Washington, DC - This year’s Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange, released November 17, 2014, on the occasion of the 15th annual celebration of International Education Week, reports that the number of international students at institutions of higher education in the United States increased by 8.1 percent to a record 886,052 students in the 2013/14 academic year, while the number of U.S. students studying abroad expanded by 2.1 percent to an all-time high of 289,408 in 2012/13.

• Over the past 15 years, the overall number of international students in the United States has grown 72.1 percent. There are five times as many Chinese students in the United States as there were in 2000, almost 2.5 times as many Indian students, 7.5 times as many Vietnamese students, and more than 10 times the number of Saudi Arabian students.
• International students’ spending in all 50 states contributed approximately $27 billion to the U.S. economy in 2013.
• The overall number of U.S. students studying abroad has more than doubled in the last 15 years from 129,770 to 289,408. Study abroad by U.S. students majoring in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields increased by 8.8 percent.
• Study abroad continues to diversify with greater numbers of U.S. students choosing nontraditional locations, such as Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
• Despite record high numbers, international students still make up only about 4 percent of the total U.S. higher education population and less than 10 percent of U.S. students study abroad during their academic career.