Losing the World's Best and Brightest: America's New Immigrant Entrepreneurs, Part V
Foreign national students have come to the United States to study and have participated in some of the most advanced academic research efforts to date. They lend enormous brainpower to the development of technological and scientific innovations that benefitted America.
Recently, however, anecdotal evidence suggests that fewer foreign national students wish to stay in the U.S. after graduation. There has been little empirical research into the post-graduate intentions of foreign nationals and the key factors driving their decisions to seek to stay in the U.S. or to move abroad.
This paper is based on a Facebook survey of 1,224 foreign nationals who are currently studying in institutions of higher learning in the U.S. or who had graduated in 2008. It finds that these students are planning to leave the U.S. in numbers that appear to be higher than the historical norm. A significant percentage also say they intend to open businesses. This expressed intention is prevalent among Indian and Chinese nationals studying in the U.S.
Wadhwa, V., Saxenian, A., Freeman, R. B. Salkever, A. (2009). Losing the World's Best and Brightest: America's New Immigrant Entrepreneurs, Part V. Ewing Marie Kauffman Foundation.