Return or Stay Decision of Chinese and Korean Graduate Students in the STEM Fields

• In Event: 4367 - Section on Asia and Asian America Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: 5. International Students from Asia in the U.S.

Abstract

Despite the increasing trend of international students’ mobility, the growing number of graduate students is returning to their home countries. This phenomenon raises concerns as the majority of international students major in the STEM fields, which heavily tied to countries’ economic innovation and global competitiveness. Thus, this research studies factors contributing to Chinese and Korean graduate students in the STEM fields’ return/stay decision after completing their studies. Two specific groups are selected due to their large population both in the STEM and the international population. I have utilized the secondary data, International STEM Graduate Student in the United States Survey in 2015 (Han et al. 2015) and run a regression model using STATA. As a result, 72% of Korean and 52% of Chinese students responded that they want to remain in the US, while 6% of Chinese and 0% of Korean students decided to return to their home countries. However, since none of Koreans responded to leave the US, I was not able to run the regression model for Koreans due to its limited data. While Korean students decided to stay in the US regardless of external factors, professional factors significantly influence Chinese students’ decision to stay, and the societal and cultural factors become the most substantial effects on their decision to leave.

Author

• Sujung Crystal Lee, Syracuse University