International Student Mobility

This chapter examines the role that sending country structural factors play in influencing the proportion of tertiary students studying abroad. It examines how outbound mobility ratio (OMR) responds to sending county supply and demand for tertiary education, population size, per capital GDP, development, education expenditures, and other factors. In all Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and fixed-effect model specifications, the OMR had a negative relationship to tertiary supply. While countries with larger populations send more students abroad, they have smaller OMRs. Fixed-effects models also showed that changes in tertiary supply and the percentage of GDP spent on tertiary education were negatively related to OMRs. The chapter reviews government scholarship programmes sponsored by Global South countries and the practices they pursue to encourage student return and strengthen tertiary capacity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). These programmes in developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are changing international student flows.