doi: 10.1111/imig.

12035

The Ethnic Composition of Science and

Engineering Research Laboratories in the
United States
Zeynep Esra Tanyildiz*

ABSTRACT
The United States has been a top destination country for science and engineering (S&E) graduate education for foreign talent for many years. Despite the clear existence of foreign students
in the USA, relatively little is known about the factors inuencing the ow of foreign students.
In this study, we examine foreign doctoral students in science and engineering, and test
whether ethnic afnity plays a role in the ethnic composition of research laboratories (in
what follows, labs) in US universities. In order to test this hypothesis, we conduct a web
search, and select 164 science and engineering laboratory web pages for analysis. Among
these 164 labs, 82 are directed by foreign-born faculty (Korean, Chinese, Indian or Turkish).
These 82 are matched with labs that are in the same department of the same university, but
directed by a native (US origin) faculty member. We nd strong evidence that labs directed by
foreign-born faculty are more likely to be populated by students from the same country of origin than are labs directed by native faculty. The percentage of students working in a lab from
a nationality (foreign or native) is higher when they share nativity with the director. We seek
to draw attention to the effect of afnity on the ethnic composition of research labs at the
micro level that translates into the ethnic composition of the scientic community at the macro
level. Further, these results emphasize the role of lab directors in future enrolments, creating
scientic human capital, and contributing to the brain circulation phenomenon in the global
context.

INTRODUCTION
For many years, the United States (USA) has been a top destination country for foreign talent in
the area of science and engineering (S&E) doctoral education, largely due to better educational
opportunities and better nancial support (Mazzarol and Soutar, 2001).
Relatively little is known, however, about the factors inuencing the ow of these foreign students. The role of families and networks of friends is well documented in international migration
literature, but mostly in the context of the migration of low-skilled workers (see Massey et al.,
1993, among others). The ethnic afnity hypothesis has not been tested for these highly skilled
immigrants, even though selecting an institution of higher education in a foreign country poses the
same challenges associated with international migration (e.g. visa, work and study permits, return
policies) and adaptation (e.g. language barriers, cultural differences, academic differences).
* Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey, Ankara, Turkey.
2013 The Author
International Migration 2013 IOM
International Migration Vol. 53 (1) 2015
ISSN 0020-7985

Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Ethnic composition of laboratories

51

Most graduate students in S&E start their training in university research laboratories (in what follows, labs). The ethnic composition of these research labs offers an opportunity to test the impact
of foreign-born faculty members on students from the same country of origin. We compare the ethnic composition of 82 S&E labs directed by foreign-born faculty (Korean, Chinese, Indian or Turkish) with 82 labs in the same department of the same university directed by a native (US origin)
faculty member.
We nd strong evidence that labs directed by foreign-born faculty are more likely to be populated by students from the same country of origin. On average, 33 percentage points more of the
students working in a lab are Korean (or Chinese, Indian, or Turkish) if the lab director shares that
foreign nationality than if the director is native born. The results are consistent across all four
nationalities, the three (top, middle and bottom) tiers, and all but one discipline.
These results draw attention to the effect of afnity on the ethnic composition of research labs at
the micro level, an afnity that also translates into the ethnic composition of the scientic community at the macro level. Further, these results emphasize the role of lab directors in future enrolments, in the creation of scientic human capital, and in contributions to the brain circulation
phenomenon in the global context.

BACKGROUND AND THEORY

Foreign students in the United States
Foreign student enrolment dramatically increased during the 1980s and until the mid-1990s, followed by a decrease in rst-time, full-time S&E foreign graduate enrolments after the events of
September 11, 2001. By 2006, that decrease had reversed its course in all elds. After three consecutive years of decline, total foreign enrolment increased by a modest 1 per cent in 2006 (Burns
et al., 2009).
Currently, almost half a million foreign students are enrolled in US universities. By 2006, 47.7 per
cent of American PhD degrees were earned by foreign-born students. Within the past three decades,
Asian students have constituted the largest population of foreign students in the USA. Chinese, Indian
and South Korean students constitute almost half of the doctoral students in the USA (Stephan, 2010).
Several studies have documented the importance of foreign doctoral students to the American science
community. Foreign graduate and postdoctoral students are not only important in stafng university
laboratories, but also play major roles in research production. A study of 133 papers published in Science having a last author afliated with a US university found that 53 per cent of the co-authors were
foreign students or postdoctoral candidates. Furthermore, foreign graduate students constitute almost
60 per cent of rst-author graduate students (Black and Stephan, 2008). Also, in their analyses of
counts of publications and number of citations for 100 research universities in 23 S&E disciplines,
Stuen et al. (2008) nd that foreign-born doctoral students make higher contributions (as measured by
citations) to elite institutions as compared with citizen doctoral students. Chelleraj (2004) suggests that
a 10 per cent increase in the number of foreign students would raise patents granted to universities by
6 per cent and non-university patents by 4 per cent.
Foreign-born graduate students and scientists existence in the USA is, of course, not without
costs. The idea, for example, that foreign students crowd out natives has received much attention.
According to a report by the National Science Foundation, the number of US citizen and permanent
resident male graduate students decreased from 1993 to 2000, whereas the number of temporary
foreign graduate students who are male increased (National Science Foundation, 2004). Borjas
(2004) argues that the steepest drops in white male, native-student enrolments are observed in
institutions in which foreign-student enrolment increases are the largest.

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Tanyildiz

Although this information is consistent with the possibility that foreign students crowd out
natives, some authors point to other factors that could contribute to these results. For instance, the
decrease in the US population in the 2024 age cohort within the past decade contributes to the
decrease in the total number of native-student enrolments (Bean, 2005). In addition, the existence
of more attractive job opportunities (higher-paying and with better working conditions) for native
students can pull native-born college graduates towards more lucrative programmes (Bean and
Brown, 2005; Stephan and Sharon, 2003). This effect is even stronger for native male students,
who are more sensitive to US labour market conditions than are foreign students (Bean and Brown,
2005). Moreover, native female enrolments held steady during the 1990s, even in the face of simultaneous foreign-born female enrolment increases, a pattern not consistent with the crowding out
argument. Both foreign-born and native groups of females increased their enrolments from 2000 to
2003 (Oliver, 2005).
The percentage of foreign students staying in the country after completing their studies has also
been increasing. Aslanbeigui and Montecinos (1998) nd that 45 per cent of foreign students from
developing countries planned to stay for some time, 15 per cent planned to stay permanently and
another 15 per cent planned to go to a third country. Finn (2005) indicates that the proportion of
foreign students staying in the USA for at least 2 years after receiving their degrees increased from
49 per cent for the 1989 cohort to 71 per cent for the 2001 cohort. The stay rate is the highest
among engineering, computer science and physical science graduates. There is also a signicant
difference in stay rates by students country of origin. The difference is remarkable among the top
source countries. Among the temporary residents who received their PhDs in 1996, China and India
had very high stay rates, at 96 per cent and 86 per cent, respectively. The stay rates in 2001 were
40 per cent for Taiwan and 21 per cent for Korea. However, developments in other countries could
inuence the US dominance in attracting and keeping foreign talent. Other countries are not only
strengthening their S&E education, but also producing more graduates each year (Freeman, 2009).
Given the important role that foreign students play in research, it is of policy interest to know
whether ethnicity plays a role in determining the labs in which they work. We study university
research laboratories, where most graduate students in S&E start their training, and become part of
a team with fellow lab members. Understanding the ethnic compositions of research teams at the
research laboratory level provides a new layer to our understanding of ethnic communities in the
USA. A recent study highlights the role of ethnic communities in the USA and their contribution
to technology transfers to their home countries. Ethnic scientic and entrepreneurial channels are
found to be important for the transfer of both codied and tacit knowledge. In addition, I suggest
that an understanding of the ethnic linkages provides insights into the brain drain versus brain
gain debate (Kerr, 2008).
We chose to examine S&E research labs for two particular reasons. First, the research lab is a
good representation of a foreign students social environment, because doctoral students spend a
signicant portion of their time at school. Many research labs are populated with foreign students,
and some of these labs are directed by foreign-born professors from the same country. Thus, labs
present a closed environment, enabling us to observe possible networks. Second, research labs have
a unique independent structure within the department. They are semi-autonomous groups within the
university that receive separate funding and, at times, hire separate personnel. Foreign-born directors often continue to be in contact with their home academic institutions and, therefore, provide
information about open lab positions to potential students. Likewise, students from home academic
institutions may initiate contact with lab directors from their country of origin before formally
applying for positions. Accordingly, these two characteristics of research labs enable us to observe
both the network effect in a general sense, and the effects of lab directors as active nodes or
initiators within those networks.

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Ethnic composition of laboratories

53

The network effect

Recent studies address high-skill labour movements using a social network perspective (Khadria,
2001; Meyer, 2001; Portes and Sensenbrenner, 1993; Vertovec, 2002). However, these studies do
not focus exclusively on foreign doctoral students. Foreign student movements require specic
attention in order to understand the internationalization of US higher education. Further, because a
signicant number of foreign students move into the US labour force at a later stage, the patterns
through which foreign students enter S&E labs also have an inuence on the composition of the
scientic labour force in the USA (Hugo, 2002; Khadria, 2001; Li et al., 1996).
The networks that foreign students develop provide opportunities for friends and colleagues in
their home countries. As Meyer (2001) indicates:
Connections with earlier migrants provide potential migrants with many resources that they use to
diminish the risks and costs of migration: information about procedures (technical as well as legal),
nancial support, job prospects, administrative assistance, physical attendance, emotional solidarity.
(Meyer, 2001: 93)

For foreign students, social networks are crucial to nding accommodation, goods and services,
and social and economic information, as well as emotional support. Social networks serve as a
guiding source for foreign students throughout their education. Some studies also suggest that the
interpersonal ties of migrants continue to be effective after graduation in nding jobs either within
the USA or back in their home country (Poros, 2001).
Portes and Sensenbrenner (1993) point out the varieties of structural and relational embeddedness in these networks (Meyer, 2001; Waldinger, 2005). Both the student and the faculty benet
from the easy ow of information that is a product of their shared culture.
Early studies regarded the ow of doctoral students from developing countries to developed
countries as a brain drain. Along with the recognition that networks among skilled workers exist,
a terminological shift has occurred that employs a global conception emphasizing the benets that
accrue to both the sending and the receiving ends. Saxenian (2002) calls this new dynamic brain
circulation, drawing attention to the role of ethnic networks in mobilizing information, know-how,
skills and capital. These new transnational communities provide shared information, contacts, and
trust, creating new opportunities for once peripheral regions of the world economy. Policymakers
are also seeking ways to utilize a globally mobile workforce and cultivate the benets of brain
exchange and brain circulation among countries (Saxenian, 2002).
The role of the director in research laboratories
The role of foreign-born faculty in the current context is noteworthy. The majority of foreign-born
faculty members earn their graduate degrees in the USA after receiving their undergraduate education in their home country. Assuming that they still have ties with their undergraduate institutions,
such faculty are likely to be important resources for students from the same country of origin who
are applying to a doctoral programme in their respective departments. Many of these faculty members direct research laboratories and play a role in recruiting students, getting them admitted and
offering them nancial assistance. They routinely hire doctoral students directly. Therefore, an
interesting question to ask is whether foreign research laboratory directors are more likely to hire
students from their home country than are other laboratory directors.
Faculty members also play an important role in graduate students lives, impacting how they
think and do research. Trow (1977) suggests that the inuences of graduate faculty can guide students future research and teaching during their entire careers. As for foreign students, Tanyildiz
(2008) found evidence from focus group interviews with Turkish students at the Georgia Institute

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Tanyildiz

of Technology that foreign students feel that their background is better understood by faculty from
their country of origin and also feel more comfortable communicating with such faculty. The relationship between the graduate faculty and the graduate student in S&E is perfectly described by
Fox (2003):
[In S&E elds] scientic work and training revolve strongly on facultystudent interchange. In science and engineering, faculty and students are bound together potentially in research facilities and
projects, funded through faculty as principal investigators on which students largely undertake daily
work. (Fox, 2003: 92)

Another important role of foreign lab directors could be explained through the concept of mixed
embeddedness (Kloosterman and Rath, 2001). Mixed embeddedness aims to understand the socioeconomic position of immigrants not only through their embeddedness in actual social networks,
but also through their more abstract embeddedness in the social, economic and institutional environments of their adopted countries. This approach is particularly appropriate in the analysis of lab
directors, because universities provide a unique environment that enables them to engage simultaneously in both their ethnic and non-ethnic networks. Thus, foreign-born directors not only efciently communicate with compatriots students, but also play a crucial role in students transitions
into the scientic community in the USA.

METHODOLOGY
Sampling
The sampling of this study begins with the 1993 NRC rankings of PhD-granting institutions. At
the initial stage, a multi-stage stratied random sample was constructed by drawing universities
from the ranking lists of 12 S&E disciplines. The sample was stratied by discipline (biology,
physics, chemistry, computer science, chemical engineering, aerospace engineering, mechanical
engineering, materials engineering, electrical engineering, chemical engineering and industrial engineering) and rank (top, middle and bottom). At the rst stage of the multi-stage sampling, we randomly selected an equal percentage of departments from each stratum. We selected 110
departments from the list of 360 departments. At the second stage, we identied research laboratories directed by native (US origin) faculty1 and then labs directed by faculty from four specic
foreign nationalities: Chinese, Indian, Korean and Turkish.
Departments that did not have laboratories directed by faculty from any of the four nationalities
were excluded from the sample. We then randomly selected two laboratories in each department,
one from the list of labs directed by a foreign-born faculty member, and one from the list of labs
directed by native faculty member. Lab directors from countries other than China, India, Korea or
Turkey2 are not included in the sampling frame of this study. The methodology is explained in
more detail below.
Data collection
We used a systematic approach to identify the labs through our web search. Once we had obtained
the list of departments in each university, we located their web pages and made sure that each was
accessible. In our sample, all of the departments had a functioning web page that enabled us to proceed to the next step. On each department web page, we looked under the Research tab where,
in most cases, we found the list of research labs and the names of the directors of those labs in that
department. This list constituted the sampling frame for the random selection at the next stage. An

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Ethnic composition of laboratories

55

alternative approach, which we used less often, was to search under the Faculty tab, enabling us
to identify native lab directors and directors from our four nationalities. By making a random selection from these two lists, we identied one foreign director and one native director from each
department. Next, we accessed each directors personal web page, where we located the directors
research group with the corresponding list of group members.
The majority of departments had individual web pages for each research lab. However, we had
to exclude 23 pairs3 from the sample for a variety of reasons. The most common reasons were lack
of a research lab with a director from one of the four foreign nationalities; lack of a list of lab
members; unidentiable nationalities; inaccessible lab web pages; and lack of a comparable
research lab with a native director.
Identication of nationalities
Chinese, Korean, Indian and Turkish doctoral students and faculty members are obvious groups to
study for two reasons. First, these four are among the top ten foreign-student source countries in the
USA. Second, identication of these four nationalities is relatively straightforward compared with
identication of other nationalities. Because there are large immigrant populations from these countries in the USA, existing ethnic-name databases provide comprehensive guidance in predicting the
origin of student and faculty names. Further, students of these nationalities generally form student
organizations at their universities, thus providing a list of members on their web pages that could be
used as an alternative source for nationality identication. In this specic study, we beneted from the
existence of large student groups from these four nationalities in an additional way: we were able to
hire students from these four countries to review the student names in the sample and identify names
from their own country. This provided us with additional reliability in nationality identication.
Because identication of faculty nationality was the key step in composing our sample, we rst
identied the nationalities of the faculty that were listed as directors of research labs. At this stage,
we relied on the CVs or resumes posted on their web pages. In our sample, 97 per cent of the faculty whom we identied as Chinese, Korean, Indian or Turkish received their undergraduate degree
in the corresponding home country, therefore strengthening our certainty of country of origin.4 In
the few cases where resumes or CVs did not exist, we asked foreign-student assistants to identify
the nationality and then cross-referenced this identication with the list of Most Common U.S.
Ethnic Surnames provided in Kerrs (2006) recent study. In this study, the author identies the
ethnicities of the inventors names contained in the NBER Patent Data File originally compiled by
Hall et al. (2001). The NBER Patent Data File provided micro-records for all patents granted by
USPTO from January 1975 to December 1999. Kerr maps on to these inventor names an ethnicname database, constructed by Melissa Data Corporation, originally designed for direct-mail advertisements. A list of Most Common U.S. Ethnic Surnames is provided in the Kerr study, which
we used as a reference for identifying Chinese, Korean and Indian last names.5 Faculty members
with common US rst and last names were coded as native if they had received their undergraduate degree from a US institution.
The same methodology was used to identify the nationalities of students. However, unlike the
faculty members, not all students had resumes posted on the web pages. Consequently, for identication of the foreign students nationality, we relied heavily on the Most Common U.S. Ethnic
Surnames from Kerrs study (Kerr, 2008), recognition by a student of the same nationality, and
our searches on relevant web pages (such as foreign student association member lists).
To ensure the quality of our study, we checked how up-to-date the web pages that we used were,
using the date of update notation at the bottom of the page where possible. In other cases, in
which this information was missing, we looked for a recent posting or a recent publication. From
the date on that post or publication, we approximated the last access date to that web page.

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Tanyildiz

Analyses
The central question of this study is whether the percentage of foreign students from one specic
country of origin in research labs directed by faculty with the same origin is higher than the percentage of students from that origin in research labs directed by native faculty. Our sample provided 82 matched pairs, for a total of 164 cases. We constructed the pairs by matching each lab
directed by a foreign faculty member with another lab directed by a native faculty member within
the same university and the same department. In order to answer this question, we applied a paired
sample t-test that examined the signicance of this difference. We tested the null hypothesis that
there is no difference between the mean foreign student percentages in both labs. In addition to our
main hypothesis, we also examined the relationships among nationality, institutional ranking,
discipline and the ethnic composition of that research lab.
Summary of data
The data set consists of 164 S&E research labs, 82 of which are directed by Chinese, Korean,
Indian or Turkish faculty, matched with another 82 labs directed by native faculty within the same
department in each university. Our intent was to include physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics,
electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, aerospace engineering, industrial engineering, materials engineering, civil engineering and computer science. However, we were
not able to locate labs in mathematics departments. We were able to nd foreign professors working on projects with doctoral students, but they were never identied as groups or research labs. In
retrospect, this is not surprising given the character of mathematical research.
The 164 labs had 1,074 afliated students. The average number of students in each lab was 6.5
(ranging between 1 and 35). This average was very similar for the labs directed by native faculty
(6.54) and for the labs directed by foreign-born faculty (6.44). The average percentage of foreign
students in each lab was 58.6 per cent (ranging between 0 and 100%).
Among the foreign lab directors, only two had earned their undergraduate degrees in the USA,
whereas the rest had earned their undergraduate degrees in their home countries. Data regarding the
undergraduate degrees of foreign professors revealed one interesting result. In this data set, 80 per
cent of the Korean directors graduated from Seoul National University, 57 per cent of the Indian
directors from the Indian Institute of Technology, and 21 per cent of the Chinese directors from the
University of Science and Technology in China, suggesting the existence of top-source institutions
within these top-source countries. In the case of native directors, the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT), Harvard University and Cornell University were the most common undergraduate institutions.
The majority of the web pages observed in this study were updated relatively recently. Seventyve per cent of all the web pages had been updated within the past year, 19 per cent in the year
before, and 6 per cent slightly more than 2 years before.

RESULTS
We hypothesized that within the same university and department, the percentage of students from a
specic country of origin is higher in labs with a faculty member from the same country of origin,
compared with labs directed by native directors. To test this hypothesis, we applied a paired t-test
to 82 pairs of S&E research labs. The results in Table 1 show that the difference in the percentage
of foreign students between the labs directed by foreign professors and the ones directed by native
directors is 33.11. The mean percentage difference between the labs varies between 26 and 40. The

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Ethnic composition of laboratories

57

TABLE 1
FOREIGN STUDENT PERCENTAGE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN RESEARCH LABS (FOREIGN NATIVE
DIRECTORS)
Paired differences

Mean difference
Std error: Mean
Lower
Upper

(33.11)**
3.67
26.02
40.32

The mean difference represents the mean percentage difference of foreign students between foreigndirected labs and native-directed labs in the same departments of the same universities.
**, Signicant at the 1% level.

result is signicant at the 1 per cent level, suggesting that lab composition in the same departments
at the same institutions is related to the ethnicity of the faculty. Students from one country of origin
are more likely to be in labs directed by a faculty member from the same country of origin.
We also test mean percentage differences between labs directed by native professors and labs
directed by faculty from one of the four countries studied. Again, the hypothesis is that the percentage of students working in a lab from a nationality is higher when the students share the nationality
of the director. We nd the mean percentage difference to be 29 points, signicant at the 1 per cent
level (Table 2). This is slightly lower than the mean percentage difference (of 33) for foreign students between foreign-directed labs and native-directed labs. We conclude that the afnity effect is
not exclusively the domain of the foreign-born.
As shown in Table 3 below, the percentage differences (the difference between the percentage of
foreign students in labs directed by a faculty from the same country of origin and the percentage of
foreign students in labs directed by native directors) vary slightly according to the country of origin.6 In this sample, the highest mean difference is between the labs directed by Chinese faculty
and those directed by native faculty. In other words, we observe the studentdirector afnity effect
to be greater in labs directed by Chinese directors than those directed by other nationalities. On the
other hand, the percentages of Indian students are more balanced between the native-directed and
Indian-directed labs. As we can see in Table 3, the smallest percentage difference is between the
labs directed by Indian faculty and comparable labs directed by native faculty. The reason might be
due to Indian students better command of English compared with Chinese, Korean or Turkish
students.
Table 4(a) shows that the mean percentage differences between foreign facultydirected and
native facultydirected labs were much higher in lower-ranked departments. This is an expected
result, as the assumption is that a foreign student who is qualied for acceptance to a top-ranked university would rely less on the benets of networks. Also, students that qualify for the highest-ranked
universities usually consider a limited number of institutions with similar rankings, regardless of the
TABLE 2
NATIVE STUDENT PERCENTAGE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN RESEARCH LABS (NATIVE FOREIGN
DIRECTORS)
Paired differences

Mean difference
Std. error: Mean
Lower
Upper

(28.92)**
4.92
19.03
38.81

The mean difference represents the mean percentage difference of native students between foreign-directed
labs and native-directed labs in the same departments of the same universities.
**, Signicant at the 1% level.

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Tanyildiz

TABLE 3
FOREIGN STUDENT PERCENTAGE DIFFERENCES IN MATCHED LABS BY DIRECTORS COUNTRY
OF ORIGIN (FOREIGN NATIVE DIRECTORS)

China
India
Korea
Turkey
Total

Foreign
mean (%)

Native
mean (%)

Mean
difference (%)

Std.
error

40
19
20
3
82

55.4
45.9
34.4
36.3
47.4

17.6
18.8
5.4
0.0
14.3

(37.8)**
(27.1)**
(29.0)**
(36.3)*
(33.1)**

5.6
6.4
7.2
17.9
3.6

The mean difference represents the mean percentage differences (also reported separately) of foreign students between foreign-directed labs and native-directed labs for each nationality.
**, Signicant at the 1% level; *, signicant at the 5% level.

TABLE 4 (A)
FOREIGN STUDENT PERCENTAGE DIFFERENCES IN MATCHED LABS BY RANKING OF THE
DEPARTMENT (FOREIGN NATIVE DIRECTORS)

Top
Middle
Bottom
Total

Foreign
mean (%)

Native
mean (%)

Mean
difference (%)

Std.
error

45
24
13
82

36.3
55.9
70.3
47.4

10.4
20.0
17.1
14.3

(25.9)**
(35.9)**
(53.2)**
(33.1)**

4.3
6.8
9.8
3.6

TABLE 4 (B)
THE DIFFERENCE IN FOREIGN STUDENTS PERCENTAGES ACROSS THE RANKING TIERS

Middle
Bottom
Constant

Coefcients

Std.
error

(19.81)*
(26.62)*
(36.01)**

7.44
9.25
4.42

The mean difference represents the mean percentage differences (also reported separately) of foreign
students between foreign-directed labs and native-directed labs for each university ranking tier.
**, Signicant at the 1% level; *, signicant at the 5% level.

existence of students or faculty from the same country of origin. In the same vein, for students applying to lower-ranked universities, networks might play a determining role in their selection of an institution. Further, we test whether the percentage differences of foreign students are similar across tiers.
The results show that the percentage differences (between foreign-borndirected labs and native-directed labs) in the middle-ranked and bottom-ranked institutions are higher than those percentages in the
top-ranked institutions. Both results are signicant at the 5 per cent level (Table 4(b)).
The mean percentage differences are quite different among the S&E disciplines included in our
sample (Table 5). The mean difference is highest among industrial engineering labs and lowest

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Ethnic composition of laboratories

TABLE 5
FOREIGN STUDENT PERCENTAGE DIFFERENCES IN MATCHED LABS BY DISCIPLINE (FOREIGN
NATIVE DIRECTORS)

Industrial engineering
Electrical engineering
Civil engineering
Chemistry
Materials engineering
Biology
Aerospace engineering
Chemical engineering
Physics
Computer science
Mechanical engineering
Total

Foreign
mean (%)

Native
mean (%)

Mean
difference (%)

Std.
error

6
6
5
7
12
5
9
7
6
9
10
82

70.0
54.7
52.5
44.3
49.9
53.8
43.7
37.0
33.9
33.5
49.8
47.4

12.0
3.2
12.5
6.9
14.5
18.0
8.6
5.9
6.7
10.4
14.5
14.3

(58.0)**
(51.5)**
(40.0)*
(37.4)**
(35.4)**
(35.8)*
(35.1)**
(31.1)*
(27.2)*
(23.1)*
9.2
(33.1)**

11.1
11.7
19.1
10
11
16.9
11.6
11.8
13.3
8.9
7.2
3.6

The mean difference represents the mean percentage differences (also reported separately) of foreign
students between foreign-directed labs and native-directed labs for each discipline.
**, Signicant at the 1% level; *, signicant at the 5% level.

among chemical engineering labs. In order to explain this difference, the common characteristics of
projects in each discipline should be further examined. One theory may be that ethnic networks are
more visible in disciplines that require close facultystudent contact in project execution.
Finally, we looked at the 1,074 students included in our sample. As shown in Table 6, the percentage of foreign students working with foreign faculty is higher than that of native students
working with foreign faculty. Likewise, a higher percentage of native students work with native
faculty compared with foreign faculty. The distribution of students among labs directed by foreign
and native faculty is further detailed in Table 7, by student origin.
In addition, we test the hypothesis that foreign students are more likely to work with a foreign
director than are native students (Table 8). On average, in this sample, foreign studentforeign professor cases are observed 30 percentage points more than are native studentforeign professor
cases. This difference could be attributable both to students perceptions of working with a director
from their country of origin (i.e. feeling more valued and/or communicating better) and to the role

TABLE 6
ORIGIN OF STUDENTS BY ORIGIN OF LAB DIRECTOR WORKING TOGETHER (BY COUNTS AND
PERCENTAGES)
Student

Director

Native
Foreign

Total

Count
%
Count
%
Count
%

Native

Foreign

319
67.0
157
33.0
476
100.0

223
37.3
375
62.7
598
100.0

2013 The Author. International Migration 2013 IOM

Total
542
50.5
532
49.5
1074
100.0

60

Tanyildiz

TABLE 7
THE DISTRIBUTION OF STUDENTS IN LABS BY FACULTY ORIGIN (BY COUNTS)
Directors origin

Student
China
India
Turkey
USA
Other
Total

Korea

China

India

Turkey

USA

Total

43
.
.
.
49
56
148

.
106
.
.
64
56
226

.
.
54
.
35
46
135

.
.
.

8
34
18
0
319
163
542

51
140
72
8
476
327
1,074

8
9
6
23

This table should be interpreted with caution. In each lab in the data set, we have only identied three
groups of students: those who are of the same origin as the director, native students and all others. That is,
we only know the nationality of the student when it is the same as that of the director. For example, if a Korean student is observed in a lab directed by a Chinese faculty, he or she is identied as other foreign
rather than Korean.

TABLE 8
DIFFERENCE OF MEAN BETWEEN FOREIGN STUDENT FOREIGN PROFESSOR AND NATIVE
STUDENT FOREIGN PROFESSOR CASES
Mean difference

Mean difference
Std. error difference
Lower
Upper

(0.30)**
0.00
0.22
0.41

The mean difference represents the mean percentage difference between foreign studentforeign professor
cases and native studentforeign professor cases observed in the labs.
**, Signicant at the 1% level.

that network connections between the foreign student and the foreign-born lab director play in
determining students placements.
Another way of looking at the composition of S&E labs is to calculate dissimilarity indices for
Chinese, Korean, Indian and Turkish students. Figure 1 presents integration of foreign student
groups within a research lab compared to native students. In this sample, the native-Turkish dissimilarity index is 49 per cent. This means that to make native and Turkish students evenly distributed
across all labs, 49 per cent of the native students would need to move to another lab. In a similar
manner, the dissimilarity indices for Indian, Chinese and Korean students are 36 per cent, 31 per
cent and 51 per cent, respectively. These percentages provide evidence of dissimilarity of foreign
doctoral students among the laboratories. That is, the distribution of foreign students is not similar
across laboratories.

CONCLUSION
US science and engineering (S&E) research labs directed by foreign-born faculty are much more
likely to be populated by students from the same country of origin than are labs directed by native

2013 The Author. International Migration 2013 IOM

61

Ethnic composition of laboratories

As compared to native students

FIGURE 1
DISSIMILARITY INDICES FOR FOREIGN STUDENTS
Turkish

Korean

Indian

Chinese
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

The gure shows what percentage of students would need to move to another lab to make the foreign student percentages (from that nationality) evenly distributed across the labs.

faculty. The percentage of students working in a lab from a specic nationality (foreign or native)
is higher when they share nationality with the director.
Foreign-born faculty members appear to be active nodes of ethnic networks, mobilizing foreign
students from their country of origin and opening new channels for collaboration between their
home institutions and US institutions. Although we cannot test how matching between the student
and the faculty was done, we believe that some degree of networking could well be involved, given
that directors play a signicant role in stafng their laboratories.
This pattern may increase the quality of foreign students, as foreign lab directors have an advantage over their native colleagues in assessing the quality of students coming from their home country. They can interpret country-specic information (such as the quality of institutions attended and
the characteristics of a prior work-place) more condently, which could lead to a better t regarding skills needed in research labs.
This pattern also suggests that, despite the increased number of foreign students in American
universities, students still tend to interact with their compatriots at the initial stages of their scientic careers, making research labs transitional media that help students to integrate into the
scientic community. Foreign students, arguably, have a steeper learning curve in becoming a
part of the scientic community due to differences in language and culture. Interacting with
compatriots should provide foreign students with additional support to help absorb both tacit
and codied knowledge at a faster rate. As Tanyildiz (2008) documents, Turkish students at
the Georgia Institute of Technology nd studying together for qualifying examinations, exchanging lecture notes for common courses, tutoring each other or simply discussing questions about
their eld easier among compatriots, as they are able to ask questions and clarify ideas much
more easily in their own language.
Studies seeking to explain foreign student ows should consider research labs as one of foreign
students main entry points into the scientic community. Rising percentages of foreign-born lab
directors could translate into a changing ethnic composition of university research laboratories. Foreign student ows, to be sure, are far from unstructured. Yet, previous studies fall short in explaining how existing structures affect foreign student ows. Relevant policies controlling student
movements (related to work permits, quotas etc.) alone cannot explain the mechanisms through
which these ows occur. The current structure of foreign-born scientists networks, which would
activate future ows, could be another important part of these explanations.

2013 The Author. International Migration 2013 IOM

62

Tanyildiz

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Financial support for this research was provided by National Science Foundation (SRS-0720020). I
would like to thank Paula E. Stephan and Gregory B. Lewis for their comments on an earlier
version of this manuscript.

NOTES
I refer to directors with a US origin name as native directors.
All four countries are among the top ten source countries.
Out of 220 cases in 110 S&E departments.
This result generates two further propositions: First, foreign-born lab directors might have strong network
connections with their respective countries. Second, a majority of our lab directors are rst-generation immigrants; second-generation Korean, Chinese, Indian and Turkish directors are not represented in the sample.
5. Turkish names are identied by the author, who is a native of Turkey.
6. Note that the sample includes only three matching pairs for the Turkish nationality. The result suffers from
small sample size and should be interpreted with caution.

1.
2.
3.
4.

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APPENDIX
AN ALPHABETICAL LIST OF THE INSTITUTIONS

Auburn University
Brown University
Carnegie Mellon University
City University of New York
Clemson University
Columbia University
Cornell University
Florida Institute of Technology
Harvard University
Illinois Institute of Technology
Iowa State University
Johns Hopkins University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Michigan State University
North Carolina State University
Ohio State University
Oklahoma State University
Oregon State University
Oregon Institute of Technology
Pennsylvania State University
Portland State University
Princeton University
Purdue University
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Stanford University
State University of New York Binghamton
State University of New York Buffalo
Stony Brook University
Texas A&M University
University of California Berkeley
University of California Davis
University of California Los Angles
University of California San Diego
University of California Santa Barbara
University of California Santa Cruz
University of Cincinnati

2013 The Author. International Migration 2013 IOM

Ethnic composition of laboratories

University
University
University
University
University
University
University
University
University
University
University

of
of
of
of
of
of
of
of
of
of
of

Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Houston
Illinois
Kentucky
Michigan
Missouri at Kansas City
Texas
Wisconsin
Wisconsin Milwaukee

2013 The Author. International Migration 2013 IOM

65