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Internationalization of the postdoctorate in the United States: analyzing the demand for international postdoc labor

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Abstract

The American academic research enterprise relies heavily on contributions made by foreign nationals. Of particular note is the large number of international postdocs employed at universities in the United States (US). Postdocs are among the fastest growing group of academic staff in the US, and over 50 % of all postdocs in the US are temporary visa holders. While academic mobility is sometimes understood using a ‘push–pull’ model, we argue that demand for educational migrants must be considered. Drawing from Marginson’s (Handbook on globalization and higher education. Edward Elger, Northampton, 2011; Marginson and Rhoades in High Educ 43:281–309, 2002) work, we develop a model for assessing local, national, and institutional (or local) variables that may shape the employment of international postdocs at universities in the United States, and we operationalize the model through a panel regression analysis using data covering the period 1989–2009. We find that the passage of time and federally supported research and development expenditures are strong predictors of postdoc employment. Institutional characteristics predict changes only in the subsample of private universities.

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Notes

  1. A small minority of postdocs hold prestigious fellowships and are not employees performing work in exchange for a salary. See Davis’ (2005) study for a breakdown of funding sources from a large sample of postdocs.

  2. Intra-European mobility being the major exception.

  3. This annual national survey includes all research universities in the US.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Jenny J. Lee and two anonymous reviewers for useful comments on previous versions of this paper. All errors and omissions are our own. This research was supported by a grant from the American Educational Research Association which receives funds for its “AERA Grants Program” from the National Science Foundation under NSF Grant #DRL-0941014. Opinions reflect those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the granting agencies.

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  1. Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Brendan Cantwell

  2. University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA

    Barrett J. Taylor

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Correspondence to Brendan Cantwell.

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Cantwell, B., Taylor, B.J. Internationalization of the postdoctorate in the United States: analyzing the demand for international postdoc labor. High Educ 66, 551–567 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-013-9621-0

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