Posted on June 13, 2007  Comments (1)

Education, Entrepreneurship and Immigration: America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs is part 2 of a study by Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering and UC Berkeley. Some interesting points from the study:

• 52 percent of immigrant founders initially came to the United States primarily for higher education, 40 percent entered the country because of a job opportunity, 6 percent came for family reasons, and only 2 percent to start a business.
• 91 percent of Indian founders, 35 percent of Chinese and 97 percent of Taiwanese founders completed their undergraduate degrees in their home country
• Indian and Chinese founders graduated from a diverse set of schools in their native countries, many of which are considered
  second- or third-tier universities (only 15 percent of Indian founders were graduates of the IIT).
• Immigrant founders of technology and engineering firms have strong backgrounds in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. 75 percent had completed their highest degree in a STEM field.
• Advanced education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is correlated with high rates of entrepreneurship and innovation. The U.S. economy depends upon these high rates of entrepreneurship and innovation to maintain its global edge.

Related: Part 1 of the study (pdf) – Engineering Education and Economic Growth – Engineers in the Workplace – S&P 500 CEOs, Engineering Graduates – Diplomacy and Science Research – USA Under-counting Engineering Graduates