India, China top senders to US schools

Washington -- For the fifth year in a row India sent the maximum number of foreign students to the United States during the 2005-2006 academic year, according to an official report on international education exchange.

Although at 76,503, the number of Indian students declined 4.9 percent from 2004-2005, Institute of International Education's (IIE) Peggy Blumenthal attributed this decrease in Indian enrolment to "booming employment possibilities" in India.

China ranked second with 62,582 (up 0.1 percent), South Korea third with 58,847 (up 10.3 percent), Japan fourth with 38,712 (down 8.3 percent) and Canada fifth with 28,202 (up 0.2 percent).

Other countries sending sharply increasing numbers of students to study include Taiwan (up 7.6 percent), Mexico (up 6.6 percent), Hong Kong (up 9.3 percent), and Nepal (up 24.7 percent).

IIE also reported that a record number of US students studied in other countries during the 2004-2005 academic year with a double-digit increases in the number of US students studying in 13 of the top 20 destinations, including India (up 52.7 percent) in the last place.

The number of non-US students enrolled in US higher education institutions during the 2005-2006 academic year remained within a fraction of one percent of the previous year's totals, at 564,766, but new enrolments rose sharply, according to IIE 2006 report.

"We are increasing the number of scholarship programmes," said Miller Crouch, the State Department's deputy assistant secretary for educational and cultural affairs, at a Monday briefing on the report, Open Doors 2006. "We are continuing to make improvements in visa processing," he said.

IIE president Allan E. Goodman attributed the rebound in international student numbers in part to the outreach efforts of US colleges and universities. "US campuses are now seeing the results of their hard work over the past few years reaching out proactively to international students," he said.

"Our advising offices abroad and higher education fairs are crowded with students and parents seeking information," Goodman said. "These students know the quality of our educational systems and the value of a US degree."

The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) funds the annual Open Doors study, which is based on a survey of nearly 3,000 accredited US educational institutions by IIE, a non-profit educational and cultural exchange organisation based in New York City. The study on new enrolments is based on a smaller survey of 1,000 campuses.

Key findings from Open Doors 2006 include an 8 percent increase between 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 in new student enrolment. Given US Department of State data showing a sharp rise in the number of student visas in the year ending September 2006, this rise in enrolment probably has continued into the current academic year, Crouch said.

Total enrolment in 2005-2006 remained "virtually flat" compared to the previous year, but this is not surprising because it takes years for increases in new enrolment to be reflected in an increase in the overall total.

Business and management remained the most popular field of study (up .8 percent to 100,881 students), followed by engineering (down 4.8 percent to 88,460 students).

US campuses also hosted 96,981 international scholars in 2005-2006, up 8 percent from the previous year.

As the host of 22 percent of the world's international students, the United States remains by far the No. 1 destination. "With several thousand campuses able to host international students [10 times as many as any of the other leading host countries], the United States has a huge untapped capacity to meet the growing worldwide demand for higher education," Goodman said.

According to IIE, visa application processes are not being cited as affecting international student enrolment as often as in the recent past. Whereas 35 percent of universities cited visa application processes as a negative factor in 2004-2005, just 20 percent did so in 2005-2006.

The cost of tuition was cited almost as often (16 percent), or a combination of factors, such as competition from other host countries and increased capacity in the students' home countries.

Crouch said the initial upfront fees required for applying to US institutions are a problem for some students. He said the State Department and its partners, including the IIE and the network of international education advisers, are looking at ways to provide needy students with grants to help them deal with such fees.

In 2004-2005, some 205,983 US college students received credit for studying in other countries, an 8 percent increase from the 2003-2004 academic year, the report found. Top destinations for US students were the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, France and Australia.

IANS