The only thing 22-year-old Joep Salet lacks in his new life as a student in the Paris region is the waves of Scheveningen beach (The Hague, Netherlands) in the North Sea, where he surfed until 2023. Now a master's student in perfume development at ISIPCA, the International Institute of Perfume, Cosmetics and Food Aromatics, on the Versailles campus, the native of The Hague decided at the age of 17 that he would become a perfumer, "a profession that combines science and creation and whose best schools are here and in Grasse" (French Riveria). In his class of around 20 students, he rubs shoulders with a Colombian, a Korean, a Chinese, an Italian... and two French students. In this niche of higher education, the reputation of the best French institutions knows no borders.

Milica Ritopecki, 24, also feels a touch of nostalgia when she recalls evenings spent with her friends on the banks of the Danube, in Pancevo, Serbia. But in 2022, as a physics and chemistry undergraduate at the University of Belgrade, she traveled around Europe in search of "the best European program in [her] specialty." She left Vojvodina, a province in northern Serbia, for the Ile-de-France region, at the Université Paris-Saclay. And she's not the only one. Out of 48,000 students, 35% are international.

For Dario Cervera Jorda, a newcomer to Paris, it's the warmth of the sun in his native Valencia, Spain, that he misses. With a bachelor's degree in piano from his local university, the 27-year-old set foot at the Paris Conservatoire as an Erasmus exchange student in 2022. In 2023, he was admitted, after a competitive examination, to the harpsichord master's program. The Holy Grail for the young Spaniard. "This school, open to the whole world, has a legendary status for all musicians. Its resources are impressive and its teachers exceptional," pointed out the student. "The years of study here open up many professional opportunities," he continued.

In search of the skills and institutions they need to build their future, more than 400,000 international students chose France in 2024 to pursue their studies. They are also France's future ambassadors, and an accurate barometer of the country's attractiveness. According to a report by Campus France, the national agency in charge of promoting French higher education abroad, published in June 2023, French universities are the leading institutions welcoming international students (65%), ahead of business schools (14%) and engineering schools (7%). The top regions of origin for their students are North Africa (75,477) in 2021-2022, sub-Saharan Africa (71,221), the European Union (46,938) and Asia (44,498).

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