Riding the High Tide
India has surpassed China as the leading sender of foreign students to the United States, so why are its students increasingly drawn to U.S. universities?
By Shilpa Banerji
When 24-year-old Anil Mukherji joined Louisiana State University as a postdoctoral research assistant in chemistry in 1957, he was one of four Indians in the school. More than four decades later, in 2003, LSU’s Indian Student Association, one of the largest student communities in Baton Rouge, claims to have 465 members.
Indians have always viewed the United States as the Mecca of higher education, so it is no surprise that the numbers of Indian students pursuing their degrees at American institutions has dramatically increased over the years. Though traditional English institutions such as the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge fascinated the educated elite in the former British colony, opportunities for research-oriented subjects in the math and science fields have long attracted Indians to American universities.
According to the International Institute of Education (IIE), India’s enrollment rates have followed the larger Asian trend over the past 40 years, with several thousand students coming each year to pursue higher education. The numbers of Indian students attending U.S. institutions of higher education first peaked in 1992 and then gradually declined in 1996. However, since 1997, the number of students has dramatically increased. With a massive boost of 22 percent in 2002, or a total of 66,836 students out of 582,996 international students, India has surpassed China as the leading sender of foreign students to the United States for the first time. In 2002, China sent 63,211 students, an increase of only 6 percent.
