Foreign Policy Blogs

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:

american-in-paris

 

Author

James Ketterer

James Ketterer is Dean of International Studies at Bard College and Director of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs program. He previously served as Egypt Country Director for AMIDEAST, based in Cairo and before that as Vice Chancellor for Policy & Planning and Deputy Provost at the State University of New York (SUNY). In 2007-2008 he served on the staff of the Governor’s Commission on Higher Education. He previously served as Director of the SUNY Center for International Development.

Ketterer has extensive experience in technical assistance for democratization projects, international education, legislative development, elections, and policy analysis – with a focus on Africa and the Middle East. He has won and overseen projects funded by USAID, the Department for International Development (UK), the World Bank and the US State Department. He served on the National Security Council staff at the White House, as a policy analyst at the New York State Senate, a project officer with the Center for Legislative Development at the University at Albany, and as an international election specialist for the United Nations, the African-American Institute, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He is currently a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Association and has also held teaching positions in international politics at the New School for Social Research, Bard College, State University of New York at New Paltz, the University at Albany, Russell Sage College, and the College of Saint Rose.

Ketterer has lectured and written extensively on various issues for publications including the Washington Post, Middle East Report, the Washington Times, the Albany Times Union, and the Journal of Legislative Studies. He was a Boren National Security Educational Program Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and in Morocco, an International Graduate Rotary Scholar at the Bourguiba School of Languages in Tunisia, and studied Arabic at the King Fahd Advanced School of Translation in Morocco. He received his education at Johns Hopkins University, New York University and Fordham University.

Areas of focus: Public Diplomacy; Middle East; Africa; US Foreign Policy

Contributor to: Global Engagement