Birmingham, Dubai has achieved great success in terms of the scale over the last eight years.
International students, which is students coming in from key source markets, have clearly played a great role in terms of the group by growth story. Would be critical to understand how have they contributed to Birmingham's growth story. Also, what do international students look for? And finally, how do you think this is going to shape up the future of Birmingham and the Dubai's ecosystem?
The appetite from international students in key markets has been phenomenal for Birmingham. If I tell you, actually, that over the last three years, our numbers have tripled. So we've gone from seven hundred to fourteen hundred to over twenty one hundred, two thousand one hundred in three years, partly because of overseas students, so international students coming from overseas, and partly because of demand from long term expat students and as well as local students. So the University of Birmingham being a global top one hundred, and being located here in Dubai, provides a very viable option to those students who don't necessarily want to go overseas or want to go too far away from family. So students could be traveling from India, from China, from Central Europe. It is a very safe city, but also the long term opportunities for employment. And we've seen the numbers, growing that were, you know, recently released from from the KHDA.
That understanding of the opportunity that Dubai and the UAE provides in terms of longer term, beyond study opportunities for employment, for ongoing studies, for research. All of those things are real attractive points. For us, I mean, the the very positive regulatory nature of of Dubai means that we can do our business very easily. And maybe the final point to add to that is this will only grow. Dubai is on an upward trajectory. We have seen the growth in student numbers and international student numbers, but we've seen the excellent work that, the team at Study Dubai Dubai are doing to position Dubai as a viable study abroad destination. So we can only see that growing.
Thank you. So in terms of the growth opportunity, it is safety and security, the employability options that Dubai provides, and the connectivity to the key source markets, which has helped Birmingham achieve the scale that it has, but also has helped Dubai achieve the growth rates, the twenty percent growth rate on a Y o Y basis.
