Figures represent halt to decline of the last three years
The following came today (November 2, 2006) from the Institute of International Education in New York:
The Council of Graduate Schools has just released the findings of its Fall 2006 enrollment survey, and we wanted to put it into context with the upcoming (November 13) release of Institute of International Education's Open Doors report on 2005/06 enrollments and our Fall 2006 enrollment survey to be released on November 13 as well.
The CGS survey shows that total foreign student enrollments at CGS member grad schools have increased by about 1% this year, and new enrollments are up even more, by about 12%. This survey is consistent with what IIE will be saying when we release our Open Doors statistics, two weeks later, although the numbers will not match exactly since we survey a much wider pool of US host campuses, and include undergraduate as well as graduate enrollments. It is possible that the CGS release, coming out first, will receive wide press attention this week with its headline that the Fall 06 enrollment increases reverse a three-year decline. That is basically the same information that IIE will release, which the State Department asks us to hold for release until the November 13, the first day of International Education Week (IEW).
As many of you know, each year we hold a briefing at the National Press Club in Washington on that first Monday of IEW, in conjunction with the Department of State, and it has become a very good forum for discussion of major trends. The Chronicle of Higher Education is already preparing their annual special feature covering this news, for publication on the 13th, and we have already started working with education reporters at major news outlets (on a strictly embargoed basis) to give them background on the foreign student enrollment trends nationwide, which are much more complex and comprehensive than those released in the CGS survey. CGS, of course, is aware of the Open Doors release date when they come out with their earlier, and more "sound bite friendly" findings.
Indeed CGS is one of the 8 higher education associations with which we collaborate on our "Fall 06 enrollment survey", which includes feedback from almost 1,000 US campuses, and which all partners agreed to release on November 13. But that has not stopped CGS from annually releasing their own separate fall enrollment survey two weeks earlier, as they have done for the past several years. Our challenge each year is to keep press focused on the wider story of international student flows, and also the good news about increasing US students abroad. As we speak with reporters over the next two weeks, we will be explaining where the CGS findings fit into the larger picture of U.S. higher education.
For those of you who have seen the CGS release and wonder how its findings differ from ours, here are a few key points to help put the two in context:
The CGS survey is conducted in Fall 2006, covering the current academic year (2006/07), the same time period as the joint on-line survey we'll be releasing. However, Open Doors, based on a comprehensive census conducted over the past year, covers the previous academic year, 2005/06, including both undergraduates and graduate students.
The CGS survey goes out to their membership of 475 of the major U.S. graduate schools; with a 38% response rate, they had only about 177 schools responding. Open Doors surveys all accredited higher education institutions in the US and gets more than a 70% response rate, with feedback from almost 3,000 campuses. Our joint Fall survey with 8 colleague higher education associations gets nearly 1,000 responses. Again, both these include undergrad as well as graduate students, unlike the CGS survey.
The major CGS finding is a 1% increase in Fall 2006 in the total enrollment of international graduate students this fall, reversing three years of declines. [The OD report for 2005/06 will show flat enrollments overall, with an increase in new students which logically would translate into increased total enrollments in Fall 06, as CGS and our own Fall 06 survey confirms.]
Additionally, The CGS survey indicates that first-time grad school enrollment is up 12%, with large increases from India (32%) and China (20%), and in Engineering (22%) and Business (10%). [The Open Doors report for 2005/06 actually showed declining numbers from India and limited growth from China, but those were for total enrollments and not new enrollments, and included all types of U.S. colleges and universities. Our fall joint survey will be similarly positive about upswing in new enrollments, and we would expect that next year's Open Doors figures will continue this positive trend.]
You can see the CGS press release at www.cgsnet.org/portals/0/pdf/N_pr_intlenrl06_III.pdf and the full report (an 11 page PDF) is available on the CGS website at www.cgsnet.org/portals/0/pdf/R_intlenrl06_III.pdf.
Our IIE release will be posted on the IIE Open Doors website (www.opendoors.iienetwork.org) on November 9th (protected with a password until the 13th) so that reporters can access it in preparing their stories for release on November 13. We are happy to provide you a password for access to this site, or to send you an advance copy of the release, and we appreciate your help in disseminating the data widely after the November 13 release date.