The undergraduate declines were partially offset by an increase in the total number of graduate enrollments, which increased by 2.4 percent in 2003/04, with wide diversity among graduate fields and institutions. The national average for graduate enrollments at larger research/doctoral institutions (which host almost 70 percent of all foreign graduate students in the U.S.) showed minimal change over the prior year, with an average decrease of only 0.4 percent. However, the 25 universities hosting the largest number of international students did not fare as well as the national average. Among the top 25 hosts, there was an average decrease of 3 percent international graduate students, with 15 of the institutions reporting declines, and a few individual research universities reporting declines as steep as 23 percent. Graduate student enrollments at the smaller research/doctoral institutions held steady (0.1 percent increase), and the master's institutions saw increases of 12 percent in their graduate student numbers. These increases, along with additional increases in the numbers of graduate students at "other" graduate institutions (such as medical, fine arts, and law) — which had a combined increase of 8 percent — account for the overall increase in the international graduate student enrollments. By field of study across all types of institutions, there were increases in the numbers of graduate students in the fields of business and management (8.0 percent), physical and life sciences (3.3 percent), social sciences (2.2 percent), fine and applied arts (6.0 percent), education (7.0 percent) and agriculture (2.5 percent).  

Further details on the surveys and their findings can be accessed on http://opendoors.iienetwork.org.