International Education

Which audiences are turning to the Asian Tigers - and why?

6 min read

| 19/08/25 13:24

Jack Surtees

Recently we reported on the rise of the “Asian Tigers”. We saw that collective efforts to capitalize on global shifts in international education have led to growing search interest in South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong, particularly from other Asian audiences.

Here we’re going to explore this area in greater detail. How are each of these four destinations performing individually? And, using our unique combination of search and survey data, we can also investigate what is it that attracts their audiences.

How do audiences differ?

When measuring search trends collectively, we found that the “Asian Tigers” currently attract a greater level of interest than both China and Japan, the two largest markets in Asia.

Much of this interest is driven by India and Indonesia. Which are by far the largest international audiences for this region, followed by the USA and then a collection of audiences from across Asia, Europe and the Americas. But does that remain true when we examine each destination individually?

Well, yes…and no.

Indian, Indonesian and US audiences feature prominently across all four study destinations:

India is the largest audience for South Korea.
Indonesia is the largest for Taiwan and the second largest for both South Korea and Singapore.
The USA is the second largest for Hong Kong.

Furthermore, none of these three audiences fall outside of the top 5 for any of the "Asian Tiger" destinations.

Clearly they remain major audiences across the board, but what about other audiences? What share of searches do they account for? To explore this, let’s look at a breakdown of regional search interest for each destination.

The variation in audience makeup is immediately evident.

We see, for example, that Southeast Asia is a major part of the audience for each destination, but clearly most important to Taiwan where it accounts for just under half of all searches (45%).

Similarly, Europe and South Asia collectively make up a significant proportion (at least 19%) of each audience, but none more so than for South Korea, where they account for around half of all search interest (47%).

This helps to outline where the markets are strong for each destination, and also where the opportunity lies. For example, Taiwan and Hong Kong currently attract notably less interest from South Asian audiences than South Korea and Singapore, highlighting an area for potential growth. But what does growth look right now?

Where is growth coming from?

We previously found that a large portion of the growth in interest for the “Asian Tigers” collectively was being generated by increasing interest in intra-Asian mobility, particularly from Southeast Asia and South Asia. But does this remain true across each individual destination? Let’s take a look.

As a quick explanation of what we're seeing here, any bars above 0 represent growth from that audience between April and July, and anything below represents a fall in interest during that timespan. It is also worth noting that, as Asian audiences are relatively large for each destination, we are less likely to see major shifts in interest from them - effectively, they are larger and more stable.

So, what do we see?

Well, what's immediately apparent is that Taiwan and Hong Kong are excelling at attracting interest. They both see only growth from all four tracked audiences - most notably +45% and +103% respectively from the Americas.

Additionally, Hong Kong manages to attract significant growth from Europe (+67%), as does Singapore (+27%).

Singapore is also attracting greater interest from Africa (+27%) than the others, but sees the largest fall in interest from audiences in the Americas (-24%).

South Korea, meanwhile, sees growth from Europe (+10%) - and remember, European audiences already account for over a quarter of all South Korean searches, so this is significant - despite slight falls from Asia, the Americas, and Africa. Clearly there is opportunity here yet to be capitalized on.

So, how can institutions continue to attract greater interest and tap into that opportunity? Well, a good place to start is by understanding what attracts audiences in the first place, in order to thoroughly communicate your strengths.

What do audiences think of study in the "Asian Tigers"?

Seoul was recently announced as the top student city in the QS Best Student Cities rankings, overtaking London which had held the top spot for six straight years. This result further underlines the growing appeal of Asian study, but why are students attracted to these destinations? And how do they compare to competitors?

Our survey data allows us to contextualize what we see in search trends, giving us a unique insight into the way students feel about their chosen destinations. We ask them to rate a variety of factors that influence their choice of study destination, and here’s what the data has to show:

Here, we see the percentage of respondents that rate each destination as being ‘very good’ for each factor - the "Asian Tigers" are once again viewed as a collective and compared against China, Japan, and the (recently usurped) UK.

So, for example, half of our respondents seeking to study in an “Asian Tiger” destination feel ‘very good’ about the reputation of their institutions. In fact, their academic reputation is viewed more positively than both China and Japan, and only slightly behind the UK – which tracks when you consider that many of their institutions (particularly in Hong Kong) have been climbing the THE university rankings in recent years.

Audience sentiment for the “Asian Tigers” stacks up well when compared to these competing destinations across the board and it performs particularly well against them in three key factors: visa & entry requirements (24%), affordability (26%), and safety & political stability (45%) - which bodes well for continued growth as we progress into the 2025/26 academic year.

In the current geopolitical climate, we have seen the impact of stability and simple positive messaging. The fact that the "Asian Tigers" already perform exceedingly well in these regards goes a long way to explaining why more and more audiences are turning in their direction.