Finishing Degrees and Finding Jobs: US Higher Education and the Flow of Foreign IT Workers

John Bound, Murat Demirci (), Gaurav Khanna and Sarah Turner

Innovation Policy and the Economy, 2015, vol. 15, issue 1, 27 - 72

Abstract: The rising importance of information technology (IT) occupations in the US economy has been accompanied by an expansion in the representation of high-skill, foreign-born IT workers. To illustrate, the share of the foreign born in IT occupations increased from about 15.5% to about 31.5% between 1993 and 2010, with this increased representation particularly marked among those younger than 45. This analysis focuses on understanding the role that US higher education and immigration policy plays in this transformation. A degree from a US college/university is an important pathway to participation in the US IT labor market, and the foreign born who obtain US degree credentials are particularly likely to remain in the United States. Many workers from abroad, including countries like India and China where wages in IT fields lag those in the United States, receive a substantial return to finding employment in the United States, even as temporary work visa policies may limit their entry. Limits on temporary work visas, which are particularly binding for those educated abroad, likely increase the attractiveness of degree attainment from US colleges and universities as a pathway to explore opportunities in the US labor market in IT.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/680059 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/680059 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
Chapter: Finishing Degrees and Finding Jobs: US Higher Education and the Flow of Foreign IT Workers (2014)
Working Paper: Finishing Degrees and Finding Jobs: U.S. Higher Education and the Flow of Foreign IT Workers (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:ipolec:doi:10.1086/680059

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Innovation Policy and the Economy from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().