Where are you flying off to - US or UK?
This created quite a buzz in the education circles. Was the UK replacing the US in the Indian student's heart? Data for 2010 on fresh visas for entry into colleges showed 32,000 student visas being issued by the US as against 57,200 by the UK (in 2009, the US issued 34,000 visas against the UK's 27,000).
A November 2009 Open Doors report (published annually by the Institute of International Education with support from the US Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, however, had listed India as the leading sending country to the US, with an encouraging 9 per cent increase (for colleges/universities).
Though visa issuances are a key trend indicator, says Peggy Blumenthal, chief operating officer of the Institute of International Education (IIE), "students may apply for visas to more than one country, and visa approvals for fall semester continue through September, so it is too soon to know how UK and US enrollment totals will compare."
Adam J Grotsky, executive director United States - India Educational Foundation (USIEF), attributes the changes in the visa issuance numbers to "occasional peaks and troughs due to local factors that influence decisions to study in other countries". The buoyant Indian economy has certainly been a factor in persuading Indian students who might otherwise have considered graduate education in the US, to postpone their plans. The number of students going for undergraduate studies has been rising for some years now, albeit from a lower base, Grotsky adds.
Going by the 2008-09 enrollment figures for graduate degree programmes, says Blumenthal, "We do know that most of the over 1,00,000 Indian students studying in the United States as of 2008-09 were enrolled in multiple-year graduate degree programmes, while the UK hosted about 40,000 Indians students during the same time period. Recent surveys by the IIE and EducationUSA staff in India show that America remains the clear destination of choice for the vast majority of Indian students."
