Probably as another effect of the prolonged global economic downturn, both the outflow of Korean students abroad and the influx of foreign students here have fallen this year.

As of last April, 154,178 Korean students were studying degree courses at foreign institutions of higher learning, down 6.1 percent from a year earlier, according to figures from the Education Ministry.

It marks the first time since 2005 that the number of overseas Korean students has recorded a year-on-year drop. Even at the height of the global financial crisis in 2008, the figure increased by 2.4 percent, followed by a 19.5 percent jump the following year. The number of Korean students attending language courses at foreign universities also fell by 13.5 percent to 85,035 from 98,296. As a result, the amount of money sent by Korean parents to their children studying abroad during the first nine months of the year decreased by 5.9 percent from a year earlier to $3.35 billion.

The number of foreign students studying here, which increased from 22,526 in 2005 to 89,537 in 2011, slipped by 3 percent to 86,878 this year.

Their parents’ financial difficulty is certainly seen as a main reason for the decrease in Korean students going abroad for higher education. But the glut of foreign diplomas, whose value is no longer so appreciated in the local job market, also appears to have accelerated the downturn. Education experts note that there will be diminishing returns for Korean students who pay the high costs of studying overseas.

To the contrary, foreign students, especially those from developing countries, seem to have growing interest in studying at institutions of higher learning here. The heightening global competitiveness of Korean companies, coupled with the widening popularity of Korean pop culture across the world, has led many young foreign students to look for opportunities to gain high levels of professional knowledge and skills in the country. Though not without room for improvement, a growing number of local universities are equipped with faculties and facilities that meet or are close to international standards.

Brazil has chosen Korea over China and Japan as a destination for the engineering students it sends to the world’s top-class universities and research institutes under a state scholarship program named Science without Borders. Despite the slight decrease this year, the influx of foreign students here is expected to continue rising again, exceeding 100,000 next year, according to local education officials.

In a possible indicator of future demand for studying in Korea, the annual number of foreigners taking the test of proficiency in the Korean language jumped from 4,850 in 2000 to 103,909 in 2011. In the first half of the year, it reached nearly 60,000, according to statistics from the Education Ministry.

Against this encouraging backdrop, efforts should be strengthened to draw more young foreigners to universities and other institutions of higher learning in the country. The inflow of foreign students, matched by the slowdown in the number of Korean students going abroad, will help reduce the country’s chronic economic deficit in the education sector, which has hovered above $4 billion annually in recent years. But the more important and fundamental benefits will be securing an outstanding potential workforce for Korean companies and forming a global network of educated talent well aware of and friendly with the country.

In a right direction that should be further accelerated, the government has tried to expand support for foreign students here. The “Study Korea” project launched in 2005 has helped draw more students from more diverse countries. Although those from China still take up a large part of the population of foreign students ― 66 percent in 2011, slightly down from 70 percent in the previous year ― an increasing number of students have come here from other countries in Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Under the reinforced scheme named Study Korea 2020, announced last month, the Education Ministry plans to attract 200,000 foreign students by the target year, quadrupling the total state scholarship for them, which is set at 52.6 billion won this year, over the planned period.

The ministry is also working to provide expatriate students with more useful information and build more lodging and cultural facilities for them. Still, more comprehensive and practical measures should be implemented to support foreign students, especially those at provincial universities in financial trouble, so that they can receive necessary counseling services and health care. A recent study by a local institute showed some foreign students who initially felt favorable toward Korea left the country with an antagonistic sentiment. Spending part of the most precious time in their life should never end with such a result.