Foreign Student Share and Supply of STEM-Designated Economics Programs

Over the past decade, there has been a significant increase in the number of U.S. institutions offering STEM-eligible degree programs in economics. This paper documents the trends in STEM-degree offerings across degree levels and examines the share of foreign students and other characteristics of institutions that offer STEM-eligible programs. Using a difference-in-differences design, this paper finds that departments with a proportion of foreign students above the sample median are 6 and 9 percentage points more likely to offer a STEM-eligible degree program at the bachelor's and master's levels, respectively, after the STEM designation in 2013. Additionally, the tobit regression results suggest that early adopters of STEM-eligible programs are associated with a higher share of foreign students, private institutions and doctoral and research institutions.