Briefing
Is the Middle East crisis pricing out education abroad?
With oil prices surging and currencies in flux, the Iran war is threatening to put an overseas education out of reach for many.
By Michelle Zhu
"For families who have built their lives around expatriate work in the Gulf, these pressures translate directly into financial uncertainty for the children studying abroad."
"Those who budgeted carefully for a multi-year degree may now find themselves unable to predict, let alone control, what their education will ultimately cost."
“Those who remain face an impossible bind: they can stay and risk both safety and the ability to pay, or they can leave and face an uncertain academic future."
In brief
- The escalating Middle East conflict is destabilising international education, as surging costs and safety concerns force thousands of students to abandon or redraw their global study plans.
- Families face plummeting currencies and bank closures, while airspace shutdowns leave students stranded and regional hubs like the UAE see a dramatic 43% drop in student interest.
- Universities must offer emergency aid and flexible policies as student mobility shifts toward stable hubs in Europe and Asia to bypass volatility and financial uncertainty.
Unless cost has never been an issue for one's family, the average student's dream of an overseas education has always come with a complex financial calculus: tuition, living expenses and flights home.
The war, which began in late February this year, has rocked these considerations with threats of currency volatility, skyrocketing oil prices and inflation. Students already enrolled abroad are most immediately hit by higher travel costs and, in worse cases, disruptions to the family income that funds their education.
In the UAE – which accounts for nearly a fifth of India's global remittances – the war has reportedly triggered layoffs, salary cuts and unpaid leave across hospitality, travel, events and retail sectors. For families who have built their lives around expatriate work in the Gulf, these pressures translate directly into financial uncertainty for the children studying abroad.
And for those still planning to apply, the barriers appear to be multiplying. This also means the map of where students can afford to go may be redrawn soon as well.
When money can’t move
Families who hold savings in local currency are watching the war accelerate a crisis that was already building. Students who rely on parents back home for tuition and living expenses may be watching those contributions lose value almost overnight.
Most obviously, the Iranian rial, which had already been weakening for months under pre-war sanctions, has now become increasingly impossible to exchange.
But the problem extends far beyond Iran. The Indian rupee logged its worst fiscal year drop in over a decade after falling below 95 rupee to US dollar on March 30. Despite the ceasefire, the rupee remains at historically low levels. That decline has directly raised costs for the tens of thousands of Indian families remitting funds each semester. For a family sending US$40,000 for a year's tuition and living expenses, even a small depreciation adds thousands.
Families who have the funds also face a new challenge remitting them across borders. Several global banks, including Citi and HSBC, have temporarily closed some Gulf branches citing security reviews since the war began. Though both emphasise that online banking remains fully operational, this shift poses a barrier for families in countries with unreliable internet or frozen digital payment systems.
The broader question is how sustained currency volatility and disrupted banking infrastructure will affect financial planning around higher education. Those who budgeted carefully for a multi-year degree may now find themselves unable to predict, let alone control, what their education will ultimately cost.
Some institutions have already begun stepping up to offer support to affected students. The University of Guelph in Canada has offered flexible tuition payment arrangements, waived late fees and provided emergency bursaries for students who were stranded in Iran.
In Australia, the University of Melbourne has made all Iranian citizens automatically eligible for special consideration for coursework during the conflict. And according to an Australian news podcast, Iranian students in the country have also appealed directly to academics for leniency on deadlines and fee waivers.
The International Baccalaureate (IB) has acted as well, extending its coursework submission deadline across 12 Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, Israel, Lebanon and the Gulf states. The organisation is further offering fee-free exam deferrals and full refunds for students who withdraw from the May 2026 session under its Adverse Circumstances policy.
Of scholarships and stranding
Beyond self-funding, students on government-sponsored scholarships from their home countries face an entirely different kind of uncertainty. Even those who secured promises of a scholarship long before the war are finding themselves in precarious positions, as governments and private sponsors alike shift to realign their funding priorities.
The war against Iran was officially estimated to cost over US$11.3 billion in just the first week alone – a figure that Bernie Sanders on March 18 said had since grown to US$22.8 billion. The US senator reckons that amount could have cancelled US$20,000 in student debt for over a million borrowers, among other uses.
The question becomes whether other government-funded scholarships, particularly those supporting students from countries now diverting budgets to war efforts, will face similar cuts. After all, overseas study programmes become an easy line to trim when a conflict drains national coffers at such an alarming rate.
Consider the Pentagon, which terminated 93 military fellowship programmes in February this year before the war began, citing ideological alignment rather than war costs. It remains unclear whether other government-funded scholarships will face similar cuts as conflict spending rises.
Students across the world also continue to find themselves in transit limbo amid widespread airspace closures and flight disruptions as the war escalated. The list is long: from the more than 80 MBA students from Pune who found themselves stuck in Dubai, to a Queen's University group that was forced to shelter in Doha after their flight abruptly turned around. Agroup of about 30 students and staff from the National University of Singapore found themselves briefly stranded in Johannesburg, their return trip from a field studies trip in Kenya via Doha derailed by the airspace closures.
In Iran alone, the Ministry of External Affairs estimated that around 9,000 Indian nationals, including a significant number of students, were in the country when the war began. Many have since been evacuated via gruelling overland routes through Armenia and Azerbaijan, but the episode exposed how quickly the infrastructure of international travel – and by extension, international education – can collapse.
And those who remain face an impossible bind: they can stay and risk both safety and the ability to pay, or they can leave and face an uncertain academic future.
A new map for student mobility?
The Gulf has made clear its aspirations to become a major international education hub, offering accessible alternatives to Western destinations. US and European university branch campuses across areas like Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi have since been forced into temporary closures in the wake of the Iran war for the safety of both staff and students alike, with several moving their courses online amid the ongoing aggression between Iran, Israel and the US.
Student sentiment towards the region has become hostile as well. Data from Studyportals shows that interest in studying in Gulf Cooperation Council countries has dropped 43 percent since the pre-conflict peak in late December 2025, and 30 percent compared to the first week of February before the war broke out.
For students from Asia and Africa who had been drawn to Gulf institutions for their quality international degrees and proximity to home, this could mean a painful reassessment of their educational plans.
Some may pivot to mainland Europe, where countries like Germany and France offer strong academic programmes. Others may look to emerging education hubs in Asia such as South Korea, which emerged as a competitive destination even before the war and surpassed 300,000 international students in 2025.
The intensity of the impact of Middle East crisis could take months or years to assess. But it is already clear that the financial ground beneath students and their families has become far less stable in the face of currency swings, bank closures, scholarships that vanish overnight and students rerouting their plans mid-degree.
For students from privileged backgrounds, these shocks may be an inconvenience. But for others – especially those reliant on Gulf remittances, the Iranian rial, or scholarships from conflict-strained national budgets – studying abroad may no longer be an option.