The number of Uzbek students at U.S. colleges and universities reached 530, a 7.8% increase from the previous year, with the total number of international students topping 1 million for the first time, paced by a surge of graduate students in sciences, engineering and math from India.
The figures comes from Open Doors 2016, the annual census conducted by the Institute of International Education in partnership with the State Department. Its release is a highlight of International EducationWeek, marked with fairs and festivals at hundreds of U.S. campuses and abroad.
China still sends the most students - 328,500 or nearly a third - but enrollments from India climbed 25 percent to almost 166,000 in 2015–2016.
The ranks of international students climbed by almost a half million over the past decade. Overall U.S. enrollment now stands at 20.3 million. No other country draws so many college students from outside its own borders.
“We need to encourage youth in all countries to seek out exchange opportunities beyond their borders,” says Evan Ryan, who heads the bureau in charge of the State Department's exchange programs. “We see international education as an essential component in making communities and the world safer and more tolerant.”
More than 250 U.S. universities each host more than 1,000 international students, led by New York University (15,500) and the University of Southern California (13,300).
