Let's discuss the origins of the foreign student population in the United States for the academic year 1995/96. Let's discuss it in order from those areas sending the most students to those areas sending the fewest students. If we look at the figures provided by the annual census of foreign students in the United States for the year 1995/96, we see that most of the foreign students studying in the United States during this year were from South and East Asia. This is a rather large geographical area which includes such countries as China, Korea, Pakistan, India, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The total number of students from this area, South and East Asia was 156,830. In other words, roughly 2 out of every 5 foreign students come from South and East Asia. Almost 24,000 of this total were from China. Malaysia was close behind with just a little over 23,000 students. The next largest number of students came from the Middle East. The number of students from the Middle East came to about one-third the number from South and East Asia. The fourth largest number came from South America. Next came Europe, Africa, North America, and Oceania. Let's recapitulate what we've said. The largest number of students studying in the United States during the academic year 1995/96 were from South and East Asia, followed by the Middle East, South America, Europe, Africa, North America, and Oceania.

What fields are these large numbers of foreign students studying in? It probably won't surprise you to learn that the largest number are in the field of engineering. In fact, 21.7% of the total number are studying engineering. Business and management is close behind, however, with a total of 18.9%. The third most popular field was mathematics and computer sciences with 10.3%. As you can see, engineering with 21.7%, business and management with 18.9%, and mathematics and computer sciences with 10.3% comprise about one half of the total number of foreign students.

Let's talk about which academic levels these students can be found in. Foreign students can be found studying at all levels of higher education. As you might expect, the greatest number of them are studying at the undergraduate level ? approximately 158,000. The second largest group study at the graduate level and that number is just under 122,000. The rest study at junior colleges or in non-degree programs. It is at the graduate level that foreign students have the most impact. While foreign students comprise only 2.7% of the total U.S. student population, they account for 8.7% of all the graduate students studying at U. S. institutions. Let me give you those percentages again so you can get a better feel for the overall picture. Foreign students make up only 2.75 of the total U. S. student population, but they make up 8.7% of the total graduate student population.

Well, I see that's all the time we have today. We'll have to leave discussions of the geographic areas these students study in until another time.

Now you are going to hear the talk a second time.