City encourages diversity of ideas and cultures; sees monetary benefits
[1]Nearly 40 percent of foreign students who graduate from Oklahoma City metropolitan area colleges stay and get jobs here, a new study shows.
Based on data from 2008 to 2012, the Brookings report identifies 118 metro areas with the largest numbers of foreign students and measures their monetary contributions to their U.S. metropolitan destinations.
Oklahoma City ranked 28th with 8,576 students on the F-1 visa — the most common visa issued to foreigners studying in a full-time academic program. The top destination institutions were Oklahoma Christian University, Oklahoma City University, Southern Nazarene University, University of Central Oklahoma and University of Oklahoma.
Foreign students paid $113,073,309 in tuition and $70,156,544 in living costs.
The report — released Friday as part of the Global Cities Initiative, a joint project of Brookings and JPMorgan Chase — suggested metropolitan leaders nationwide take steps to realize the full benefit foreign students bring. These include:
- Leveraging foreign student connections with their home communities abroad to facilitate and deepen economic exchange.
- Retaining foreign student skills by 1) developing programs to connect graduates to employers located in the school’s metropolitan area, 2) helping local employers obtain the necessary visas for foreign graduates with in-demand skills and 3) advocating for immigration reform to make more visas available for graduates who want to stay in the U.S.
“Foreign students are a significant source of earnings for U.S. metro economies in several ways,” said Neil Ruiz, associate fellow for the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program and author of the report.
(Next page: Business leaders’ efforts to attract and retain)
“First, they open up markets in their home cities which facilitates trade, foreign direct investment and knowledge transfer. In addition, they infuse revenue into local communities, and they help fill demand for jobs requiring specific skills in local labor markets. Our business and community leaders need to develop better strategies that retain their talents after they graduate.”
Oklahoma City business leaders’ efforts to attract and retain college graduates — both foreign and domestic — are paying off, said Roy Williams, president and CEO of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce.
The city’s workforce has grown increasingly diverse in the past decade as companies hire college graduates from across the country and around the world, Williams said.
“It’s because they are trying to get the brightest and the best,” he said.
“Diversity is important. The more diverse, the more accepting and the more interesting,” Williams said.
Workers from other countries bring different values, different ideas and different approaches to a business, he said, and they make the community “a more exciting place.”
Oklahoma universities do a good job of recruiting foreign students, who are attracted by the “very reasonably priced tuition,” Williams said.
It’s up to business leaders to recruit those students to stay after they graduate, he said. Some larger companies have immigration attorneys to help with the legal process.
The chamber’s Greater Grads program connects Oklahoma college graduates with employers in the Oklahoma City region looking to fill permanent positions or internships.
Internships are a great way to get foreign students off the campus and expose them to the community, Williams said.
“They connect with other young professionals so they can picture themselves living here, and not just working here,” he said.
“Young people tend to go where they want to live and then look for a job,” Williams said. “They are coming from all over.”
Amenities like MAPS improvements and having an NBA team are important to the urban lifestyle they are looking for, he said.
“What is exciting is the trend continues to trend up.”
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