The number of international students in the U.S. continues to rise despite the recession.  In the last year, there were more 675,000 international students enrolled in the U.S. higher education or the post-secondary institutions. And this number had been consistently growing for the last five years.  Nearly 30% of internations studnets in USA are from India and China.

Major factors to shot up this number:

1) Countries like China, India have huge number of undergrad students graduating each year and these countries don't have right facilities for masters level study

2) Many of these students graduating from schools are unemployed or not finding better opportunities, they also seek higher education. So thats one push factor.

3) Financial aid provided by US schools to international students. Most of the students are nearly playing zero dollars.