Foreign Students in College and the Supply of STEM Graduates

Best and brightest? The impact of student visa restrictiveness on who attends college in the US

“…Columns 6-7 show that the SAT gap also varies significantly across subjects, with international students scoring 0.42 SD higher on math but 0.38 SD lower on verbal. This is consistent with international students' comparative advantage in choosing STEM majors and are important contributors to the STEM workforce (Bound et al, 2015;Anelli et al, 2020).…”

“…Studies find that reductions in state appropriations have led to increases in international undergraduates at public universities (Bound et al, 2020), and China's trade liberalization is an important factor for driving Chinese student expansion in the US (Khanna et al, 2020). In addition, while international undergraduates subsidize in-state students and lead to an increase in domestic college graduates (Chen, 2021), they push domestic students from STEM majors to high-income social science majors (Anelli et al, 2020). Lastly, Chen (2019) finds that US-educated Chinese students face more labor market challenges than Chinese-educated when they return home.…”

Free Movement of Workers and Native Demand for Tertiary Education

“…Earlier studies also document crowding-out effects (Borjas, 2004). At the field level, there is some evidence that foreign students reduce the likelihood that natives major in a STEM field (Orrenius and Zavodny, 2015;Anelli et al, forthcoming). Unlike in the US and the UK, where these studies were conducted, Switzerland has generally no cap on the maximum number of students enrolled that could explain crowding out.…”