What role does mentorship play in the number of international students studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics in the United States? A reader from the Southeast posed that question to me, specifically asking about the correlation between the number of international professors and international students in the STEM fields. He asked if the dominant ethnic makeup of a department influences the educational attainment of students of that race/ethnicity.
This was a difficult question to answer. There’s plenty of data on international students studying STEM disciplines here in the United States, but the ethnic breakdown of faculty teaching those students is harder to come by.
Temporary residents represent one-third of the science and engineering graduate degrees earned in the United States. Nearly 28 percent of science and engineering doctorates awarded at minority-serving institutions during the 2003-2004 academic year went to international students; for all schools, that number was 43 percent.
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The high representation of international students in doctoral STEM programs is further confirmed by a study released earlier this year by six federal agencies — the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
In 1974, only 11 percent of doctorate recipients were non-U.S. citizens. That number had risen to 33 percent by 2005. The increase in international student numbers has accounted for virtually all of the growth in doctorate awards. In 2005, life sciences were the most popular discipline for permanent residents, and engineering and physical sciences were the most common among temporary visa holders. Non-U.S. citizens received more than 58 percent of all engineering doctorates, 44.5 percent of physical science and 27.4 of life science doctorates.
