Japanese students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities decreased by 1.2 percent to around 19,000 in the 2013-2014 academic year, although they remained the seventh-most numerous in the country, the New York-based Institute of International Education said Monday.
Japanese accounted for 2.2 percent of the roughly 886,000 foreign students in U.S. colleges in the year that began in autumn 2013, the nonprofit organization said.
Japan was the leading dispatcher of foreign students to the United States from 1994 to 1999, with the number peaking at around 47,000 in the 1997-1998 academic year.
China remained out in front last year, accounting for more than 30 percent of the total, which was up 8.1 percent from the year before. India came in second, followed by South Korea and Saudi Arabia.
In terms of American college students studying overseas from 2012 to 2013, the most recent academic year with available data, Japan placed 10th as a destination, hosting about 5,800 of the 290,000 Americans studying abroad.