Source: http://www.chinareviewnews.com 2013-11-12 08:18:31

Editor’s Note: viewers can also read “Over 270,000 overseas Chinese students returned in 2012”, 11-07-2013 09:06, http://english.cntv.cn/program/china24/20131107/101611.shtml

According to the latest statistics released on November 11, 2013, by the American Institute of International Education (IIE), in the 2012-2013 academic year, there were 265,500 students from the mainland of China, Taiwan and Hong Kong studying in American universities. The number topped the international students list and among them there was a continued surge of the number of students from the mainland, which surpassed the previous school year by 21.4% to reach a total of 235,600.

This was already the fourth consecutive year for the number of Chinese students from the mainland to surge by more than 20 percent year-on-year, giving the mainland of China the leading position for the number of students from various countries to the United States. It accounted for 29 percent of the total number of international students in the United States. The students from Taiwan numbered 21,900, 5.9 percent fewer than last year and from Hong Kong 8,026, the same as in the previous year.

Meanwhile, the U.S. students studying abroad have also increased. In the 2011 to 2012 academic year, a total of 283,000 U.S. students studied abroad; among them 14,900 went to study in the mainland of China, an increase of 2 percent over the previous year. The Chinese mainland was the largest destination in Asia and the fifth largest destination in the world for American students who went abroad to study. The other top four destinations were the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and France; they are all European countries. Despite the warming enthusiasm of the American students to study in the mainland of China, it was still an obviously distant goal to reach Obama's One Hundred Thousand Strong educational initiative of sending 100,000 American students to study there in five years. In the same academic year, the American students who went to study in Hong Kong and Taiwan numbered 1,474 and 820, respectively.

During the 2012-2013 academic year, a total of 820,000 international students studied at American universities, an increase of 7.2 percent over the previous year; this number has increased for seven consecutive years. The continuous surge of Chinese students was the main driving force behind the persistently increasing number of international students in the US. An estimated total of $24 billion from foreign students contributed to the U.S. economy last year.

The second to eighth countries or territories among the number of foreign students in the United States were, in decreasing order: India (96,800), South Korea (70,600), Saudi Arabia (44,600), Canada (27,400), Taiwan (21,900), Japan (19,600) and Vietnam (16,100).

The American universities that had the most foreign students were, in decreasing order: University of Southern California (9,840), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (9,804), Purdue University (9,509), New York University (9,362), Columbia University (8,797) and University of California, at Los Angeles (8,424).

Currently, among the students from the mainland of China, most are working on master degrees, accounting for 103,500. This has increased by 17 percent over the previous year. But the growth rate of Chinese undergraduate students is even larger. It has reached 93,800 in the current academic year, an increase of 26 percent over last year.

The academic areas that the mainland students are most enthusiastic about are, in decreasing order: business administration, engineering, mathematics and computer sciences, physics and life sciences, social sciences, and fine arts and applied arts. For the students from Taiwan, the corresponding areas are: business management, engineering, fine arts and applied arts, physics and life sciences, social sciences, mathematics and computer science.