E-Paper
US sees fall in Indian students
The visa restrictions have been constantly cited as the reason for the falling number of foreign students.
The number of researchers from the Middle East applying to graduate study programmes in the US rose by six per cent in the past year whereas those from India and China showed a drastic decrease.
According to the US-based Council of Graduate Schools (CGS), which released the figures, the rise in applications challenges the belief that tighter US visa regulations since Sep 11 2001 would deter students from Muslim nations, the Science magazine reported.
The visa restrictions have been constantly cited as the reason for the falling number of foreign students - especially from India and China - applying to study there.
According to the council's report, the number of foreign applications to US graduate schools declined by 28 percent between 2003 and 2004. Between 2004 and 2005, applications fell again, but only by five percent.
That decrease corresponds to a similar trend in Britain and so could be due to external factors, the report adds.
According to the CGS' survey of 450 US institutions, applications from the two biggest sources of students, China and India, are down by 13 percent and nine percent respectively.
But students from the Middle East have shown a six percent rise - the second consecutive year that applications from the region increased.
The Asian numbers point to increasing domestic opportunities in the region, says Peggy Blumenthal, president of the Institute for International Education in New York City.
A survey by Universities UK found that some campuses reported a drop of more than 50 percent in enrolments by Chinese students compared to 2003 figures.
No matter what the short-term figures show, "there's no denying that US universities face increasing global competition for the best students, particularly in the sciences and engineering," said CGS president Debra Stewart.
Urging US graduate schools to step up efforts to attract both international and domestic applicants, Stewart warned: "We will never return to the day when the top one per cent of every country's students wanted to come to the United States."
