Archive for February, 2011

It seems impossible to disassociate Arizona from immigration debates after the most (in)famous law in the State’s history–SB1070–was passed last year.  The AACSB’s Deans Conference in Phoenix this week couldn’t be an exception, and I was given the honor of moderating the panel on immigration and business schools featuring also Kenneth R. Keeley of the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University and Dean Michael Luger of the Manchester Business School at the University of Manchester.

Here’s a summary of my thoughts:

• Immigration can be and has been a driver of innovation and economic growth in the US economy.
• According to data from the Kauffman Foundation (see my posting Connectivity means Competitiveness) immigrant-founded companies generated $52B in revenues and 450K jobs in 2005. Over half of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were born outside the US. And more than a quarter of all engineering and technology companies created in the US between 1995 and 2005 had one foreign-born founder.
• According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, non-citizen inventors generated 24.2% of all patent applications in 2006 (up from 7.3% in 1998).
• More than half of the immigrants that go on to create businesses in the US originally came to the US to study.
• The #1 discipline of study among foreign students coming to the US is business (21.1% in 2009/10).  Business plus STEM fields account for 67.2% of all foreign students in the US.
• Mainland China, India and South Korea are the main sources of foreign students, each accounting for more than twice as many students as any other country.  Canada, Taiwan, Japan, and Saudi Arabia come next. China and Saudi Arabia have shown the highest growth last year (30% and 25% each).
• Immigration debates tend to center around how to best keep immigrants out, but the future of the American economy requires policies that proactively attract the right types of immigrants, and universities (and business schools) are the best vehicle to do that.
• H1B Visas granted by the US went down dramatically after 9/11, from 163,000 in 2001 to less than 80,000 in 2002, 03 and 04, and not back to 85,000. Not surprisingly, the percentage of foreign students at Thunderbird peaked in 2001 (67%) and declined to around 44% in 2008. Total number of foreign students declined in the US between 2002 and 2006 (and is recovering now).

I asked my colleague Kip Harrell to share his thoughts on this matter and here are some highlights:

• Rankings tend to penalize schools with high national diversity because employment difficulties of foreign students hurt “employed at graduation” and “3 months after graduation” metrics.
• International student employment is not only more difficult in the US market, but also in finding employment at home
• Helping international students develop networks, both in US and their home country is critical for employment success
• International diversity is critical in educating true global leaders, but the complexities of attracting the right students and helping them find employment should not be underestimated