Indians have become the largest group of international students in the United States, surpassing Chinese students this year for the first time in 15 years.

New data released by the Department of State in collaboration with the Institute of International Education shows that there are now 331,602 Indian international students in the United States (23% growth from last academic year), up from 277,398 Chinese international students (a decrease of 4.2%).

South Korea, Canada and Taiwan follow a distant second as the second country of origin for international students, with numbers well under 50,000.

Long the most populous of U.S. colleges and universities, Chinese international students have been declining every year since the pandemic. In the same post-Covid period, students from India have seen their numbers increase rapidly.

The shift is driven by the lingering impacts of the U.S. government’s pandemic and climate change travel restrictions on China, experts say, as well as the lure of engineering and computer science programs in American universities.

“There was a decline in Chinese student migration, and then during Covid it really dropped,” said Gaurav Khanna, an assistant professor of economics and immigration expert at the University of California, San Diego. “American universities have realized that the Chinese numbers are not going to come back, we need another source of really smart international students, they have started to sort of tap into the pool that is India.”

Since the pandemic, the number of Indian international students in the United States has almost doubled. This is partly due to the subcontinent’s demographic trends, said Mirka Martel, head of research, evaluation and learning at IIE.

As India’s college-age population grows, studying in the United States is becoming increasingly in demand. More than 40% of India’s population is under 25, according to the Pew Research Center analysisand the population is aging more slowly than China and the United States

“The vast majority of Indian students who come to the United States are graduate students, particularly graduate students studying mathematics, computer science or engineering,” she said. “Their higher education options are really attractive outside of India. »

They also tend to want to stay in the United States and work after graduation, Khanna said.

Chinese international students generally have different priorities, Martel and Khanna said. The boom in Chinese students coming to the United States in the 2000s was largely because universities outside China were more affordable than those in China, Khanna said.

Today, there are geopolitical factors that make the United States less feasible and less attractive.

“When we saw the big increases in the 2010s, they were mainly driven by students coming from China to study undergraduate degrees,” Martel said.

This trend was hit hard during the Covid crisis, but the slowdown in Chinese student immigration began before that, in 2016, when relations with China began to deteriorate, Khanna said.

The U.S. government has begun mass screening and rejection of students from any institution suspected of having ties to the Chinese military, he said. Anti-China rhetoric from government officials has also dampened the desire of many to come to the United States.

“The discourse on this was not as well received by Chinese students,” he said.

Indian international students have not seen higher numbers than their Chinese counterparts since 2009, when both groups were about a third of what they are now.

In the 75 years since data collection began, the total number of international students has continued to increase across the board, despite temporary declines following 9/11 and Covid, said Martel.

“We found that international trends in education transcend politics,” she said. “International education benefits everyone. »