Brain Drain from the U.S.?

Last month Vivek Wadhwa had an interesting piece on U.S. brain drain in Yale Global Online.   Wadhwa outlines the enormous contribution made by international graduate students, faculty and researchers (as measured by patent filings) in science, technology, engineering and mathematical (STEM) disciplines – and to the U.S. economy overall.

In 2006, immigrants contributed to 72 percent of the total patent filings at Qualcomm, 65 percent at Merck, and 60 percent at Cisco Systems.

The corresponding number of international students in graduate STEM programs, therefore, is no surprise:

For example, during the 2004–2005 academic year, roughly 60 percent of engineering Ph.D. students and 40 percent of Master’s students were foreign nationals.

What is a surprise, however, and a real change for the U.S., is that a larger number of those international students and researchers now seek to return to their home countries.  Wadhwa notes:

As part of research on immigration funded by the Kauffman Foundation, we located more than 1,200 such foreign-born Chinese and Indian returnees with knowledge worker backgrounds on the social networking site  LinkedIn alone. When we surveyed them as to reasons for their departure, they emphasized that they left to seek better economic opportunities and better chances for career advancement…Future departures seem set to increase, as well. In a similar study of over 1,200 foreign national students matriculating in the US, we found that only 6 percent of Indian, 10 percent of Chinese, and 15 percent of European students said they want to stay permanently. Not surprisingly, many cited worries over obtaining visas, a logical concern, as restrictive immigration policies have left roughly 1 million immigrants and their dependents in a limbo that could go on for over a decade with no promises that they will ever obtain citizenship.

This brings to mind a few thoughts, hopefully connected:

• I have sat through many meetings in which people involved in state higher education policy decry U.S. visa regulations that require students to return to their home countries at some point after graduation.  “Why should we invest in their education if they are not going to support the state economy?” is the general sentiment at these meetings.  I often try to point out, usually unsuccessfully, that there are equally valid U.S. foreign policy and development interests at work that make it good for all involved (including the U.S.) to have highly trained graduates return to their home countries.  Encouraging brain drain from the developing world undermines our development efforts and causes many other problems over time.  So, the return of graduates is not unmitigated bad news.
• If enough graduates return home it will only be a matter of time before a few of them work to ensure that higher education institutions in their respective countries develop the capacity to train the next generation needed to work in new fields and firms – without the time and expense of having to send those students to the U.S. Consequently, the steady flow of international graduate students in STEM disciplines might not remain so steady.  This trend is exacerbated by the fact that the U.S. continues to lose market share of international students, according to the OECD.  In the short-term, U.S. attraction of international students remains strong, with Open Doors reporting a solid 8% increase in foreign higher education enrollments in 2008-09 over the preceding year, to an all-time high of 671,616 students. This follows annual increases of 7% in 2007-08 and 3% in 2006-07. A slight downturn after 9/11/2001 has been succeeded by several years of consistent growth.
• But the U.S. cannot count on those international students continuing to arrive.  There needs to be a serious focus on the P-20 pipeline in the U.S, especially urban areas (where high school graduation rates are often under 50%) to ensure that more American students are college ready.  This is not an original idea, of course, but the prospect of fewer international students enrolling in STEM programs should turn up the tempo on these efforts.  Again, the OECD notes the weak U.S. position in this area: “The number of people with a higher education science degree per 100 000 employed 25-to-34-year-olds in the United States is 1 100 for university-level qualifications and 301 for non-university tertiary qualifications, such as a Vocational Associate’s Degree. Both figures are significantly below the corresponding OECD averages of 1 295 and 384”
• Finally, as education and career advancement opportunities continue to improve in other countries, U.S. universities might very well find that they have to compete to retain American students.  In other words, over the next twenty years it might not be so uncommon for U.S. students to apply to graduate school in other countries, and in large numbers.   And then maybe undergraduates will follow.  Already, more U.S students are opting for college in Canada, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer:  “During the last decade, the number of American students at Canadian universities has more than doubled, says the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, to 8,200 in 2007-08, up from 3,312 a decade ago.” (But it does not appear that anyone is collecting data on the overall number of U.S. students who enroll directly in degree programs at universities outside the U.S.  The standard-setting book in this field, “Higher Education and Student Mobility in the Global Knowledge Economy,” by Kemal Guruz, also notes the need for this data.)  (UPDATE: my colleague Sally Crimmins-Villela sent along an article on an increase in U.S. job seekers looking for work outside the U.S..  That article is here.) So, campus tours in Montreal, Vancouver and Halifax are increasingly de rigueur for prospective American students and their parents.  Can college sweatshirts and car window decals from Ankara, Abidjan and Paris be that hard to imagine?  How did the Sorbonne football team do this year?