Enrollment of New International Students Up 8% from 2005

In what is often seen as a leading indicator of future total international student enrollment numbers, the percentage of newly enrolled foreign students has increased 8.3 percent between the 2004-05 and 2005-06 school years. This trend and others were highlighted in the annual Open Doors Report published by the Institute of International Education. The attractiveness of the U.S. as a place to attain an education is of great concern to many higher education institutions and public officials because of the contributions international students make to the innovative capacity and economic future of the U.S.

 

Looking back over the past few years, total enrollment of international students in the U.S. was at its highest number during the 2002-03 school year – 586,323 students. Enrollment then declined the following two years by 2.4 percent and 1.3 percent, creating concern over the country’s ability to attract international students to its shores, especially after the response to the terrorist attacks in 2001 and the competitiveness of other higher education institutions outside of the U.S. However, new data in this report shows this decline slowing to a crawl, with only a 0.05 percent decrease from 2004-05 to 2005/06. Furthermore, a recent survey conducted by the institute shows 52 percent of U.S. campuses report increases in new enrollment for fall 2006, with 20 percent reporting declines.

 

In addition to these statistics, the newest version of Open Doors provides information about the fields of study for international students, the level of degrees they are pursuing, their country of origin, their source of funding, and the enrollment change within each state. For example, India has the largest number of students in the U.S., but that number has decreased by 5 percent between 2004-05 and 2005-06.

 

Although the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors 2006 will not be available for shipping until February 2007, an assortment of data used to create the report can be found at:

http://opendoors.iienetwork.org/?p=89189