Getting started with Global Student Flows
When you first open the Global Student Flows dataset, you’ll land on the Overview report. This report provides a high-level snapshot, including:
Top 10 source countries or territories
Top 10 source cities
Top 10 destination countries
This overview helps you quickly understand the biggest student movement patterns before drilling deeper into trends.
Using the Source/Destination/Time Period Filters
At the top right of each report in Global Student Flows, you’ll find three key dropdown filters:
Source – Where students are coming from
Destination – Where students are going
Time period – The range of years you want to analyze
By default, the source is set to Global, but you can change this to any specific country or region. For example, selecting China as the source updates all charts to show where students from China are studying and how those patterns change.
Comparing trends with the Benchmark Report
The Benchmark report is a great option to compare student flow trends over time.
Once you select a source country, the benchmark view shows how student flows from that source have trended across multiple destination countries. You can adjust the time period to compare for a specific timeframe (up to last 10 years thru 2030).
The charts show:
Source countries as rows
Destination countries as columns
This side-by-side layout makes it easy to see how student demand for different destinations has risen or declined over the selected timeframe.
Focusing on a single destination
If you want to analyse one destination in detail, you can filter the benchmark report to a specific country (for example, the United States or Canada). This displays a single trend line showing how many students from the selected source country studied in that destination over time.
Heatmap (in Analytics Report)
The Heatmap uses a colour scale to represent relative values:
Bright yellow indicate higher values.
Dark colours indicate lower values.
The cells can display:
Values (number of students)
Row Percentage
Column Percentage
By selecting a destination country (for example, Canada), you can see:
How student numbers have changed over time
Multiple Locations/ Destinations in the same chart
Clear visual patterns of growth or decline
The Heatmap also offers options to export data for external analysis:
Copy Data to Clipboard
Download CSV