Students from 89 nations are attending St. Cloud State fall semester 2016.
Of the 1,374 international students, 915 are undergraduates, 365 are graduate students, five are pursuing doctoral degrees and 89 are not seeking degrees.
That total represents a 12.7 percent increase from 2015 and a 23 percent increase from 2014. Undergraduate students from other lands jumped 30.1 percent, year over year. Graduate students fell 3.9 percent.
Top nations-of-origin include Nepal (333), India (173), Saudi Arabia (148), China (146) and Republic of Korea (59). Nepalese enrollment jumped nearly 71 percent from 2015’s 195 students.
St. Cloud State’s international student enrollment is ranked among America’s top 40 master’s granting institutions, according to the Institute of International Education.
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According to NAFSA, the association of international educators, Minnesota’s 14,941 foreign students and their families contributed an estimated $418.5 million and 4,148 jobs to the state economy.
One St. Cloud State’s international students is from Madagascar, the Indian Ocean island nation of 22 million off the southeast coast of Africa. Home to lemurs, it’s principal economic drivers include fishing, forestry and agriculture.
Another lone student hails from East Timor, which regained sovereign-nation status in 2002, after centuries of being under Portuguese and Indonesian control. At 5,400 square miles, East Timor is smaller than Minnesota’s St. Louis County.
St. Cloud State’s total enrollment — a headcount on the 30th day of the semester — is 15,092, down from 15,461 in 2015.
