Asians earn 25 percent of doctorates in American universities

Daya Gamage – US National Correspondent for Asian Tribune

Washington, D.C. 12 November (Asiantribune.com): Although international students earned less than 10 percent of all doctorates awarded in the United States in 1960, by 1999, they were earning more than one-third of all doctorates in the fields of science and engineering and 17 percent of doctorates in other fields, according to the October 10 report, U.S. Doctorates in the 20th Century, by the National Science Foundation.

The largest group of international students earning doctorates has come from China, India, Taiwan and South Korea. Students from the People’s Republic of China, the largest international group, received more than 24,000 of the doctorates awarded by U.S. universities in the 1990s.

The percentage of international students who come from the Asian region earning doctorates in recent years has been twenty five percent.

International graduate enrollment at U.S. universities has increased for the first time in four years and that increase is driven by 12 percent increase in first-time enrollment, the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) reports in a new study.

The CGS study, which is based on fall 2006 enrollment figures, confirms the findings of recent reports by the National Science Foundation and the American Council on Education, which showed that over the past century the United States increasingly has become an educator to the world.

Enrollment figures for international graduate students declined in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States but now are rebounding, according to CGS president Debra Stewart, who credits the U.S. Department of State and Homeland Security and U.S. graduate schools for the turnaround.

International students represent an important means for strengthening U.S. cultural diplomacy around the world, according to new reports that show that the United States continues to welcome more international students than any other country and that the growing percentage of the doctorates U.S. universities award are earned by students who are not residents of the United States, and a greater percentage is from the Asian region.

The United States, the analysts and experts have noted, achieved the political, economic and military clout in the last century because of the international students who opted to pursue their education in the U.S. and joined the nations various public and corporate agencies. The expatriate intellectuals built the global power of the United States, was the consensus of many researchers.

The American Council on Education in a recent report stated that by 2003 international students earned 55.3 percent of doctoral degrees in engineering, 44.3 percent in mathematics, and 43.8 percent in computer sciences.

Another report described the development of the unique U.S. graduate education in which fundamental research is conducted at universities, typical with the assistance of graduate students most of whom are international students with a very large percentage from the Asian region. According to the internationally influential U.S. model, doctoral education is “organized around an intensive, real-world research experience that prepares students to be scholars capable of discovering, integrating, and applying knowledge,” the report said.

The biggest increase in first-time enrollment, according several reports, is among students from India (32 percent) and China (20 percent).

Perception in some parts of the world that it became more difficult to get a student visa after September 11, 2001, are “outdated,” according to Maura Harty, assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, who addressed the issue earlier in 2006 at the U.S. University Presidents Summit on International Education.

At the same conference, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that almost all visa applications – some 97 percent – are processed within two days.

According to Open Doors 2005, a study by the Institute of International Education, approximately 565,039 students came from around the world to study at schools of higher education in the United States in 2005. The leading country of origin India, which sent 80,466 students, followed by China and the Republic of Korea, which sent 62,523 and 53,358 students, respectively.

- Asian Tribune -