Press conference in Shanghai

China remains the first among all countries sending students to the United States for the sixth year in a row and also the most popular Asian destination for American students. This is according to the 2015 Open Doors Report on International Education Exchange released in Beijing on Nov. 17, 2015.

The number of Chinese students enrolled in U.S. institutions of higher education in 2014/15 increased from 274,439 to 304,040, 10.8% up from the previous year. The number accounts for 31.2% of all international students in the United States. 

Among these, more than 63,000 Chinese student visas were issued in Shanghai, said Jewell Elizabeth Evans, Consular Section Chief of the U.S. Consulate General Shanghai. "We began to release 5-year-long student visas one year ago. And since then the number of Chinese students studying in America have continued to rise."

For the first time, the number of students from China pursuing an undergraduate degree surpassed the number of those pursuing graduate degrees, according to the report. In 2014/15, there were 124,552 Chinese undergraduate students, representing an increase of 12.7% from the year before. Chinese graduate students in the U.S. numbered 120,331, representing an increase of 4% from the year before.

Another highlight is that optional practical training (OPT) students from China increased by 29.1%. OPT is a period during which undergraduate and graduate students are permitted to work for at most one year on a student visa towards getting practical training to complement their field of studies.

Jenny Yu, Senior Education Specialist of Embassy of the United States of America in China said in Shanghai that the increase shows that more Chinese students take advantage of this policy to practice what they learn in America and this experience is good for their future development.

The report also finds that China remains the fifth most popular destination for U.S. students studying abroad and the also top Asian destination. China ranks behind the UK, Italy, Spain and France, and ahead of Germany, Ireland, Costa Rica, and Australia. In 2013/14, there were 13,763 U.S. students studying in China, representing 4.5% of all U.S. students who go abroad.

In September 2015, Presidents Xi Jinping and Obama announced the One Million Strong Initiative which seeks to have one million American K-12 students studying Chinese by 2020.

This year’s Open Doors report shows that the number of international students at U.S. colleges and universities had the highest rate of growth in 35 years, increasing by 10% to a record high of 974,926 students in the 2014/15 academic year. The United States is the first leading host country for the world’s 4.5 million globally mobile college and university students. United Kingdom ranks second.

The release of the new Open Doors data marks the celebration of International Education Week, a joint initiative of the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education to prepare Americans for a global environment and attract future leaders from abroad to study, learn, and exchange experiences in the United States.

About Open Doors

Open Doors is the annual report on international academic mobility published by the Institute of International Education (IIE), an independent not-for-profit organization, with support from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State.