Internationalization of strongUstrong.S. Doctorate Education.pdf

Internationalization of U.S. Doctorate Education John Bound University of Michigan and NBER Sarah Turner University of Virginia and NBER Patrick Walsh Saint Michael’s College Population Studies Center Research Report 09-675 March 2009 DISCLAIMER: The use of NSF data does not imply NSF endorsement of the research methods or conclusions contained in this report. We would like to thank Richard Freeman, Daniel Goroff, Bill Kerr, and Michael Rothschild for helpful comments. We are grateful to our colleagues who helped us to understand particular country circumstances and locate international data including Michael Baker, Olivier Blanchard, Michael Elsby, Al Hermalin, Lutz Killian, Albert Park, Steve Pishke and Yu Xie. Our research has been supported by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Science and Engineering Workforce Project at NBER, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. This work was finished while Bound was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University. Internationalization of U.S. Doctorate Education 2 ABSTRACT The representation of a large number of students born outside the United States among the ranks of doctorate recipients from U.S. universities is one of the most significant transformations in U.S. graduate education and the international market for highly-trained workers in science and engineering in the last quarter century. Students from outside the U.S. accounted for 51% of PhD recipients in science and engineering fields in 2003, up from 27% in 1973. In the physical sciences, engineering and