Chinese undergraduates are enrolling at American universities in record numbers and may soon outpace Indian students, who for the past eight years have come to the United States in greater numbers than any others, according to a recent article in the New York Times. Overall, international enrollment at U.S. schools was the highest ever in 2008-9 and showed the largest percentage increase year over year in more than 25 years.
These and other figures were released as part of the annual Open Doors 2009 Report, published by the Institute of International Education with support from the State Department. Citing the report, the Times article revealed that China last year sent 98,510 undergraduates to study at American universities, a 21 percent increase over the year before. India, which sent 103,260 students, saw only a 9 percent increase over the previous year.
“I think we’re going to be seeing 100,000 students from each for years to come, with an increasing share of them being undergraduates,” Peggy Blumenthal, executive vice president of the Institute of International Education, told the Times.
The upward shift is most notable in China, according to the Times. China sent 26,275 undergraduates and 57,451 graduate students to the United States last year, up from 8,034 undergraduates and 50,976 graduate students five years earlier.
Blumenthal told the Times that the increase among undergraduates coming from China promises to alter the face of Chinese students’ presence in the United States more widely.
“It used to be that they were all in the graduate science departments, but now, with the one-child policy, more and more Chinese parents are taking their considerable wealth and investing it in that one child getting an American college education,” she said, adding that a book explaining liberal arts education is receiving considerable attention in China right now.
The book, A True Liberal Arts Education, explains the concept of liberal arts and describes the education available at small liberal arts colleges, both of which were previously unfamiliar to most Chinese. It was written by three Chinese undergraduates from Bowdoin College, Franklin & Marshall College and Bucknell University.
Overall, broken out by field of study, more international students come to the United States to study business and management than any other subject, according to the Open Door 2009 report. In 2008-9, 137,495 international students pursued business and management courses, representing a 25 percent increase over the year before (higher than any other field) and 21 percent of international students overall.
To read the Times article, click here. To access the Open Doors 2009 Report, click here.
