国际学生对本国同龄人的种族与性别影响

摘要

American colleges and universities have seen a notable increase in the share of international students in recent years, raising the question of how these demographic shifts might affect domestic students. This paper explores this question by examining the impact of international students on the academic outcomes of domestic peers in introductory economics courses. We address the potential endogeneity of class selection by focusing on first-year students enrolling in a large public flagship university, for whom class assignment is likely to be quasi-random, conditional on a rich set of control variables for the class and individual. Results suggest an increased share of international student peers reduces the likelihood of majoring in economics for domestic White and Asian men while increasing the likelihood of majoring in economics for domestic men from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. Higher shares of international student peers also increase the likelihood that domestic White and Asian men major in business and decrease the likelihood that some men drop out of college. Exploring mechanisms, we show that a higher international peer share is associated with higher domestic student grades, with additional evidence suggesting a “curved” grading mechanism, whereby some international students earn lower grades in introductory economics, resulting in higher grades for domestic students while the average class grades are relatively unchanged. Results for men enrolled in large introductory economics classes are similar to the main results for men overall and are also similar for women. Overall, our results are consistent with a higher share of international students in introductory economics classes raising course grades for domestic students, which potentially enables domestic students on the cusp of eligibility thresholds to choose more selective majors, such as business, and allows domestic students at risk of dropping out to stay in college. Together, these findings highlight potential implications of policies which affect international and domestic student composition as well as the importance of disaggregating impacts by gender, race, and ethnicity.