Do individuals in one country respond to changes in educational returns that occur in another country? The connection between foreign labor markets and domestic school- ing in the presence of future migratory opportunity is the essence of every “brain gain” model. Empirical evidence, however, of whether migration prospects affect schooling de- cisions is non-existent. The main challenge of identifying the causal effect of educational returns abroad on human capital investment is the lack of suitable natural identification strategies and the infeasibility of designing a randomized-control experiment. This paper analyzes a unique natural experiment in Nepal where a change in the educational require- ment for British Gurkha Army recruitment led to an exogenous increase in educational returns abroad for Monglo-ethnic Nepalese men. The results suggest that an increase in educational requirement led to an average increase in years of education completed by 1.24. It led Gurkha men aged 15 in 1993 to raise their years of education by 0.62, aged 12 by 1.03, and aged 8 by 1.36. It induced 11% of Gurkha men aged 6 to 12 in 1993 to complete at least primary education and 10% to complete at least secondary education. This implies that an increase in the expected foreign lifetime income by $8,828 for young Gurkha men with at least 8th grade education led to an increase in educational attainment by 23.7%