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What predicts whether foreign doctorate recipients from U.S. institutions stay in the United States: foreign doctorate recipients in science and engineering fields from 2000 to 2010

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Abstract

Using data from the Survey of Earned Doctorates by the National Science Foundation, this study examines factors influencing foreign doctorate recipients’ decisions to stay in the United States after they complete their degrees. This study expands the existing literature on human capital theory on migration decision by exploring the variables that appear to be associated with one’s migration decision, which takes into account the prestige of degrees and the home country context. The findings suggest that the foreign doctorate recipients with a prestigious doctoral degree were less likely to stay in the United States. The home country’s economic conditions relative to those of the United States also significantly influenced one’s migration decision. The foreign doctorate recipients’ odds of staying in the United States increased when the unemployment rate gap between the home country and the United States widened. Lastly, the country of origin was important in predicting migration decisions for foreign doctorate recipients.

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Notes

  1. Data retrieved from http://data.worldbank.org/indicator.

  2. Data retrieved from http://www.arwu.org/.

  3. The list of prestigious foreign BA institutions in the model is in the “Appendix” (Table 6).

  4. Data retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/.

  5. Descriptive statistics of country variables by country are in the “Appendix” (Table 7).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Education Cooperation Division, Ministry of Education, 408 Galme-ro, Sejong, 339-012, Republic of Korea

    Jin-Young Roh

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Correspondence to Jin-Young Roh.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 6 and 7.

Table 6 A list of selective foreign BA institutions in the model: 83 institutions
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Table 7 Descriptive statistics of the country variables: mean by countries from 2000 to 2010
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Roh, JY. What predicts whether foreign doctorate recipients from U.S. institutions stay in the United States: foreign doctorate recipients in science and engineering fields from 2000 to 2010. High Educ 70, 105–126 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-014-9828-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-014-9828-8

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