Number of Foreign Students in US Continues to Rise

17 November 2011

Jennifer Parungao and Hossam Shahin, both 19, are international students at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

The number of international students at colleges and universities in the United States has increased for the fifth year.

The Institute of International Education in New York released its annual "Open Doors" report this week. It says a record high of more than seven hundred twenty thousand students from other countries studied in America during the last

academic year

. The number was five percent higher than the year before and almost one-third higher than ten years ago.

There were big increases from China, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Iran and Venezuela. Almost twenty-two percent of international students were Chinese, with increases especially at the undergraduate level. Together, almost half of all international students came from China, India and South Korea.

Peggy Blumenthal at the

institute

says Chinese students are now studying throughout the United States.

PEGGY BLUMENTHAL: "Ten, twenty years ago, students from China only knew of

a handful of

U.S. institutions, but now they are

enrolling in

our community colleges, in our small liberal arts institutions, in the research universities -- really spread across the country.”