plate 190 · 2023 data

Türkiye overtook France in hosting foreign students

Internationally mobile students enrolled in universities and colleges, thousands, 2015 and 2023, UNESCO.

People: ageing, growing, moving
  1. 1. The world has already passed peak child
  2. 2. Japan's median age is more than three times Niger's
  3. 3. South Korea now has a quarter of its 1971 births
  4. 4. China's population is projected to more than halve by 2100
  5. 5. Japan now has over 100,000 centenarians, up from 153
  6. 6. Japan has 9 million empty homes: one in seven
  7. 7. One in ten in Japan will be foreign by 2070
  8. 8. Japan's foreign residents have doubled since 2012, passing 4 million
  9. 9. Jakarta, not Tokyo, is the world's largest city
  10. 10. Two in three newly licensed UK doctors qualified abroad
  11. 11. Iran dropped from top refugee host to fifth in 2025
  12. 12. More Christians live in sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else
  13. 13. Two in three people live where fertility is below replacement
  14. 14. Japan's births fell below half their 1899 level
  15. 15. Brazil now has more people over 65 than Germany
  16. 16. Egypt has more asylum seekers than Germany, Spain and Italy
  17. 17. 34 countries and territories are past their population peak
  18. 18. Chile's fertility rate fell below Italy's and Japan's
  19. 19. Nigeria now has almost 25 million more people than Brazil
  20. 20. Thailand's births have fallen below its deaths
  21. 21. Women hold at least half the seats in seven parliaments
  22. 22. Child marriage in South Asia has nearly halved since 2005
  23. 23. Six in ten child deaths now happen in sub-Saharan Africa
  24. 24. Argentina's teen birth rate fell 60% in ten years
  25. 25. Chad rose from 15th to 6th among refugee hosts
  26. 26. Sri Lanka's population has shrunk three years in a row
  27. 27. Bangladesh's births per woman have fallen by two-thirds since 1970
  28. 28. Türkiye overtook France in hosting foreign students
301,634

Foreign students in Türkiye in 2023, more than four times the 72,178 of 2015.

2023

The year Türkiye passed France (276,217), the classic study-abroad host. In 2022 it trailed, 244,027 to 263,459.

−11%

China's foreign students since their 2020 peak, to 200,892. Japan's fell 18%. Both now sit well below Türkiye.

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics: inbound internationally mobile students, 2023
the numbers & method
Türkiye overtook France in hosting foreign students. Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics: inbound internationally mobile students, 2023.
2015 (k)2023 (k)
Türkiye72302
France239276
China123201
Japan132182

Claim types Fact

UIS indicator 26637 'Total inbound internationally mobile students, both sexes' (tertiary education), read from the UIS public data API (api.uis.unesco.org/api/public/data/indicators?indicator=26637&geoUnit=TUR), UIS data release of February 2026. No estimate flags on the values shown. Türkiye by year: 2015 72,178; 2016 87,903; 2017 108,076; 2018 125,138; 2019 154,505; 2020 185,047; 2021 224,048; 2022 244,027; 2023 301,634 (no 2024 value yet). France: 2015 239,409; 2022 263,459; 2023 276,217; 2024 284,865 (still below Türkiye's 2023 figure). China: 2015 123,127; peak 2020 225,100; 2023 200,892; 2024 194,327. Japan: 2015 131,980; peak 2020 222,661; 2023 181,821. Larger hosts in 2023, not shown: United States 956,923; United Kingdom 748,461; Australia 467,074; Germany 423,197; Canada 389,181; Russia 336,453. Ratios and percentage changes are progrss calculations. Licence: UIS data, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

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