Ratios of international students in HE across OECD growing

In the Education at a Glance 2025, OECD Indicators report on education trends worldwide, the OECD says there were 5.02 million ‘internationally mobile students’ in OECD countries, with the USA hosting the largest share of students.

Share of international students: The OECD said that the proportion of globally mobile students as a share of all tertiary enrolments has increased in almost every destination country analyzed between 2013 and 2023. A notable exception was New Zealand, where the authors attributed a decreased share (15 per cent) to the country’s prolonged border closures during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In several countries where the share of mobile students was five per cent or less in 2013, the share has more than doubled in the past decade: including Estonia, where the share rose from three per cent in 2013 to 11 per cent in 2023; Latvia (four-to-13), Lithuania (two-to-11), Portugal (four-to-13), Slovakia (five-to-15) and Slovenia (three-to-11).

Portugal is one of the OECD countries where the ratio of international students has more than doubled in the last 10 years.

The ratio of international students has also more than doubled in Ireland, Finland and Hungary over the last 10 years.

Luxembourg, traditionally an outlier in the OECD data set, had the highest proportion of internationally mobile students at 52 per cent, followed by Australia (27), the UK (23), Canada (21) and Austria (20).

Across the OECD as a whole, the proportion of international students as a share of all tertiary students increased from five per cent in 2013 to seven per cent in 2023, the report shows.

Combined the ‘Big Four’ English-speaking destinations (the USA, the UK, Australia and Canada) accounted for 48 per cent of all international students in OECD and partner countries.

Source regions: Asia was comfortably the largest source region of international students in tertiary programs across the OECD in 2023, accounting for 58 per cent of those enrolled, followed by European students (19 per cent).

The authors noted that many European students stay within Europe for international higher education, as they represent 39 per cent of mobile students within the EU 25 countries.

Across the OECD and partner countries, South Africa has the largest share of international students from African countries at 86 per cent, followed by France (52) and Portugal (42), representing the historical and linguistic ties in former colonial relationships, the authors said.

South Korea and Japan have the highest dependence on Asia for international student enrolment in tertiary education at 94 per cent, followed by Australia (86), New Zealand (77), the USA (75) and Canada (72).

Destinations in Latin America, including Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Argentina, had the lowest ratios of Asian students and their international student cohorts are dominated by other countries in the continent.

Concentration of international students: For this year’s report, the OECD has introduced a new indicator to analyze the concentration of international higher education students at institutions within a country.

In Spain, 37 per cent of international students were clustered at institutions that represented 10 per cent of overall tertiary enrolments, suggesting a high concentration at certain institutions rather than a more even spread across the country. Spain was followed by Lithuania, Latvia, South Korea and Germany.

Among the countries for which data was available, Czechia had the lowest score, suggesting a more even spread of international students across its institutions.

The authors noted that major destinations such as the UK, Canada and Australia also exhibited relatively lower levels of concentration, suggesting that “a more even distribution of international students across tertiary institution could be associated with the overall attractiveness of a country to international students”.