By Karin Fischer
Education USA DailyVisa applications from Indian students seeking degrees in the United States are up sharply, and international-education experts say a confluence of factors, from a booming economy to stricter immigration restrictions in other top destination countries, are fueling the growth.
Applications from prospective Indian students soared 20 percent in the 2011 fiscal year, compared with the previous year, according to figures from the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. The State Department issued more than 24,500 visas to Indian students in the 2010 fiscal year.
It's too soon to know just how many of those students will show up on American campuses for the fall semester, as application numbers tend to exceed actual enrollments. Some students will choose to stay at home or go elsewhere; others won't meet consular approval.
But the visa-application figures suggest there is a resurgence of interest from India, the second-largest source of foreign students in the United States, after a couple of years in which enrollments stagnated or, at the graduate level, declined.
Indeed, the visa totals don't take into account applications processed in July and August, two of the busiest months for college-student submissions.
"The U.S. is becoming more attractive," said Rahul Choudaha, director of development and innovation at World Education Services, a nonprofit organization that specializes in foreign credentials and trends. Mr. Choudaha's group has seen a 24-percent increase in requests from Indian students during the first half of 2011 to have their credentials reviewed and verified.
Right now, American colleges are as popular in India, Mr. Choudaha said, "as a Harry Potter movie."
One of the biggest factors behind the growth, Mr. Choudaha and recruiters on the ground agree, is the tightening of immigration regulations in Australia and Britain, which could make it more difficult for international students to obtain visas and to remain in those countries after graduation to work. A series of high-profile assaults on Indian students in Australia also dampened interest in study there, and student-visa applications from India plummeted nearly 63 percent this past year, according to a new Australian government report.
The United States, Australia, and Britain are the three most popular destinations for Indian students going abroad.
"The UK has changed its rules, and students don't want to go there," said Gouri Shankar, the marketing head for Global Educational Consultancy, a Bangalore-based independent recruitment agency. As for Australia, after the 2009 attacks, "students are still scared of going," Mr. Shankar said.

Economic Influences

Another global trend that could be affecting visa numbers is the economy. According to conventional wisdom, worldwide economic downturns tend to depress international enrollments, said Nathan E. Bell, director of research and policy analysis at the Council of Graduate Schools. A survey by the council this year found that graduate-school applications from India were up by 7 percent.
But India's economy has bucked the global recession and continued to expand, which means more students and their families have the resources to pay for an international degree.
Staying in school also could be an attractive option because, despite the country's economic growth, the rise in the number of college graduates is outstripping new job creation, Mr. Choudaha, a former international student himself, notes. Some students could be "parking themselves" in graduate school, both in India and overseas, to wait for more employment options, he said.
American colleges are also very likely benefiting from the widening gap between demand for higher education in India and available university spaces, particularly at top-ranked institutions. Competition is so tight at the University of Delhi, for example, that it is turning away students with perfect grades and exam scores.
For students denied a place at one of India's highly-ranked universities and technical institutes, going overseas may be a more attractive option than attending a lesser-ranked domestic institution.
At the same time, India is gradually becoming more of an undergraduate market, as newly affluent Indians send their children abroad for an education. While the number of Indian undergraduates studying in the United States hasn't increased at the same breakneck speed as the number of those from China, expansion in Indian undergraduate enrollments has outpaced the rate of growth among graduate students, climbing nearly 7 percent over the last three years.
Typically, about two-thirds of Indian students in the United States are enrolled in graduate programs.

Increased Recruiting

A number of American colleges have recognized the opportunity offered by growing interest among younger students and their families and have begun to more aggressively recruit Indian undergraduates. The University of Cincinnati, for one, has hired a Mumbai-based staff member, who works with high schools and with third-party agents to bring in undergraduate students. This year, Cincinnati expects at least 20 Indian freshmen to enroll; last year there were just seven.
Still, Cincinnati's effort to raise its profile in India has actually had a greater impact, in raw numbers, on the graduate level, says Jonathan Weller, the university's director of international admissions. So far, the university has confirmed 260 Indian graduate students for the 2011 academic year, an increase of 57 percent from the prior year.
"I think there has been a trickle-down effect" from the university's outreach to undergraduates, Mr. Weller said.
Like Cincinnati, many American colleges have begun more proactive marketing and recruitment campaigns in India, and agents contacted by The Chronicle there say they are being approached more frequently by American colleges to help attract Indian students. Commissioned agents may also be becoming more forceful in soliciting American clients as business from Australia and Britain, whose colleges have traditionally worked with outside recruiters, slows.
But Janet A. Weiss, vice provost for academic affairs and graduate-school dean at the University of Michigan, said her institution hasn't changed its recruiting strategy at all—yet the university anticipates a 27 percent increase in graduate enrollments from India. "We're just doing what we've always been doing," she said.
Meanwhile, several colleges are reporting an uptick in visa denials among Indian students seeking to study at their institutions. Ellen H. Badger, director of international student and scholar services at Binghamton University, in New York, said she already has had 11 Indian students denied visas for study this fall. Last year, just four were not given visas.
Ms. Badger said the students were given only a cursory explanation about why their visa applications were denied, but she wonders if the heightened scrutiny could be due to recent raids on a pair of American universities that may have exploited visa loopholes to enroll large numbers of Indian students.
Those cases have drawn widespread media attention across India, and it remains to be seen what kind of impact they could have on interest in study in America.
Shailaja Neelakantan contributed to this article from New Delhi.