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     Fanno1 Yavvanam Kaatesina Bewarse Username: Fanno1 Post Number: 7225 Registered: 03-2004 Posted From: 76.122.133.243 Rating: N/A |
MUMBAI: There is a popular wisecrack among engineers in India—one leg in India, another in Air India. Most of them graduate and fly off to pursue a master's. Little wonder then for the US, as many as four Indian cities are among the largest senders of students who want to wrap up their education with an American degree in STEM — short for science, technology, engineering and maths, according to Brookings report. These Indian graduates are likely to get to spend more time in the US with President Barack Obama clearing the new immigration policy. The optional training programme, which allows F-1 (student) visa holders to work full-time in the US for up to 29 months after receiving an American bachelor's, master's or doctoral degree in STEM, will be relaxed further. Of all international students flying to the US for an education, most sign up for either a business management course or an STEM programme. Collectively, the STEM fields account for 37% of all F-1 visa approvals. Among foreign STEM students, 31% are from China, 27% from India and 5% from South Korea, according to the Brookings report. Hyderabad sent 26,220 students to America between 2008 and 2012, and 20,840 of these attended STEM classes. As many as 91% of the students from Hyderabad flew out for a master's, and only 4% for a bachelor's degree. The vast majority were studying for computer and information sciences (about 9,100) and engineering (about 8,800) degrees. Hyderabad was followed by Beijing, Seoul and Shanghai and Mumbai. Of all those who flew out from the country's commercial capital, 61.5%—10,638 of 17,294—joined a STEM course. Within the STEM fields, engineering is the most popular major, followed by computer and information sciences and biological and biomedical sciences. "I think they (students from Mumbai) are different from students from Hyderabad since most of them are going to 'top schools' in the US—USC, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Rochester Institute of Technology," said Neil Ruiz, Associate Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program at The Brookings Institution. "Students from Hyderabad are going to non-ranked, non-accredited, mostly for-profit schools or schools that were closed down because of fraud such as Tri-Valley, University of Northern Virginia." While most international STEM students head for large metros that house research universities, such as New York (31,800), Los Angeles (20,200) and Boston (14,200), Hyderabad candidates' choices are different. The top five destination schools of F-1 students from Hyderabad are institutions where no major research activity is on according to the Carnegie classification, noted the report 'The Geography of Foreign Students in US Higher Education: Origins and Destinations'. The largest is International Technological University (ITU), a non-profit accredited master's medium-sized college with no research activity. Other top destination schools of students from Hyderabad include for-profit master's small and larger programmes such as University of Northern Virginia (unaccredited and shut down by Department of Homeland Security), Stratford University (accredited), Tri-Valley University (unaccredited and shut down by DHS) and Herguan University (unaccredited). Some of these schools were closed down because they were abusing the F-1 visa system and the Curricular Practical Training (CPT) programme to bring students to work rather than primarily to study for a degree. India also accounts for eight of the 10 origin cities with the highest shares of their F-1 students in STEM fields. These are Vijayawada with 1,867 STEM students of a total 2,181 (85.6%), Visakhapatnam (1,482 of 1,840 or 80.5%), Chennai (7,342 of 9,141 or 80.3%), Hyderabad (20,840 of 26,220 or 79.5%), Secunderabad (2,333 of 2,969 or 78.6%), Pune (4,270 of 5,551 or 76.9%), Bangalore (6,470 0f 8,835 or 73.2%), and Kolkata (2,570 of 3,881 or 66.2%). |