This report has been concerned with graduate students at American institutions, regardless of their country of birth or residence. However, many of these students are foreign nationals who return to their homelands at the completion of their studies. Contrariwise, each year several thousand American students are enrolled at foreign institutions. The present chapter seeks to complete the picture of graduate enrollment by estimating the volume and nature of this international exchange of students.

FOREIGN GRADUATE STUDENTS IN THE UNITED STATES

The Institute of International Education defines a foreign student as "... a citizen of a country other than the United States who is studying or training in an institution of higher education in the United States, and who plans to return to his home country when his studies are completed. The term does not include Displaced Persons, immigrants, persons who have taken out first citizenship papers, or foreign citizens studying in the United States below the college level." Until 1946, the total number of foreign students at American colleges and universities exceeded 10,000, including perhaps 2-3,000 graduate students. But during the years following the end of World War II, their number rose spectacularly. In 1953-54, 33,800 foreign students were attending American institutions, including 10,100 engaged in graduate study" -about 5 percent of the total national graduate enrollment. In 1955-56, 36,500 were reported, of whom 13,600 were at the graduate level.

never

This postwar upsurge is a sign of the demand for highly skilled professional and technical personnel to serve the new industries, expanding economies, and enlarged populations of the world. It is also a reflection of the prosperity and influence of the United

Education for One World, Institute of International Education, 1954, p. 4.

70 Data from the Institute of International Education's publications Open Doors, 1956 and 1955, and Education for One World, 1954. The status of 3,850 students was undetermined in the Institute's 1953-54 census; if these are distributed among the categories "graduate," "undergraduate," and "special" student in the same proportions prevailing in 1954-55 when better reporting was obtained, the number of foreign graduate students in 1953-54 can be more nearly esti mated at 11,500.

States; of financial support extended to foreign students by educational institutions, private agencies, and both the U. S. and foreign governments; and of the achievement by American educational institutions of an internationally recognized status that had been attained earlier by European universities. Thus, in 1953-54, there were virtually as many foreign students in the United States as in all the universities of Western Europe, whereas thirty years before there had been over three times as many foreign students in Western Europe as in this country." The American Government and private educational and philanthropic organizations have welcomed and encouraged the wish of friendly peoples to study here, as well as the corresponding study by Americans in foreign institutions.

Geographical Origins

In 1953-54, the following seven countries accounted for 5,103 or 50 percent of foreign graduate students at American institutions: Canada, 1,239; China, 1,016; India, 917; Philippines, 595; Mexico, 480; Japan, 450; United Kingdom, 406. (A full listing of the home countries of foreign graduate students in 1953-54 and 1954-55, when fuller reporting was obtained, is given in Appendix D, Table 1, pp. 280-2.)

Four of the seven countries, it will be noted, are in Asia or adjoining islands. Since at least the second decade of this century, Asian students have usually far outnumbered Europeans at American institutions. This longstanding condition may be attributed, on the one hand, to the availability, in Europe, of institutions with the most advanced standards

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71 In 1953-54, some 35,650 foreign students (including 5,000 Americans) were reported in all the universities and higher educational institutions of Western Europe; in 1922-23, it was estimated that there were 24,870 foreign students in Western Europe--i.e., students foreign to the countries in which they were studying--and 7,420 in the United States (Study Abroad, VII, 1955-1956, UNESCO, Paris, 1955, p. 546; The Foreign Student in America, edited by W. Reginald Wheeler et al., 1925, p. 322; and Bulletin No. 11, U. S. Bureau of Education, 1926, p. 127).

As data on the number of graduate students from each foreign country are not at hand for the years before 1953, this statement and others which follow on foreign enrollment in earlier years relate to total (graduate and undergraduate) foreign enrollment in American institutions. The variation in the proportion of graduate students from each continent who were at the graduate level in 1953-54 is given on p.

Fields of Study

and, on the other, to historical circumstances that have led many Asians to obtain their higher education in the United States.

The prominence of Chinese--they have generally outnumbered all other foreign students in American institutions except, occasionally, Canadians--dates from 1908, when the indemnities of the Boxer Rebellion paid by China were set aside in part by the United States for scholarships to enable Chinese to study in America. In the thirties, the SinoJapanese War and, in the forties, World War II reduced the flow of students from China and Japan (during the first three decades of the century, Japanese had been the third or fourth largest group of foreign students). The situation prevailing since the Communist regime took over the mainland of China in 1949 has been unusual. Many of the Chinese students reported in the 1953 and subsequent surveys of the Institute of International Education are sympathetic to the Nationalist Chinese Government on Formosa; they have remained in this country longer than is customary and, under present circumstances, many are unlikely to return home. The influx of Philippine students which began after the islands became an American possession in 1898 has continued since they acquired their independence in 1946. In recent years there has been a marked increase in the number of students from Korea, India, and the Near East.

British nationals have generally been the most numerous Europeans in American universities, in part, perhaps, because of the absence of a language barrier (just as Canadians have outnumbered Mexicans), although Germans have been a close second and, at times, as in the late 1930's, have outnumbered the British.

The overall ranking of foreign students by continental area which prevailed in 1953--in order of diminishing numbers, Asians, North Americans, Europeans, South Americans, and Africans--appears to have remained the same throughout most of the past half century. One exception was during World War II, when Asian students ranked third after North Americans and Europeans. During the last decade there has been a marked increase in the number of students from South America.

The proportion of students from each continent who are at the graduate level varies widely. Thus in 1953-54, 44 percent of Asian students and 43 percent of Europeans and Africans were at the graduate level but only 25 percent of North Americans and 19 percent of South Americans."

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Excluding special students and those whose status was undetermined. In 1955-56, the proportion of students from each continent at the graduate level was: Asians, 47 percent; Europeans and Africans, 49 percent; North Americans, 26 percent, and South Americans, 23 percent (Education for One World, 1954, Table II, and Open Doors, 1956, Table III, Institute for International Education, New York.).

The distribution of foreign graduate students by fields of study in the academic year 1953-54 is given in Table XII-1 (p. 141) and additional data by continent of origin are reported in Appendix D, Table 2, (p. 283). Some clarifying remarks are in order about these and other tables based upon data of the Institute of International Education. The Institute secured a more uniform level of reporting in all fields than did the Foundation, with its low reportage of enrollment in education and other nonscientific fields. However, the Institute's field classification differed in some significant respects from that of the Foundation. For example, biochemistry, classed as a biological science by the Foundation, was grouped by the Institute with chemistry; agricultural engineering, considered by the Foundation as a branch of agriculture, was treated by the Institute under engineering; accounting, listed separately by the Foundation, was classified by the Institute with business administration; and, in general, Institute fields were not as detailed as those of the Foundation. For these reasons, no line by line comparison between the two surveys is undertaken here. Nevertheless, some comparison of a broader nature seems warranted, and is attempted in Table XII-2 (p. 142).

Several striking conclusions emerge from this table. Proportionately twice as many foreign as American graduate students--52 percent as against 26 percent--were studying natural sciences and engineering, and a larger proportion of foreign students were studying psychology and the social sciences; the proportions studying humanities and the fields designated as "professional" in the preceding chapter were roughly the same among all American graduate

The

as

students. greatest difference, however, arose in education, which enrolled proportionately far American and far fewer foreign students than any other major academic field.

more

Some 5,150 or 9 percent of the estimated 57,800 graduate students in the physical sciences, life sciences, and engineering were foreign nationals intending to return to their home countries upon completing their studies. (For perhaps as many as 500-600 of these, mostly Chinese and some from other countries under Communist domination, the intention may be more nominal than real.) The concentration of foreign students in these fields is a reflection of the limited opportunities in their home countries for advanced scientific and technical education, as well as the world-wide drive to increase agricultural and industrial productivity and efficiency.

acute problem, particularly for those in fields where laboratory equipment and space requirements automatically impose limits on the number of students. The difficulty is aggravated by the growing number of exchange projects...concerned with technology and applied science. . . . Effort might. . .be given to 'spreading' foreign students more equally throughout all our institutions, to relieve overcrowding at those institutions where foreign students have traditionally been concentrated." 75 To be sure, as the Conference pointed out, foreign graduate students are concentrated in a relatively small group of colleges and universities; but concentration of a similar, if somewhat lesser order, is a general characteristic of graduate education in this country.

Unfortunately, information for the most fruitful kind of comparison--between enrollment of foreign and American students in particular fields of study--is not available on an institutional basis. However, it is available on a State-wide basis.

Concentration in States by Field

Although foreign students were concentrated in relatively few States--30 percent in New York and California, and 59 percent in these two states plus Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan, and Pennsylvania --this degree of con

75 Report on the National Conference on Exchange of Persons, Institute of International Education, 1955, pp. 15-16.

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centration was little greater than that of all graduate students in the same number of States (Table XII-4, p. 143, and Appendix D, Table 4, p. 285). Of course, the proportion of graduate students who were foreign varied considerably in different States, from 3 percent or less in Texas, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey to over 8 percent in New Mexico, Minnesota, Oregon, Iowa, and Massachusetts (Appendix D, Table 4, Col. 5, p. 285).

In the natural sciences, psychology and the social sciences, and education, proportionately more foreign than all graduate students were enrolled in 10 leading States; however, in engineering, the cumulative proportion of foreign students in the 10 leading States was little greater than that of all graduate students (Appendix D, Table 5, p. 286-7).

Foreign graduate students of the natural sciences were geographically more dispersed than were most other foreign students (Appendix D, Table 5, p. 286-7). In part, this was due to the wider dispersion of instruction in many small departments, particularly in agricultural and biological sciences.

The yearly census of graduate enrollment in engineering conducted jointly by the U.S. Office of Education and the American Society for Engineering Education enables the special analysis for this field which is undertaken in Table XII-5, Col. 5 (p. 145) in this table is of special interest. It shows that in 1953-54, foreign students comprised 8 percent or more of the graduate students in three of the six states with the largest engineering enroll