Indians, Chinese constituted 48% of foreign students in US in 2019: Report

Chinese and Indians accounted for 48 per cent of all active foreign students in the US in 2019, according to an official report.

A report on immigration students in US, released on Friday by the Student and Exchange Visitor Programme (SEVP) -- a part of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) -- said there were 1.52 million active records in SEVIS for F-1 and M-1 students during calendar year 2019, a 1.7 per cent decrease from 2018.

SEVIS is a web-based system for maintaining information on international nonimmigrant students and exchange visitors in the US.

While an F1 visa is issued to international students who are attending an academic programme or English language programme at a US college or university, M-1 visa is reserved for international students attending vocational schools and technical schools.

Forty-eight per cent or 733,718 of all active SEVIS records hailed from either China (474,497) or India (249,221) in 2019, a slight increase from 47 per cent in calendar year 2018, the report said.

While the overall number of active F-1 and M-1 student records coming from Asia decreased by 28,063 from 2018 to 2019, student record trends varied across different countries, it said.

The number of students from China and India made Asia the most popular continent of origin. Despite this, China sent fewer students in 2019 in comparison to 2018 (-4,235), as did India (-2,069), the report said.

According to the report, 75 per cent of all nonimmigrant students in the US call Asia home.

Some Asian countries like Qatar, Syria, and Yemen sent fewer students, while Azerbaijan, Cambodia and Kyrgyzstan sent more students in 2019.

The report noted that 49 per cent (671,731) of foreign students in 2019 were female, while 56 per cent (851,518) were male. Of K-12 student enrolments, 42.5 per cent or 33,759 were females in 2019.

It said 43.7 per cent (442,747) of bachelor's and master's nonimmigrant students, 48.4 per cent (52,017) seeking associate degrees and 39 per cent (73,301) seeking doctoral degrees in 2019 were females.

Of the top 10 countries of citizenship in 2019, the average female enrolment was 44 per cent (471,262) and the average male enrolment was 56 per cent (595,175), it said.

The report said Asia remains the number one continent of origin for nonimmigrant students with 1,137,419 student records, despite a 2.4 per cent (-28,063) decrease in the nonimmigrant student population from the continent.