E-Paper
Indians top US varsity enrolments
Four years ago, India stole a march as the No.1 sender of students to the US.
India is once again the undisputed leader in international student enrolments in US universities. For the fourth year in a row, it leads the table in what otherwise has been another year of overall decline in foreign student inflows into American campuses.
With 80,466 of its students admitted to US universities during the 2004-05 academic year, India was well ahead of China (62,523), South Korea (53,358), Japan (42,215) and Canada (28,140).
Four years ago, India stole a march over China as the No.1 sender of students to American universities and has built on the lead with each passing year.
The enrolment figures, compiled by the Institute of International Education for its Open Doors 2005 report, will be formally released next week.
Overall, there is a 1.3 per cent decline in the number of foreign students enrolled during the year — down from 572,509 to 565,039. Experts have attributed the decline to the sharp rise in US tuition costs and difficulties in obtaining student visas.
The growth in the number of Indian students, too, has been much smaller this time — 0.9 per cent against 6.9 per cent last year.
University of Southern California at Los Angeles is the No.1 host institution for international students, admitting 6,846 of them during the year. It is followed by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Texas at Austin, and the Big Apple’s Columbia University and New York University.
The Council of Graduate Schools has come out with its own report, dealing with admissions at Master’s level and above. It reported a 1 per cent increase in the number of new international graduate students, indicating a marginal rebound.
