India

For the first time since 2004, admission of international students to U.S. graduate schools has declined, and students from India and South Korea are applying in significantly fewer numbers as well, according to a report released today by the Council of Graduate Schools.

Kapil Sibal, minister of human resource development, is pushing to open India to foreign universities hoping to set up campuses there. Blair H. Sheppard, dean of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, is among those pulling for him.

Little has gone right for Australia's higher-education system this year. This spring a series of brutal attacks on Indian students enrolled in Australian higher-education institutions made international headlines, fraying the once vibrant relationship between the two countries.

When Chen Jing and her classmates arrived in India two years ago they were shocked to discover that their university served meat only twice a week.

In the first American effort of its kind, universities and colleges in Indiana, Minnesota and Utah are starting pilot projects to make sure that degree programs in their states reflect a consensus about what specific knowledge and skills should be taught.

More than 94,000 Indian students enrolled at American colleges and universities in the fall of 2007—up nearly 24 percent from two years earlier—making India the largest source of foreign students in the United States. But that boom may come to an end in 2009.

Last week's terror attacks in Mumbai are likely to do little to cool India's standing as a higher-education hot spot, international-education experts say.

Yale University will spend $30-million from its endowment on an ambitious interdisciplinary effort that will build its course offerings and faculty expertise in India as well as expand student recruitment, research partnerships, and faculty and student exchanges in the South Asian country.