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 on the move
  1. 1. One in ten in Japan will be foreign by 2070
  2. 2. Japan's foreign residents have doubled since 2012, passing 4 million
  3. 3. Jakarta, not Tokyo, is the world's largest city
  4. 4. Two in three newly licensed UK doctors qualified abroad
  5. 5. Iran dropped from top refugee host to fifth in 2025
  6. 6. Egypt has more asylum seekers than Germany, Spain and Italy
  7. 7. Chad rose from 15th to 6th among refugee hosts
  8. 8. Türkiye overtook France in hosting foreign students
  9. 9. Uzbekistan's university enrolment rose from 8% to 57%
  10. 10. Japan rose from ninth to second as Vietnamese emigrants' home
  11. 11. South Korea turned from student sender into student host
  12. 12. Nigeria became the third-biggest sender of students abroad
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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