GRADUATE ENROLLMENT OF FOREIGN STUDENTS DECLINES

By Angela Erdiaw-Kwasie

Reprinted from ASEE Connections

From 2011 to 2016, most of the growth in engineering graduate enrollment resulted from an increase in foreign graduate students. The international students’ share rose from 39.9 percent to a peak for the period of 56.6 percent (73,895 students) of the total. During the same period, enrollment of U.S. citizens and permanent residents in graduate education experienced a gradual decrease. Among international engineering graduate students, the two most popular fields in 2016 were computer science (inside engineering) and electrical engineering, drawing 27.5 percent and 20.4 percent, respectively. Together, these two disciplines accounted for 47.9 percent of international graduate enrollment in engineering. The period from 2016 to 2018 saw a drop of 4.8 percent—11,000—in the proportion of graduate engineering students from overseas. This decline may reflect a smaller influx of international students overall into the United States, as well as a smaller number of international students staying in the United States to pursue another degree. Meanwhile, the period from 2016 to 2018 saw a gradual increase in graduate enrollment among U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

Table 1 shows the total enrollments for both domestic and foreign graduate students from 2005–2018. Figure 1 shows the graphical nature of these figures over time.