Nearly 2 lakh Indian students chose to pursue higher education in the United States in the academic year 2021-22, according to the annual Open Doors report released by the Institute of International Education (IIE) on Monday, November 14. This shows a 19% increase over the previous year, according to a press release from the US Consulate General in Chennai, which added that this is the second year in a row that a record number of Indian students chose the US as their higher education destination. Of the over million foreign students studying in the US, nearly 21% are Indian students, it said.
The Open Doors 2022 report includes international students enrolled at US higher education institutions who are present in the United States, as well as those who are pursuing their courses online from abroad and those on Optional Practical Training (OPT) from Fall 2021 to Spring 2022. Amid the pandemic, the number of Indians studying in the US had decreased by nearly 13% in 2020-21 compared to the previous academic year, last year’s report had shown. Yet, Indian students still constituted the second largest group of international students in the US after those from China, as per the 2021 Open Doors Report.
The latest report showed that in the 2021-22 academic year, 9,48,519 international students from various countries studied at US higher education institutions, almost a 4% increase compared to the previous year. The number of students from India alone was 1,99,182 in 2021-22, while it was 1,67,582 the previous year. While the number of students from China remained higher in 2021-22 (at 2,90,086 students), the number has dropped by 8.6% compared to the previous year.