Families in Nepal are investing in education not for knowledge, but for the hope of a visa.
The night after Sushil got his +2 results, his family sat in their small living room in Butwal. His mother made tea while his father pressed the buttons on a calculator. They weren’t discussing whether their son should study engineering or chartered accountancy. They were deciding which country to send him. “Canada or Australia?” his father asked. Sushil hesitated for a moment, but everyone in the room already knew the answer it was whichever country gives a visa first. For many Nepali families, higher education is no longer about learning. It has become a plan to leave.
You can see this shift on the streets of Kathmandu. Walk through Putalisadak or Baneshwor and you will pass more education consultancies than actual colleges. Bright signboards promise a “future abroad,” and visa banners line the streets. IELTS, PTE, and Japanese language classes have become an unofficial curriculum for Nepali youth. For thousands of students, the question is no longer what to study but where to go. Families follow a familiar script. They take loans, sell land, and pay the first year’s tuition as if buying a ticket out of the country.
The scale of this migration is massive. From July 2023 to July 2024, 112,593 Nepali students received government permission to study abroad. Nearly 80 percent of them chose five countries: Japan (34,731), Canada (15,982), Australia (14,372), the UK (13,339), and the United States (11,261). In just six months, families sent Rs 47 billion abroad for tuition and living costs, and by the end of the year, the outflow reached Rs 1 trillion. Nepal received around USD 11 billion in remittances in 2024 roughly 27 percent of our GDP–but this cycle is fragile. The money leaves quickly and only returns if the student manages to settle and earn abroad.
The cost to Nepal is harder to measure in numbers. Village schools have half-empty classrooms. Local colleges are struggling to fill their seats. Hospitals lose nurses, farms lose young workers, and small towns lose their future. IELTS may help our youth leave, but it leaves a silent gap at home. We are exporting our youth at 18 and 19, and importing hope in dollars. Over time, this could turn Nepal into a country of parents and grandparents waiting for money transfers, while the classrooms, clinics, and farmlands that build a nation remain empty.
Sushil’s family sent him to Canada in March. His room in Butwal is empty now, and the family’s fields are leased to a neighbor. In the short run, the plan feels smart. But in the long run, the cost is national. If education is only a flight ticket who stays to teach, to heal, and to build here? And when another Nepali family in another small town asks, “Canada or Australia?” it is not just a question for that child. It is a question for all of us.