Amerika'daki doktora programları içerisindeki kültürel çeşitliliğin yabancı öğrencilerin programı bırakma oranları üzerindeki etkileri

Increasing demand for US graduate programs by the international students in the last few decades results in a more diverse set of students culturally in the graduate programs. We investigate the effect of cultural diversity of the international students at US doctoral programs on the likelihood of dropping out of the international students within the first four years of their studies. We use individual-level data for international Ph.D. students who study in the United States with F-1 visa at research and doctoral universities between the academic years 2004/05 and 2010/11. We measure cultural diversity by Hirschman–Herfindahl Index based on either country of citizenship of the students or language spoken by the students. Estimates show that increased level of cultural diversity among international students is associated with lower attrition rates of the students. On the other hand, students who have more peers from the same cultural background as themselves are also less likely to drop out of the programs. When we measure cultural diversity by country of citizenship, we conclude that the negative effect of diversity is much stronger in small-sized classes. However, the effect of diversity based on language spoken by the students does not vary considerably by the class size.