SURVEY SHOWS US UNIVERSITIES POPULAR WITH FOREIGN STUDENTS

The Institute of International Education has released its annual survey on higher education, and the survey indicates an increasing number of Americans studying abroad as well as rises in the number of foreign students studying in the US.  The survey, “Open Doors 1998/99” collected and analyzed data from the 1997-1998 school year. 

During that year, 114,000 American college students earned course credit while studying abroad, a 15% increase from the previous year and the most since the Institute began keeping records in 1985.  There were 491,000 foreign students at US colleges and universities.  This number was up two percent from the previous year and is the largest number since 1949, when the Institute first began counting enrollment of foreign students. 

New York University accepted the largest number of foreign students, 4,749, but Columbia University, at 20%, had the highest proportion of foreign enrollment.  This translates to 4,165 foreign students, which is also the fourth most.  Boston University, with 4,447 foreign students, was second, and UCLA, with 4,278, was third.  With 64,011 there are more foreign students in California than any other state.  The largest concentration of foreign students is New York City, with 30,150. Indeed, ten percent of all international students in the United States attend schools within a 50-mile radius of midtown Manhattan.

The slight two percent growth in foreign students in the US comes in spite of substantial drops in enrollments from Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia, where many students were adversely effected by the Asian financial crisis.  These countries sent 75,387 students to the US, 10,472 fewer than the year before.  Despite these drops, students from Asian still account for 56% of foreign students in the United States.  China sent the most students, 51,000.  Japan sent 47,000, and South Korea 43,000. 

The foreign student population contributes more than $13 billion to the U.S. economy.  About 75 per cent of the funds foreign students use for support comes from outside the United States, and 65 per cent of the students cited personal and family resources as their primary sources of support. 

Foreign students in American are evenly split between undergraduate and graduate programs.  One new trend, however, is the increasing attendance of foreign students at US community and junior colleges.  During 1997-1998 there were 81,000 foreign students at community colleges, an increase of 32% over the last six years. 

The supervisor for research at the Institute for International Education, Peggy Blumenthal, says the findings reflect the increasing globalization of the world economy and students’ desire to be familiar with many cultural settings. 

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