Foreign Science and Engineering Majors and the U.S. Labor Market: The Extension of the Optional Practical Training Visa

• In Event: 63.018 - Promising Scholarship in Education: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

International students are an increasingly important population in the U.S. higher education system. For instance, the U.S. universities granted about 64,000 Bachelor’s degrees to international status with the temporary visa status in 2013 (52% increase since 2003) and 93,000 Master degrees (30% increase). More interestingly, this increase has been uneven across the board. While public research universities has taken the lead in this increase by doubling the number of foreign students at the Bachelor’s level during the period, private research universities increased the Master’s level degrees to foreign students more than the national average. On the supply side of degrees, budget contractions for public universities and/or a sudden and strong decline in endowment income for private institutions after the recent financial crisis may play a role in the increasing presence of international students on the U.S. campuses; this rise can also be associated with some demand side factors. Among those studying in the U.S. may facilitate an access to the U.S. labor market by lower search costs and increasing network opportunities. Indeed, degree receipt from U.S. colleges and universities has become an important pathway to participation in the U.S. labor market over the last decade. For example in the year 2010, among the foreign-born workforce between ages 25-34, 59% of Bachelor’s degree recipients received their highest degree from a U.S. institution, while 69% of Master recipients.

In this project, I explore potential impacts of the increasing representation of international students on both educational and labor market outcomes of native peers. Particularly, I study the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, which provides a transition opportunity from the U.S. higher education system to the U.S. labor market for international students without subject to any annual quota restrictions unlike other popular work visa programs, such as the H-1B visa. Basically, the OPT program provides a limited period in which foreign students may gain work experience at U.S. firms. I leverage a unique policy variation in the program: the extension of the practice period from 12 to 29 months in a set of designated STEM fields to answer the following research questions.

Author

• Murat Demirci, University of Virginia