Supply, Demand and Foreign Students

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/25/international

 written by — Elizabeth Redden, based on the " Internationalization of U.S. Doctorate Education" report published by National Bureau of Economic Research.

• The fact that large numbers of international students enroll in doctoral  programs in the United States is no surprise, but their considerable presence represents "one of the most significant transformations in U.S. graduate education" in the last quarter century, argues a new economic analysis of the supply and demand effects influencing student outflows from other countries and influxes into the United States.
  
• People will look at trends and say, 'Wow, there are a lot more Ph.D.'s going to foreigners. There are relatively fewer Ph.D.'s going to American citizens.'  I think one of the conclusions that some people jump to so that there's something wrong with the U.S.- we are failing behind.
  
• The relative erosion in the quality of education afforded to young people in the U.S. is a primary cause of the decline in share of doctorate degree in science and engineering awarded to U.S. students.
  
• The demand generated by increased bachelor's degree attainment in other countries, some with still developing higher education systems. This attributes to changing political circumstances including  the normalization of relations with China, now the second largest country of origin for international students.
  
• One senior physicist described how the influx of Chinese students at his research university met a need and allowed the department to  expand, as funding for physics remained glowing. 
  
• At the same time the number of undergraduates from the U.S. obtaining degrees in the physical and life Sciences was stagnate or declining and the size of college age population in the U.S. was declining.
  
• The paper does note that salaries for early career scientists with Ph.D.'s have increased more slowly than those of the college educated population more generally.
• We have got this surge of basically new Ph.D.'s in the labor markets and it looks like that has had some effect on not necessarily lowering salaries but in salaries growing at a lower rate than they would have otherwise. And that can lead back to B.A. production in the Unite States.