The enrollment of foreign students at American colleges climbed in the most recent academic year, according to new visa data, confounding expectations that international-student numbers would drop because of the worldwide financial crisis.
The analysis of visa figures from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, in a report out on Thursday by the National Science Foundation, shows foreign enrollments in American colleges increased by 3 percent in the fall of 2009, to 586,000. The NSF report provides the most up-to-date picture of international-student trends.
New enrollments in science and engineering grew by 4 percent, a larger increase than in recent years, but for the period from 2006 to 2009, science and engineering students accounted for a steady share of the foreign-student population, 44 percent.
However, the number of first-time international students in graduate-level science and engineering programs dropped 2 percent from 2008 to 2009, suggesting that there could be smaller increases in foreign graduate enrollments in future years, the report's authors note. That supports some troubling findings from the Council of Graduate Schools, whose survey of universities last fall found new foreign graduate enrollments unchanged.
Although about equal numbers of all foreign students are in undergraduate and graduate programs, graduate students far outnumber undergraduates in science and engineering. The number of first-time international students in undergraduate science and engineering programs climbed 5 percent in the last academic year.
The figures suggest that findings of more-robust growth on the undergraduate level, first identified in the annual "Open Doors" report published last fall by the Institute of International Education, are holding. The earlier report, which highlighted data from the fall of 2008, said enrollment grew far more strongly at the undergraduate level, jumping 11 percent, than at the graduate level, where enrollments climbed a little more than 2 percent. If the trend continues, undergraduate foreign-student enrollments could surpass those at the graduate level.
Over all, the enrollment of foreign science and engineering students increased from China, India, the Middle East, and Africa, but there were dips in students from Europe, Central and South America, and Canada. Numbers of first-time international science and engineering students, particularly those from India, declined.
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