The number of international students attending U.S. universities, as well as the number of U.S. students studying abroad, is at a record high, according to a report from the Institute of International Education (IIE), a nonprofit education and cultural exchange organization based in the United States.
There were 273,996 American students gaining academic credit across borders in the 2010–2011 academic year, which was up by just over 1 percent from the previous year, and there were 764,495 international students studying inside the United States during the same year, which was up by 5.7 percent from the previous year, according to the IIE’s 2012 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange.
“These numbers tell us an exciting story,” said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a televised message. “Even in an age when we can take a virtual trip to far-flung places just by clicking a mouse, we still want to see the world for ourselves and discover our common bonds firsthand.”
November 12–16 is officially recognized as International Education Week, as a result of a joint initiative between the U.S. Department of State and Department of Education.
International students in the United States can be found within many fields of study, but there are larger percentages of international students within a few particular fields. Business and management, engineering, and math and computer science remain the three most popular fields of study among international students in the United States, according to the IIE’s report.
For example, for students from China, who accounted for the largest percentage of foreign students at 25.4 percent with 194,029 students during the 2011–2012 academic year, the most popular field of study was business and management.
