Brain change: what it means to the US as Indian students overtake the Chinese in hi-tech talent pool

Name: A key US-China science cooperation deal is about to end
Uploaded: 2023-11-11T14:00:12.000Z
Duration: 37 min 53 s
Description: A key US-China science cooperation deal is about to end

Enrolment of students from India at US universities has doubled over the last decade, while the number of Chinese students is falling

The change is having a knock-on effect for American business, with a gap being left in the tech industry and STEM-related fields

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Dannie Peng

Published: 10:00pm, 11 Nov 2023Updated: 8:23pm, 12 Nov 2023

While teaching students about studying abroad, New York University professor Teboho Moja often tells her class that China, and then India, supply the highest and second highest number of international students to the US.

But she might need to switch those two countries around. For the first time in 15 years, China no longer provides the largest number of foreign students to America.

Data from the US Department of Homeland Security shows that, as of September this year, there are more than 320,000 active Indian student visa holders in the country – compared with about 254,000 from China. Most visa holders are college students.

Enrolment of international students from India has doubled over the last decade, with about 1.8 million students from the country attending US campuses in that time. In 2022, the number of Indian students who headed Stateside jumped considerably to 64,300 while China’s number fell to 24,796.

“Indian students are certainly filling the gap [left by Chinese students] and are pursuing graduate education leading to top positions in the tech industry and STEM-related jobs. This is not only happening in the US but in other countries as well,” Moja wrote in her reply to the Post.

It is a similar story across the pond. In Britain, the latest data, released in November last year, also showed that India had overtaken China as the main recipient of student visas for the first three quarters of 2022.

37:53

A key US-China science cooperation deal is about to end

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