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Tag: student

  • Vietnam Climbs to 5th Spot in US International Student Rankings; Contributes $1.15B to Economy

    Vietnam Climbs to 5th Spot in US International Student Rankings; Contributes $1.15B to Economy

    During the previous academic year, U.S. higher education institutions saw an unprecedented influx of nearly 25,600 students from Vietnam. As such, Vietnam now holds the title of being the fifth most significant source of international students for the United States.

    Academic Year 2024-2025: A Closer Look

    The 2024-2025 academic session witnessed a significant 15.9% increase in Vietnamese students studying in the U.S., taking the total count to 25,584. This not only marked the highest inflow of Vietnamese students ever recorded but also contributed nearly US$1.15 billion to the U.S. economy.

    The data, which was recorded by the Institute of International Education (IIE), is the highest it has ever been since the IIE commenced tracking Vietnamese students in the U.S. in the 2000-2001 academic session.

    The majority of these students were enrolled in undergraduate programs, comprising 63% of the total. They were followed by graduate students at 17.3%, students on Optional Practical Training (OPT) at 14.2%, and non-degree students making up the remainder.

    Global Presence

    In the same academic year, more than 1.17 million international students from over 200 countries and territories chose to study in the U.S., marking a 4.5% increase from the previous academic year. These international students constituted 6% of the total U.S. higher education population and contributed nearly $55 billion to the U.S. economy, thereby supporting over 355,000 jobs.

    The top countries contributing to the U.S. student population were India with 363,019 students (a 9.5% increase), China with 265,919 students (a 4% decrease), South Korea with 42,293 students (a 2% decrease), and Canada with 29,903 students (a 3% increase).

    Interestingly, while there was a 2.7% decrease in the number of students enrolled in graduate programs (master’s or doctorate degrees), undergraduate student enrollment witnessed an increase of 4.2%. This marks the first significant surge in undergraduate enrollment since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. The number of international students pursuing OPT also experienced a substantial growth, reaching 294,253 – constituting a 21% increase from the previous year.

    Over half (57%) of international students across all academic levels pursued STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). The most popular fields were Mathematics and Computer Science, chosen by one in four students, followed by Engineering, and Business & Management.

    However, it is important to note that despite the overall growth in the number of international students, new enrollments, i.e., students studying for the first time, decreased by 7.2% to 277,118 in 2024-2025.

    Questions & Answers

    What was the increase in Vietnamese students studying in the U.S. during the 2024-2025 academic year?
    The number of Vietnamese students studying in the U.S. increased by 15.9% during the 2024-2025 academic year.

    Which countries contributed the most to the U.S. student population in the 2024-2025 academic year?
    The top countries contributing to the U.S. student population in the 2024-2025 academic year were India, China, South Korea, and Canada.

    Which academic fields were the most popular among international students in the 2024-2025 academic year?
    The most popular academic fields among international students in the 2024-2025 academic year were Mathematics and Computer Science, followed by Engineering, and Business & Management.

  • AXA Consortium Nets Student Housing Portfolio

    AXA Consortium Nets Student Housing Portfolio

    The acquisition aims to capitalize on the high demand for student housing in Australia, the third most popular country for international students.

    A joint venture comprising AXA Investment Managers – Real Assets, Allianz and APG have agreed to acquire Urbanest, a portfolio of student accommodation properties in four major Australian cities, AXA IM – Real Assets announced in a press release on Wednesday.

    The 14 properties, located in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide, have 6,805 beds, and will be operated by student accommodation manager Scape, which also manages the consortium’s Atira portfolio comprising 3,510 beds, which was acquired in September.

    «The sector has favorable demand drivers and growing institutional appeal, assets are tightly held and the barriers to entry are relatively high, particularly in Sydney, which makes this opportunity even more appealing,» Kumar Kalyanakumar, Head of Australia at AXA IM – Real Assets, said about the deal.

  • Tencent-backed AI startup checks students’ math homework

    Tencent-backed AI startup checks students’ math homework

    In China, there is a big culture of ‘practice makes perfect’. As such, school homework is a battlefield not only for Chinese children, but also for their parents, and teachers, who have the task of reviewing assignments. Technology is increasingly lending a helping hand, though, and now, a Beijing-based online education startup has developed an artificial intelligence-powered math app that can check children’s arithmetic problems through a simple snap of a photo. Based on the image and its internal database, the app automatically checks whether the answers are right or wrong.

    Known as Xiaoyuan Kousuan, the free app launched by the Tencent Holdings-backed online education firm, has gained increasing popularity in China since its launch a year ago. It claims to have checked an average of 70 million arithmetic problems per day, saving users around 40,000 hours of time in total.

    Yuanfudao is also trying to build the country’s biggest education-related database generated from the everyday experiences of real students. Using this, the six-year-old company, which has a long line of big-name investors, including Warburg Pincus, IDG Capital, and Matrix Partners China, aims to reinvent how children are taught in China.

    “By checking nearly 100 million problems every day, we have developed a deep understanding of the kind of mistakes students make when facing certain problems,” said Li Xin, co-founder of Yuanfudao (which means “ape tutor” in Chinese) in a recent interview. “The data gathered through the app can serve as a pillar for us to provide better online education courses.”

    Yuanfudao is China’s second largest online education unicorn by valuation, according to CB Insights. It is behind VipKid, which uses an online platform to connect Chinese students with North America-based teachers to learn English via livestreaming.

    Yuanfudao’s flagship app covers different subjects including math, English, and chemistry. Li said the firm has built a database with student answers to 6 billion questions. He said this know-how has enabled Yuanfudao to better analyze individual students, helping it towards the ultimate goal of providing tailor-made courses and homework.

    Li said the company’s aim is to “dramatically improve education efficiency in China.”

    “Giving different homework to different students even if they study in the same class is even more difficult than providing different news to different readers based on their individual interests and tastes,” said Li. “What we do requires a more accurate profiling of students.”

    Li said that the company’s flagship online tutoring app can produce a basic profile of a student’s strengths and weaknesses based on their answers to three to five questions.

    Founded in 2012, Yuanfudao, which has 200 million users (2 million of whom are paid users) bagged US$300 million in a round of funding in late December, valuing the company at more than US$3 billion. The Chinese online education market is hot, attracting increased interest from technology giants such as Tencent, Baidu, and NetEase in recent years.

    “We don’t really need money, but investors insist […] [on offering more funds]. We still had US$100 million in our bank account before landing this round,” said Li. He said the company was immune to the so-called tech winter, which has seen the venture capital pool almost dry up in China recently.

    Despite a recent slowing of China’s economy, the country’s online education market – covering children from kindergarten age to high school – is set to triple to 150 billion yuan (US$22.33 billion) by 2022, according to data from iResearch, fueled by ambitious “tiger” parents who are prepared to invest heavily in their children’s after-school education.

    Li said it was not his intention to make children work harder.

    “We don’t want children to drown in a sea of homework,” he said. “In the old days, you needed to put in lots of work and practice to stand out. But now technology can make a change.”

    Using AI technologies, the company has already made it possible to recommend different courses to students based on their individual progress on a certain subject. Li said the company can even help to close the educational gap between developed and underdeveloped regions in China through a deep analysis of students’ homework.

    The company has another popular homework assistant app, Xiaoyuan Souti, which uses similar image recognition technology to find answers to student questions across a range of subjects, guiding them through the steps needed to solve particular problems.

    “Through the app, we know exactly what kind of questions teachers in Shanghai assign as homework to students,” Li said. “By collecting the information and studying it, we can enable students in the rest of China to have access to Shanghai’s education resources, in the long run [providing] a fair education environment for all children.”

    “At the end of the day, the only thing that matters in education is one’s curiosity and cognitive ability,” he said.

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  • L’Oreal Korea seeks Brandstorm 2019 contest participants

    L’Oreal Korea seeks Brandstorm 2019 contest participants

    L’Oreal is now accepting applications from students in Korea for its annual global marketing competition “L’Oreal Brandstorm 2019.” The mission for this year’s competition is to “invent the future skin care experience for health-conscious consumers.” Contestants need to choose one brand from L’Oreal’s Active Cosmetics division, such as Vichy or La Roche-Posay, and propose a new service or technology to enhance the consumer experience.

    Undergraduates in their third or fourth year of study and graduates can apply in teams of three. The application deadline is Feb. 28.

    After a final round in March, the winning Korean team will get a chance to represent the country and pitch its idea during the finals at L’Oreal headquarters in Paris.

    The winning Korea team members will also qualify for a chance to intern at L’Oreal Korea.

    The team that wins the global final round will get to test their idea at French start-up campus Station F for three months.

    The first competition was held in 1992. Since then, over 34,000 students have participated.