittances to India (March 2025, RBI Bulletin). Accessed 28 September 2026.
35. UNFPA India, India Ageing Report 2023. Accessed 28 September 2026.
36. Chevening, Work experience requirement. Accessed 28 September 2026.
37. Free Movement, OISC renamed Immigration Advice Authority from 16 January 2025. Accessed 28 September 2026.
38. The Tribune, Rise and fall of the Canadian dream (24 November 2024). Accessed 28 September 2026.
39. Sulekha business directory, overseas education consultants in Ameerpet, Hyderabad (observation only, not a source of fact). Accessed 28 September 2026.
40. The PIE News, Over 1.3 million Indian students studying abroad in 2024. Accessed 28 September 2026.
41. NITI Aayog, Working Paper on International Student Mobility (November 2025), including Table 12. Accessed 28 September 2026.
42. PRS Legislative Research, Standing Committee on External Affairs report summary: Welfare of Indian diaspora and status of Emigration Bill (1 April 2025). Accessed 28 September 2026.
43. Business Standard, Indian students going abroad fall 31% in 3 years (12 February 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
44. Business Standard, Outward remittances through RBI’s LRS hit an all-time high in FY22 (19 May 2022). Accessed 28 September 2026.
45. Business Standard, Outward remittances under LRS decline 6.85% in FY25 (22 May 2025). Accessed 28 September 2026.
46. ThePrint, Punjab Agricultural University study on rural emigration (17 January 2024). Accessed 28 September 2026.
47. Punjab Prevention of Human Smuggling Act (later Punjab Travel Professionals (Regulation) Act), text via PRS. Accessed 28 September 2026.
48. The Tribune, 24 FIRs, 1,274 raids: Punjab cracks down on travel agencies (February 2025). Accessed 28 September 2026.
49. The Tribune, Canada deportation case accused Mishra sentenced to three-year jail (May 2024). Accessed 28 September 2026.
50. IRCC, CIMM briefing: Genuine students impacted by fraud task force (28 February 2024). Accessed 28 September 2026.
51. The Tribune, Indian students see 50 per cent drop in Canadian study permits in 2025 (23 February 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
52. The Tribune, 55% seats vacant in Punjab tech colleges (2023). Accessed 28 September 2026.
53. The Tribune, Job shocker: Punjab, Haryana unemployment higher than national average (PLFS 2025). Accessed 28 September 2026.
54. Business Standard, Over 1,700 Indians deported from US in 2025 so far (4 August 2025). Accessed 28 September 2026.
55. The Tribune, Record 3,258 Indians deported from US this year (December 2025). Accessed 28 September 2026.
56. The Week, Haryana’s 75 pc job quota for locals unconstitutional, says HC (17 November 2023). Accessed 28 September 2026.
57. Careers360, Haryana govt to move Supreme Court against quashing of 75% quota law. Accessed 28 September 2026.
58. ThePrint, 8,199 applicants, 219 selected: Haryana construction workers and jobs in Israel (29 February 2024). Accessed 28 September 2026.
59. The Tribune, Haryana Assembly clears Bill to crack down on illegal travel agents (27 March 2025). Accessed 28 September 2026.
60. Telangana Today, Telugu states send more students to US, says Consul General (5 March 2021). Accessed 28 September 2026.
61. Business Standard, US Embassy sets new record in India, issues 140,000 student visas in 2023 (30 January 2024). Accessed 28 September 2026.
62. Institute of International Education, Open Doors 2025 press release. Accessed 28 September 2026.
63. Careers360, 80,000 Telugu students in the US; 21 students deported on arrival (29 August 2023). Accessed 28 September 2026.
64. Business Standard, US student visas for Indians plunge 62% during peak admission season (August 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
65. Inside Higher Ed, New student visas dropped 23% in 2025 (26 August 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
66. Careers360, Half of US visa termination cases involve Indians: lawyers’ association (April 2025). Accessed 28 September 2026.
67. Yale OISS, Presidential proclamation extends H-1B $100,000 fee policy; fee remains blocked by court order (September 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
68. Federal Register, Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers, FR Doc. 2026-19554 (23 September 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
69. Trading Economics, USD/INR (96.16 on 28 September 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
70. The Tribune, US visa fraud: Telangana student deported, consultancy firm head held (4 June 2025). Accessed 28 September 2026.
71. Deccan Chronicle, Study abroad: AP CM moots education loans at 4% interest (6 October 2025). Accessed 28 September 2026.
72. Telangana Today, Youth joblessness surges in Telangana (PLFS 2023-24). Accessed 28 September 2026.
73. DeshGujarat, Gujarat has second-lowest unemployment rate in PLFS 2023-24; state-wise data (27 November 2024). Accessed 28 September 2026.
74. The Federal, Is NEET driving students abroad to study medicine? (2 March 2022). Accessed 28 September 2026.
75. Careers360 (PTI), MK Stalin welcomes Tamil Nadu students home; evacuation completed (March 2022). Accessed 28 September 2026.
76. CBS News Minnesota, Human smuggling sentencing after Indian family died on US-Canada border (28 May 2025). Accessed 28 September 2026.
77. The Tribune, As youth with high IELTS score fail to speak in English in US court, Gujarat police begin investigation (1 August 2022). Accessed 28 September 2026.
78. ThePrint, Gujarat cops unearth IELTS exam racket; 45 booked (September 2022). Accessed 28 September 2026.
79. The Tribune, Nicaragua ‘dunki’ flight: passengers from Gujarat agreed to pay Rs 60-80 lakh (December 2023). Accessed 28 September 2026.
80. PIB, Education loans: NPAs and data (15 December 2025). Accessed 28 September 2026.
81. Deccan Chronicle, MEA to introduce Overseas Mobility Bill to replace Emigration Act (10 October 2025). Accessed 28 September 2026.
82. IRCC, Designated learning institutions list. Accessed 28 September 2026.
83. Study in the States (DHS), School Search for SEVP-certified schools. Accessed 28 September 2026.
84. Lok Sabha unstarred question 4166, answered 20 December 2024 (state-wise data on students abroad not available). Accessed 28 September 2026.
85. Ministry of External Affairs, Lok Sabha question 4709, Annexure I (state-wise students leaving, 2016 to Feb 2021), March 2021. Accessed 28 September 2026.