Policy Implications of International Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Scholars in the United States (2005) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
5 Findings and Recommendations
5 Findings and Recommendations
Pages 127-142
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From page 127... ...
What is known about the impact of international graduate students and postdoctoral scholars on the advancement of US science, US undergraduate and graduate educational institutions, the US and other national economies, and US national security and international relations? The total number of S&E graduate students in US institutions has grown consistently over the last several decades.
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2004. The Contribution of Skilled Immigration and International Graduate Students to US Innovation, (Working Paper Number 0410)
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, as evidenced by numbers of patents, publications, Nobel prizes, and other quantitative data. Finding 1-2: International graduate students and postdoctoral scholars are integral to the US S&E enterprise.
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7International student is usually taken to mean a student on a temporary visa, but figures sometimes include students on both temporary and permanent visas to compensate for the large number of Chinese students in the 1990s who became permanent residents by special legal provisions following Tiananmen Square. This issue is discussed in greater detail by Finn (see next footnote)
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. Other, more direct measures indicate that US-trained international graduate students and postdoctoral scholars gain skills that make them competitive in the US job market.
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Universities that do not already do so should offer orientation days for international students, train teaching assis tants, update Web services, and provide professional development train ing for administrators staffing international student and scholar offices. Recommendation 2-2: International postdoctoral scholars make up a large and growing proportion of the US S&E workforce, but there are no systematic data on this population.
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What is the status of working conditions for international graduate students and postdoctoral scholars compared with their domestic counterparts? Several researchers have suggested that large numbers of international graduate students and postdoctoral scholars may have at least a mild adverse effect on domestic enrollments.
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In 2002, 50.2 percent of international graduate students were supported by research assistantships (RAs) ; 18.3 percent were fellows or trainees, whose positions usually carry a higher stipend than RAs; and 27.7 percent of domestic graduate students were RAs and 29.7 percent were fellows or trainees.
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The "pull factors" include time to degree; availability of fellowships, research assistant ships, or teaching assistantship funding; and whether a long postdoctoral appointment is required after completion of the PhD. The evidence that large international graduate-student enrollment may reduce enrollment of domestic students is sparse and contradictory but suggests that direct displacement effects are small compared with pull factors.
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(4) What are the impacts of various policies that reshape or reduce the flow of international students and postdoctoral scholars (for example, visas, immigration rules, and working conditions)
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New York: Institute for International Education. Similar factors are correlated with stay rates of international graduate students (see D
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Pre-existing immigration-related policies relevant to international student flows are international reciprocity agreements, deemed-export policies, and specific acts that grant special or immigrant status to groups of students or high-skill workers, for example, the Chinese Student Protection Act of 1992 and the policies enacted shortly after the end of the Cold War to allow scientists and engineers of the former Soviet Union to enter the United States. Together, increased competition, decreased test-taking, increased security screening, and a soft economy have had a dramatic impact on graduatestudent applications, particularly from 2001 to 2004.25 Declines in admissions and first-time enrollments were less substantial (see Box 1-2)
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However, because those visa classes include students from primary to graduate school, as well as postdoctoral scholars and many other nonuniversity exchange visitors, and because graduate students and postdoctoral scholars can enter the United States with other visa classes, including the H-1b, it is not practical to try to use immigration statistics to determine anything useful about any particular level of student or trainee. That is evident in comparing enrollment patterns and visa issuance rates: if one looks only at issuance rates, the primary sending countries for postdoctoral scholars appear to be European; but enrollment numbers indicate that Asian countries send more scholars by far.
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Those environmental factors discourage international students and scholars from applying to US colleges and universities and discourage colleagues who would otherwise send their students to the United States. Recent improvements in processing time and duration of Visas Mantis clearances are a positive step, but extending visa validity peri ods and Mantis clearances commensurate with a period of study has not been uniform across nationalities.
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b. Travel for Scientific Meetings: Means should be found to allow international graduate students and postdoctoral scholars who are at tending or appointed at US institutions to attend scientific meetings that are outside the United States without being seriously delayed in re entering the United States to complete their studies and training.
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Maintaining and strengthening the S&E enterprise of the United States, particularly by attracting the best domestic and international graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, will require the cooperation of the government, universities, and industry to agree on an appropriate balance between openness, mobility, and economic and national security. Making the choices will not be easy, but the recommendations provided here define priorities, data, and analyses needed to determine effective policy strategies and substantive steps that will advance the vitality of US research and attract the talented people necessary to perform it.
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