BENGALURU: Indians are there all over the world and equally contributing to their respective economies, irrespective of whether its politics, science or technology. According to the survey, Open Doors done by the Institute for International Education, it is said that Indian students are a strong presence on U.S. campuses, contributing an estimated $3.3 billion to the U.S. economy, reports by Alyssa Ayres of council foreign relations.
The survey, which is carried out annually, draws on the data collected from around three thousand U.S. colleges and universities. And going by that, this year, the number of Indian students in the United States surpassed the 100,000 mark, ticking up to 102,673, keeping India in the number two position of origin for foreign students in the United States.
The Open Doors fact sheet also revealed that, India continued to dominate number one place of origin for foreign students for eight years, from the 2001-09. However it lost out to China, which surpassed India with more than 127,000 students in the United States as compared to India’s tally of 105,000.
Since then the number of students from India has began to dip slightly, dropping to below 100,000 by 2012-13, although its strongly placed in the number two place of origin. By comparison, students from China have been rapidly increasing for the year 2013-14 year, where there were close to 275,000 Chinese students in the United States.
The other thing to cheer about is that 59.5 percent of Indian students in the United States are at the graduate level, while nearly 12.3 percent of the Indian students here are undergrads, and 27 percent are pursuing optional practical training. Whereas, Chinese make up 40 percent of undergrads, 42 percent of graduate level, and 12.2 percent carrying out optional practical training.
More interestingly, 78.6 percent of the Indian students in the United States are in the “STEM” jobs that include Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math fields.
When it’s the other way round, the Open Doors data showed that the number of U.S. students studying in India was 4,377 for 2012-13. India as a study destination has been on a slow upward trend, with a big 44 percent jump in 2009-10 from 2,690 to 3,884 students. In subsequent years the growth has been much smaller, and last year the numbers actually dipped a bit.
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