Foreign Student Enrollments Up Last Year!

Source: "Foreign Science and Engineering Students in the United States," Joan Burrelli, NSF 10-324, July 2010

In 2008, about 568,000 foreign students (those holding temporary visas) studied at U.S. universities and colleges, 248,000 of them in science and engineering (S&E). There was an expectation (ACE 2009; Fackler 2009; IIE 2009) that fall 2009 foreign enrollments might be negatively affected by the 2008–09 world financial crisis because of schools' restrictions on enrollment, declines in institutional funds available for graduate student financial support, and declines in the value of foreign home currencies compared to the U.S. dollar, as well as the price of education in the United States compared to other countries and the increased capacity for education in the home countries.

The figures show that there was an increase in the numbers of foreign students in all fields, although a smaller percentage increase than in the previous two years. There was also an increase in the number of S&E foreign students, and indeed the increase was greater than the previous two years. Perhaps in the difficult economic conditions there was more willingness to invest in S&T education than in other types of university education.