Approval of F-1 visas increased almost 500% in 10 years for students globally.
By The American Bazaar Staff
WASHINGTON, DC: After a huge decline in foreign students entering the United States following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the number of foreign students on F-1 visas has grown tremendously, though with a minor decline during the recession, says a new report by the think tank, The Brookings Institution, released on Friday.
The number of foreign students on F-1 visas in U.S. colleges and universities grew dramatically from 110,000 in 2001 to 524,000 in 2012. The sharpest increases occurred among students from emerging economies such as China, India and Saudi Arabia. Foreigners studying for bachelor’s and master’s degrees and English language training accounted for most of the overall growth, said the report.
The annual F-1 visa approvals for students studying in the US averaged 360,000 from 2001 to 2012, fluctuating from a 2001 low of 123,000 to a 2012 high of 550,000.
The largest growth of foreign students came from the Middle East and North Africa with a 1,283 percent increase, from 5,500 students in 2001 to 75,000 in 2012.68 During the same period, the East Asia and Pacific region (451 percent growth) and Europe and Central Asia (442 percent growth) also experienced a large increase in their number of students studying in the United States.
From 2008 to 2012, 62 percent of all F-1 approvals originated from upper- and lower-middle-income countries, where gross national income per capita ranges from about $1,000 to $13,000 annually. The top countries sending foreign students to the United States during this period include China (25 percent of all approvals), India (15 percent), South Korea (10 percent) and Saudi Arabia (5 percent).
In that period, China with nearly 2,85,000 foreign students who entered US on F-1 visas sent the largest number of foreign students to the US. In India’s case, though the total number of students is not mentioned for that five year period, the five largest cities from where students emigrate are: Hyderabad (26,220) Mumbai (17,294); Chennai (9,141), Bangalore (8,835) and New Delhi (8,728), the report said.
The large majority of foreign students from the top cities in the world which sent students ti the US have ties to potentially large consumer and investment markets. Seventy-five percent of foreign students come from places with populations of 5 million or more. Only 11 percent of F-1 students came from small cities with populations under 2.5 million and 13 percent from middle-sized cities with populations between 2.5 and 5 million.
Large Asian cities dominate the list of largest home markets for U.S. foreign students. Seoul (South Korea) sent more BMD F-1 students than any other city: more than 56,000 students over the 2008-2012 period, accounting for almost 5 percent of all such students. Beijing, Shanghai, Hyderabad and Riyadh made up the other top five global cities, each sending between 17,000 and 50,000 students to the United States. Nineteen of the top 20 source cities of foreign students were large or megacities in 2010. The one exception is Kathmandu (Nepal), which despite a population of just 700,000 sent more than 10,700 students to the United States from 2008 to 2012, ranking it seventh overall.
China’s economy grew rapidly throughout this period, posting 7.8 percent GDP growth in 2012, while India experienced annual GDP growth fluctuations between 9.8 percent in 2007 and 3.2 percent in 2012.
In the 1990s and 2000s, South Korea had one of the fastest-growing economies in the world and moved into the high-income category in 1997.Saudi Arabia, an oil-rich country, instituted a government scholarship program beginning in 2003 that today fully funds more than 45,000 students in the United States.
From a degree perspective, the most significant growth occurred among foreign students pursuing language training, whose numbers mushroomed from fewer than 2,000 in 2001 to nearly 165,000 in 2012, said the report.
A large number of this growth has to do with foreign students taking preparation courses for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), a required examination for entrance into U.S. colleges and universities. Meanwhile, the number of foreign students pursuing Bachelors, Master’s and Doctoral degrees (BMD) grew rapidly as well, by more than 150,000 combined.
Foreign doctoral students’ numbers, by contrast, remained relatively steady throughout the 2001 to 2012 period. Across the more recent 2008 to 2012 period, there were 535,000 F-1 visa approvals for students pursuing a bachelor’s degree, 480,000 F-1 visa students pursuing a master’s degree and 135,000 pursuing doctoral degrees.