Startling Statistics on Number of Foreign Doctorate Graduates and Urgent Need for National Strategy to Keep the Foreign Brains in the U.S.
According to the report of the U.S. Department of State, in the 20th century, the United States became an educator of the world, according to a new report by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Although international students earned less than 10 percent of all doctorates awarded in the United States in 1960, by 1999, they were earning more than one-third of all doctorates in the fields of science and engineering and 17 percent of doctorates in other fields, according to the October 10 report, U.S. Doctorates in the 20th Century. The largest groups of international students earning doctorates have come from China, India, Taiwan and South Korea. Students from the People's Republic of China, the largest international group, received more than 24,000 of the doctorates awarded by U.S. universities in the 1990s. Recent trends in international student enrollment in the United States reported by the American Council on Education (ACE) in Students on the Move: the Future of International Students in the United States show that by 2003 international students earned 55.3 percent of doctoral degrees in engineering, 44.3 percent in mathematics, and 43.8 percent in computer sciences. Between the 1999–2000 and 2004–2005 school years, international student enrollment grew nearly 17 percent in the United States, according to Students on the Move.
This report supports urgent need for national strategy and legislation to keep these brains in the U.S. for the strategic interest of this nation in the international competition. We hope the Congress recognizes such national strategic interest in these doctorate graduates and picks up SKIL Act during the Lame duck session in November 2006.
http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006&m=October&x=200610271428311CJsamohT0.5496179