Fewer students flying to US count dropped below 1 Lakh

The 2013 Open Doors Report on International Education Exchange released recently which revealed that Indian student population in the United States has gone down for the second year. The count has reduced to 100,000 even as the American education business continued to expand on the strength of growing interest from China, which has now more sent over 235,000 students in US.

The report revealed that nearly 3.5% number has decreased in student enrolments from India in 2012/13 (on top a 4%decline the previous year), bringing the Indian student count in the US to 96,754 after over 15 years of growth that started reversing in 2011.

On the other side, China, which was displaced by India as the major source of foreign students for a few years at the century, has surged ahead. It registered 21.4% increase in 2012/2013 more the 194,000 Chinese students who were reported in US educational institutions in last year. The three countries which are major source of students coming to US-China, India and South Korea-now represent almost 50% of the total number of international students in the USA. Apart from these top three countries, no other country contributes more than 5% of the total number.

International students contribute over $24 billion to the US economy as per this report. Department of Commerce, Open Doors 2013 reports indicates that nearly 72% of all international students got the maximum of their funds from sources outside of the United States, which include personal and family sources as well as assistance from their home country government or universities.

This data also revealed that Indian students still prefer to apply for STEM subjects. Engineering (35%) and Math/Computer Science (23.1%) accounted almost 60% of the 96,754 students from India enrolled in US academic institutions. Whereas, Business Management contributed 13.7% and physical/life sciences 11.1% in the overall number. Only 3.5% are studying social science and just 0.5% study humanities.