Keshia Clukey is reporting for Newsday the number of international students studying at universities and colleges in the United States rose 1.5 percent to a new high of 1.09 million during the 2017-18 academic year, according to the latest Open Doors report just released by the Institute of International Education. During the last school year there were more than 121,000 international students enrolled in colleges in the state of New York, up 2.4 percent from the year prior. Those students contribute nearly $5 billion to the state’s economy, according to the report. New York has been second to California, the number-one host state in the country, since at least 2001. The New York institutions with the highest number of enrolled international students were New York University, Columbia University, SUNY Buffalo, Cornell and SUNY Stony Brook. Students from China and India made up more than 50 percent of international students studying in New York, followed by South Korea, Canada and Taiwan. Schools nationwide have been seeing declines in the number of new international students even as total international enrollment rose, according to the report. The slowdown is attributed to a range of factors, including the rising cost of college in the U.S. and increased competition from other countries, with China and India working to retain their own students. Read the full story in Newsday.