Data from the 2019-20 report of AISHE indicates that while the number of foreign students enrolled in India has considerably increased in the last 10 years, they still account for only 0.13% of the total enrolment. Close to 20% of all the foreign students enrolled in the B.Tech programme in 2019-20, up from just 4% in 2010-11. Recently, the Ministry of Education released the annual All India Survey on Higher Education report for 2019-20 which provides key performance indicators on the current status of Higher education in India. The report is the 10 in the series of All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE). The first such report was released in 2010-11. Among other indicators pertaining to Higher Education in India, the report also presents a statistical profile of foreign students who come to India for their higher education. The data in the report is based on voluntary uploading of data by institutions of Higher Education listed in the aishe.gov.in portal in specially designed formats for data collection. According to the report, a student is defined as ‘any person who has enrolled himself/ herself for pursuing any programme of a study conducted by the Institution’. A foreign student is a student enrolled in one of the institutions but is not a citizen of India. The number of students enrolled in a programme is the total number of students on the roll as of 30 September of the academic year. That is, if a programme is for three years, the total number of students enrolled in the programme includes the sum of the number of students in the first, second, and third year of the programme, as of 30 September 2019 as per the 2019-20 report. Number of foreign students in India has gone up by nearly 80% in the last 10 years As per the latest AISHE report for 2019-20, a total of 49,348 foreign students were enrolled for higher education in India in the year 2019-20, the highest for the last 10 years. Two-thirds of them i.e., 32,836 students were male and the rest, 16,512 were female. Enrolment of foreign students has increased gradually over the decade indicating an increased preference of foreign students for pursuing higher education in India. The total enrolment has increased by nearly 80% in the last decade. In terms of gender, the number of male students increased by 89.5% whereas the number of female students has increased by 62% in the last 10 years. A closer look reveals that female students comprised around 37% of the total enrolled foreign students between 2010-11 and 2012-13 and dropped to less than 32% in 2017-18 and 2018-19. Students from 15 countries account for more than 73% of foreign students in India The number of countries the enrolled foreign students in India belong to has increased over the last 10 years. In 2010-11, there were students from 153 countries and in 2019-20, there were students from over 168 countries across the world. However, students from 15 countries alone constituted more than 73% of all the foreign students in India. These include Nepal, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sudan, US, Nigeria, Yemen, Malaysia, UAE, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Iran, Ethiopia, and Canada. There were only 122 students from China, the most populated country in the world and India’s neighbour. Students from Nepal accounted for the highest share of foreign students in India, and this has been so in each of these 10 years. In fact, the share of Nepali students in India has only increased throughout the decade. In 2010-11, 14.5% of foreign students were from Nepal and in 2019-20, their share went up to 28%. In terms of numbers, the number of students from Nepal increased by about 3.5 times. Meanwhile, students from India’s neighbouring countries of Nepal, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and China who constituted 28% of all the foreign students enrolled in higher education in India in 2010-11, increased to 48% in 2019-20. 14 states accounted for 93% of the foreign students enrolled & Karnataka is the preferred state 93% of the foreign students were enrolled in institutions in 14 states. Each of these 14 states had more than 1,000 foreign students in 2019-20. For the first time, Odisha has reported more than 1,000 foreign students in 2019-20. With at least 10,000 foreign students every year, Karnataka has always topped the list of Indian states with most foreign students by a large margin. In 2012-13, about 38% of the foreign students were enrolled in Karnataka. As per the latest report, almost 21% of the foreign students were enrolled in Karnataka. The state has the highest number of colleges per lakh eligible population (population in the age-group 18-23 years) in India with 59 colleges per lakh population as compared to All India average of 30.