This year, the state may miss its quota of international students who come to study various undergraduate courses under the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) scholarship scheme.  According to ICCR officials in Delhi, Bangalore University (BU) is to be blamed for this.

As Chinese swell the ranks at western universities, the numbers of foreign students studying in China are also burgeoning -- increasing by 10% in a year to more than 290,000 in 2011, according to the Chinese Ministry of Education (MOE).

When students from different cultures come together in an academic setting, it fuels an intellectual exchange that sparks innovation, said Allan E. Goodman, president and chief executive officer of the Institute of International Education (IIE), in a press release. Goodman's statement coincided with the release of the IIE's 2012 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange.

The U.S. Department of State has overstepped its authority in issuing a policy against the use of paid recruiters for overseas students. That was the charge made during a panel discussion on Friday, the final day of the annual meeting of Nafsa: Association of International Educators. Mitch Leventhal is a founder of the American International Recruitment Council, or Airc, a group that develops standards of ethical practices and a system for certifying overseas recruiters.

This is the America that draws ever-growing numbers of Chinese students, who then take home a view of the United States that refutes the stereotypes.Such an exercise of informal diplomacy on a grand scale cannot help but change U.S.-China relations. It may even change the world.