Sri Lanka's economy is in a state of disarray. Inflation is skyrocketing, with food costs rising by a startling 30 percent in March alone. The value of the national currency, the rupee, has plummeted against the US dollar, and access to foreign cash is so restricted that Sri Lanka is now unable to pay for vital imports, such as gasoline, resulting in frequent power outages.

The epidemic, which discouraged tourism (a crucial source of foreign finances), and, more recently, the crisis in Ukraine, with its inflationary influence on commodities and food prices, have aggravated the country's financial difficulties. However, the crisis's origins may be traced back to years of mismanagement by previous national administrations, as well as an underlying "dual deficit" problem in the Sri Lankan economy. On the one hand, the nation has a budgetary deficit — that is, it spends more than it earns and has extremely high levels of foreign debt — but it also has a current account deficit, which means it buys more than it sells.

Protestors battled with police earlier this month in response to their dissatisfaction with the government's handling of the economy. The International Monetary Fund said in a March 2022 study of the Sri Lankan economy that "Sri Lanka [is] undergoing a dual balance of payments and sovereign debt crisis." Public debt, according to [IMF] experts, has become unsustainable, and gross reserves are dangerously low and inadequate to fulfil near-term debt servicing demands. While the government's attempts to acquire fresh FX [foreign currency] funding may give some relief in the near term, it is unclear how the significant FX debt payment commitments beyond 2022 would be paid."

Students are struggling to afford their tuition.

With domestic expenses increasing and foreign currency limitations in place – not to mention that obtaining foreign cash is now much more difficult – more Sri Lankan students are struggling to pay tuition for their continued education overseas.

According to media sources in Canada, where over 3,000 Sri Lankan students are now enrolled, third-year Biology student Dehan Kumburugala has been forced to stop his pre-med studies and make arrangements to return home owing to the escalating situation. "With Sri Lanka in such a critical position, paying education fees is just too difficult... "With no one in Canada ready to assist, finishing my degree is out of the question," Mr Kumburugala told New Canadian Media.

As local relief efforts for students and their families continue to ratchet up, additional students complain that their parents are no longer able to send money to finance their education owing to the rupee's depreciation.

Is growth being stifled?

It is unclear how the present crisis will affect outward mobility in the medium to long run. However, Sri Lanka has been generally identified as a significant South Asian growth region for student recruitment. The number of Sri Lankan students studying abroad has almost doubled in the five years before the epidemic, with more than 30,000 students studying abroad in 2019.

For example, Canada, which has a sizable Sri Lankan diaspora, saw its population increase by more than 65 percent between 2020 and 2021.

More generally, the majority of Sri Lankan students studying abroad choose to study in Australia, the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom, with an increasing number also studying in Asia, particularly India and Malaysia.