Institutional Readiness for Study Abroad: A Conceptual Review of Opportunities and Challenges in Indian Higher Education

  • Unique Paper ID: 206853
  • Volume: 13
  • Issue: 2
  • PageNo: 2864-2868
  • Abstract:
  • India has become one of the biggest places from which students move to study abroad. Depending on the method used to count, the number of students leaving India is well over a million, though growth slowed down sharply in 2025 because of stricter visa rules in other countries. The higher education system that sends so many students abroad is also not fully ready to support, structure, and take advantage of that mobility, which is strange. This paper takes a broad look at how ready Indian higher education institutions (HEIs) are to help students study abroad. It does this by looking at six areas: the institutional infrastructure, the policy and regulatory ecosystem, the curriculum and credit-recognition systems, faculty capacity, financial support structures, and digital readiness. Then, using the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, University Grants Commission (UGC) regulations, and new secondary data, it makes a map of the main problems Indian institutions face, such as regulatory bottlenecks, financial constraints, broken partnerships, faculty exposure gaps, the digital divide between cities and rural areas, and policy instability in destination countries. At the end of the paper, suggestions are made for a more organised and fair method of internationalisation that goes beyond signing documents and focuses on measurable student results.

Copyright & License

Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

BibTeX

@article{206853,
        author = {Shweta Apte and Prof. Dr.Mooon Paiithannkar},
        title = {Institutional Readiness for Study Abroad: A Conceptual Review of Opportunities and Challenges in Indian Higher Education},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {13},
        number = {2},
        pages = {2864-2868},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=206853},
        abstract = {India has become one of the biggest places from which students move to study abroad. Depending on the method used to count, the number of students leaving India is well over a million, though growth slowed down sharply in 2025 because of stricter visa rules in other countries. The higher education system that sends so many students abroad is also not fully ready to support, structure, and take advantage of that mobility, which is strange. This paper takes a broad look at how ready Indian higher education institutions (HEIs) are to help students study abroad. It does this by looking at six areas: the institutional infrastructure, the policy and regulatory ecosystem, the curriculum and credit-recognition systems, faculty capacity, financial support structures, and digital readiness. Then, using the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, University Grants Commission (UGC) regulations, and new secondary data, it makes a map of the main problems Indian institutions face, such as regulatory bottlenecks, financial constraints, broken partnerships, faculty exposure gaps, the digital divide between cities and rural areas, and policy instability in destination countries. At the end of the paper, suggestions are made for a more organised and fair method of internationalisation that goes beyond signing documents and focuses on measurable student results.},
        keywords = {internationalization; study abroad; NEP 2020; institutional readiness; Indian higher education; student mobility},
        month = {July},
        }

Cite This Article

Apte, S., & Paiithannkar, P. D. (2026). Institutional Readiness for Study Abroad: A Conceptual Review of Opportunities and Challenges in Indian Higher Education. International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology (IJIRT), 13(2), 2864–2868.

Related Articles