Train and Retain: National and Regional Policies to Promote the Settlement of Foreign Graduates in Knowledge Economies

Over the last decades, a rapid internationalization of higher education has taken place, while simultaneously many countries have started to promote immigration of the highly skilled to their economies. Increasingly, these two developments have become linked as foreign students are widely seen as the ideal highly skilled immigration candidates to retain. This paper provides a comparative analysis of admission and retention policies towards foreign students in selected industrialized countries, with a specific focus on the regional level, where such policies have only recently evolved. Finally, we ask the question to what extent countries and regions have been successful in retaining foreign graduates for their labor markets and where they have encountered problems.