The number of Malaysian students enrolled in American institutions of higher learning has not recovered from a decline since the Asian financial crisis and post-September 11, dwindling from an already low 9,000 in 1999/2000 to about 6,000 in the 2004/05 school year, a report released in Washington on Monday said.

At its height, there were more than 20,000 Malaysian students in the United States, but figures released indicated a pessimistic trend - showing a further five per cent drop from 6,483 students in 2003/04 to 6,142 in the 2004/05 school year.

"Open Doors 2005", an annual report on international academic mobility published by the Institute of International Education (IIE), a non-profit organisation, showed that the number of international students enrolled in the US was off about one per cent at 565,039 in 2004/05 from the previous year's totals.