Hello,

For this post, I have charted the growth of foreign student population in US - a key driver, in my opinion to US’s tech dominance globally.

As always, if you have a suggestion for next post’s topic, shoot me an email (or mention in comments below).

United States has dominated the worldwide technology industry over the last 3-4 decades. Companies like Apple, Google are household names all over the world.

One of the reasons why US has done so well, is that its a talent magnet. And a lot of this talent makes their way into US via higher education.

Number of foreign students enrolled in US colleges have grown from 0.3m in 1980/81 to 1.0m in 2019/20 (with a slight decline in the Covid year)

This might seem small compared to overall US college student population of ~20m. However, its big business.

So where are these students coming from? Mainly Asia, esp. China and India.

In 1980, students from these China and India were <5% of total foreign student population. Now they are 43% (with 35% from China and 18% from India).

Asian students collectively represent 71% of total foreign student population.

And 54% of foreign students pursue a major in STEM subjects. Not surprising given the demographics of US tech workforce.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading! 👋