UK universities continuing to attract Indian students

Businesses can snaup up the graduates

The number of Indian students coming to study at UK universities has risen for the second year running, in contrast to a slowdown in numbers from China, according to new figures released today by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa).

With 19,000 students coming to the UK this year, India is now second only to China as a source of overseas students. While the number of students coming from the People's Republic dropped by 3.7%, there were still 50,700 students from China enrolled in UK higher education institutions in 2005-06.

And numbers from Hong Kong declined by more than 12% to just under 9,500 for that academic year - the latest statistics show.

There were healthy increases in numbers coming from France (6.6%) and Germany (5.7%) - but university heads will be less enthusiastic about those figures because incomers from other European Union countries do not pay the high fees charged to overseas students.

Overall, the number of overseas and EU students rose by 3.7% to 330,000.

British universities are virtually all now dependent - to a greater or lesser extent - on overseas students to balance their books, and foreign students are worth an estimated £4bn

The total number of full-time undergraduates in the UK rose last year by 3.3% to 1,073,775 - a steady growth, but one that is unlikely to reach Tony Blair's target of 50% of young people in higher education by 2010.

Creative arts and design (the second most popular group of subjects) showed stronger growth (5.8%) than business studies, which remains top after a less than average 1.9% rise.

Computer studies continues to decline sharply for the second year with a drop of 7,000 students. Among the sciences, biology is showing stronger growth than the average for all subjects, chemistry is lagging with a 2% increase and physics is static. But really bucking the trend is forensic science, with a 32% leap, although the actual numbers are still much fewer than the traditional subjects.

We nee computer science... guys in India come here!