There were 20,993 Taiwanese students enrolled in US higher education institutions in the academic year ending this year, a decline of 1.3 percent from the previous year, according to a report from the New York-based Institute of International Education.
However, Taiwan is still the seventh-highest contributor of overseas students to the US, the institute said.
The total number of overseas students enrolled in colleges and universities across the US during the last academic year rose 10 percent from a year earlier to 974,926, the institute said.
Students from the top three countries of origin — China, India and South Korea — represented about 51 percent of that total, the institute said.
There were 304,040 Chinese students at US colleges and universities, an increase of 10.8 percent from the previous year. The number of students from India increased by 29.4 percent to 132,888, while the number from South Korea fell 6.4 percent to 63,710.
International students’ spending in all 50 states contributed more than US$30 billion to the US economy last year, according to the US Department of Commerce.
California was the state that had the most overseas students in the academic year ending this year, followed by New York, Texas, Massachusetts and Illinois.
In terms of universities, New York University hosted the largest number of international students, followed by the University of Southern California, Columbia University, Arizona State University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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