The number of Taiwanese enrolled at US colleges and universities last academic year reached 22,454, the third consecutive increase, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said yesterday.
The figure was a 4.4 percent increase from the 2016-2017 academic year, the AIT said, citing statistics from this year’s Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange, which was published on Tuesday by the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Institute of International Education.
Among them, 41.1 percent were enrolled in graduate programs, followed by undergraduate programs at 31 percent, up 7 percent from the previous year, it said.
Photo: Screen grab from the Institute of International Education Web site
Optional practical training programs ranked third with 20 percent, a 6.5 percent rise, the institute said.
The number of Taiwanese increased at all levels except for non-degree programs, which only attracted 7.7 percent of all students in the 2017-2018 academic year, down 4.4 percent, the report showed.
“International education is a two-way exchange. During the 2016-2017 academic year, the number of US students enrolled for academic credit at colleges or universities in Taiwan surpassed the 1,000 mark for the first time, reaching 1,002, an increase of 2.2 percent over the previous year,” the institute said.
The total number of international students in the US has reached about 1.09 million this academic year, an increase of 1.5 percent from the previous year, the AIT said.
The top six places of origin for international students in the US are China, India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Canada and Vietnam, it said.
Taiwan is the seventh-largest source, followed by Japan, Mexico and Brazil, the institute added.
The release of the report coincided with the US Dpartment of State’s five-day International Education Week, which began on Monday and is to end tomorrow, during which the AIT is holding a series of events in Taiwan to provide prospective exchange students information about studying in the US.
AIT officers and EducationUSA advisers are also traveling around the nation to discuss international education with students, the institute said on its Web site.
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