Bachelor’s degrees fuel Asia’s English-taught programme boom

This month, Japan announced that it hit its international student target of 400,000 eight years ahead of schedule. This comes just months after South Korea announced it had crossed its own 300,000 milestone two years before its 2027 deadline. Across the region, governments have spent years actively marketing themselves as study destinations and expanding English-taught programmes. In markets across South, Southeast, and East Asia, students now have a growing menu of English-taught options close to home, often at lower cost.

In 2024, the number of English-taught degree programmes in Asia overtook the number in continental Europe

Asia and Europe have not simply swapped positions, they’ve grown in structurally different ways. Continental Europe remains the dominant provider of English-taught Master’s degrees, with a substantial lead over Asia at postgraduate level.

Asia, meanwhile, has built its lead almost entirely through Bachelor’s programmes. The volume of English-taught undergraduate degrees across Asian institutions now far outpaces Europe’s undergraduate ETP provision.