India gets maximum foreign students from Nepal followed by Afghanistan while Karnataka is favourite city for foreigners to pursue higher education in India, according to HRD Ministry data.

number of males is higher than that of female students from foreign countries and B.Tech is most popular course among foreigners followed by BBA. total number of foreign students enrolled in higher education is 47,427.

Karnataka tops list with highest foreign students

Karnataka has highest number of foreign students at 10,023 followed by Maharashtra (5003), Punjab (4533), UP (4514), Tamil Nadu (4101), Haryana (2872), Delhi (2141), Gujarat (2068) and Telangana (2020).

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"Foreign students come from 164 different countries from across globe. top 10 countries constitute 63.7 per cent of total foreign students enrolled. Highest share of foreign students come from neighbouring countries of which Nepal is 26.88 pc of total, followed by Afghanistan (9.8 pc), Bangladesh (4.38 pc), Sudan (4.02 pc), Bhutan constitutes (3.82 pc) and Nigeria (3.4 pc)," according to All India Survey of Higher Education (AISHE) by HRD Ministry.

" percent of foreign students from United States of America is 3.2 pc, Yemen (3.2 pc), Sri Lanka (2.64 pc) and Iran (2.38 pc)," it said.

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Maximum number of foreign students from Nepal

Although a maximum number of foreign students come from Nepal, maximum number enrolled in Ph.D. is from Ethiopia (295) followed by Yemen (149).

highest number of foreign students are enrolled in undergraduate courses, that is, 73.4 pc of total foreign students, followed by Post Graduate with about 16.15 pc enrolment.

"Among top courses is B.Tech with 8,861 students with 85 per cent male students. second popular course is BBA (3354), BSc (3320) and BA (2226). B. Pharma, BCA, MBBS, nursing, and BDS are among popular undergraduate courses," survey report said.

For annual survey, higher education institutions were categorized in 3 broad categories--university, college, and stand-alone institutions. A total of 962 universities; 38,179 colleges and 9190 stand-alone institutions participated in survey for year 2018-19.

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