US varsities get Rs.5,000 cr annually from Hyd students

Hyderabad: It might be an eye-opener for those who argue that immigration to the United States of America is a reason for the unemployment problem facing that country's natives, as a recent study suggests that in fact students going to the US for higher education are contributing about $ 35 billion per annum to that country's exchequer. The best part is that Hyderabad is among the cities sending a significant number of students to the US for studies.

The city sends annually about 26,000 students, who end up spending about Rs 5,000 crore or $ 936 million to complete their higher studies. In the study, Hyderabad ranked fourth, with more than 26,000 Bachelor, Master's and Doctorate (BMD) degree students, despite ranking 88th on GDP per capita ($ 5,000) of the city.

Considering the overall findings of the study, experts are of the view that the Telangana government should look at ways of retaining these students in the State by creating appropriate facilities on par with those in the US.

Several startling findings have come to the fore in the study on education trends in the US between 2008 and 2012. The study, done by Global Cities Initiative, was published a few months ago.

According to the study, foreign students constitute a large source of export earnings for US metropolitan economies. This is especially true in the case of students pursuing bachelor's degrees, who mostly pay full tuition from personal sources and pay higher tuition costs at public universities than in-state students.

Over the 2008 to 2012 period, foreign students on F-1 visas studying for Bachelor, Master's and Doctorate degrees paid about $35 billion in tuition and living expenses in the 118 high F-1 US metropolitan areas.

The New York metro area ranked first in respect of total tuition ($2.6 billion) and living expenses ($1.6 billion) received from its 102,000 foreign students. It said that metropolitan geography is an important feature not only of where foreign students locate in the United States, but also of where they originate worldwide.

From 2008 to 2012, 94 cities abroad registered as significant sources of foreign students in the United States (with over 1,500 students), together sending 575,000 students and accounting for 51 percent of all F-1 approvals.

The large majority of foreign students from these 94 cities have ties to potentially large consumer and investment markets. Seventy-five percent of foreign students come from places with populations of five million or more.

Large Asian cities dominate the list of largest home markets for US foreign students. Seoul (South Korea) sent more BMD F-1 students than any other city: more than 56,000 students over the 2008- 2012 period, accounting for almost five percent of all such students.

Beijing (China), Shanghai (China), Hyderabad (India) and Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) made up the other top five global cities, each sending between 17,000 and 50,000 students to the United States.

Nineteen of the top 20 source cities of foreign students were large or mega cities in 2010. Beijing, Shanghai, Mumbai and Hyderabad made up the top five cities, after Seoul, each contributing between $650 million and $2.0 billion in total educational spending. Among foreign Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) students, 31 percent are from China, 27 percent from India, and 5 percent from South Korea.

Hyderabad is the top source city of foreign STEM students in the United States and India accounts for eight of the 10 origin cities with the highest shares of their F-1 students in STEM fields. Hyderabad sent the largest number of STEM students (20,800) to the United States and ranked fourth for the percentage of its students pursuing a STEM degree (80 percent) during the 2008-2012 period.

Notably, 91 percent of students from Hyderabad are studying for a master's degree, versus only 4 percent for a bachelor's degree. The vast majority were studying for computer and information sciences (9,100) and engineering (8,800) degrees.

The top five destination schools of F-1 students from Hyderabad are institutions with no major research activity under the Carnegie classification system.

Other top destination schools of foreign students from Hyderabad include for-profit master's small and larger programs such as University of Northern Virginia (unaccredited and shut down by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)), Stratford University (accredited), Tri-Valley University (unaccredited and shut down by DHS) and Herguan University (unaccredited).