U.S. Slips in Status as Hub of Higher Education

U.S. Slips in Status as Hub of Higher Education (New York Times, December 21, 2004)

"Foreign applications to American graduate schools declined 28 percent this year. Actual foreign graduate student enrollments dropped 6 percent. ...

Certainly many American universities continue to be extraordinary global brand names. Shanghai Jiao Tong University has compiled an online academic ranking of 500 world universities, using criteria like the number of Nobel Prizes won by faculty members and academic articles published (here). Of the top 20 on the list, 17 are American. Of the top 500, 170 are American. [Columbia is #9 - ed.] ...

During 2002, the most recent year for which comparable figures are available, some 586,000 foreign students were enrolled in United States universities, compared with about 270,000 in Britain, the world's second-largest higher education destination, and 227,000 in Germany, the third-largest. Foreign enrollments increased by 15 percent that year in Britain, and in Germany by 10 percent. ...

The number of Indian students in the United States has more than doubled in a decade, to 80,000, the largest representation of any country. The 62,000 students from China make up the second-largest group. "