By Arul Louis

New York, Nov 15 (IANS): India is the second largest international reservoir for the US higher education institutions having sent 196,271 students here in the last academic year, according to latest data.

Their numbers continued to grow, with a 5.4 per cent increase in 2017-18 over the previous academic year, according to the Open Doors report from the State Department and the Institute of International Education.

In the other direction, 4,704 students went to study in India during 2016-17, latest period for which data is available. It was an increase of 12.5 per cent from the previous year.

The report said that there was a steep fall in the number of Indian students at the post-graduate level in the US. Their numbers came down by 8.8 per cent to 95,651 in 2017-18 compared to the previous year, while the number of students in practical training programmes after graduation shot up by 32 per cent to 75,390, according to the report.

The number of undergraduate students also went up by 6.2 per cent to 23,346.

Indians made up 17.9 per cent of total of 1,094,792 international students in the US last academic year.

China sent 363,341 students, the most of any country.

In 2016-17, there were 186,267 students from India in the US, a 24.9 per cent increase over the 165,918 the previous year.

During 2016-17, there were 21,977 students in undergraduate programmes, 104,899 in graduate courses and 57,132 in practical training programmes.

The State Department said international students contributed $42 billion to the US economy and supported 450,000 jobs.