Oct.4, 2007 - Aslan: Introduction Analysis

The growing presence of foreign students in U.S. doctoral programs in economics is an indication of a trend toward internationalization of economics(Coats, 1997). Although the number of doctorates has remained relatively stable over the last quarter century (at approximately 800 degrees annually), the proportion of these doctorates conferred on foreign students has increased from 20.5 percent (183 in total) in 1972 to 43 percent (368) in 1988 (Bowen and Rudenstine, 1992, p. 378). Our own survey of 51 Ph.D. programs in economics, to be described below, indicated that 52 percent of the doctoral students in economics were foreigners in 1995–96. The share of foreign students receiving doctorates is much higher in economics than in the social or physical sciences, but lower than that in engineering fields (National Science Foundation, 1987, xii).

Move1: context
- In the first sentence of this paragraph, it showed the trend that more and more foreign student's in U.S. doctoral programs in economics influences America toward internationalization of economics to point out the growing interest about the subject of this research. So, the author cited some historical data about the growth percentage of foreign students in U.S. as the support of the background of this research. Besides, the author also mentioned a little about the data result in this research to offer some evidence to support it.

Some studies have examined the general flow of foreign students to the United
States, or their fate upon returning to their countries (Barber, 1985; Goodwin and
Nacht, 1986; NSF, 1987). But to our knowledge, only a few inquiries have considered

foreign doctoral students in U.S. economics programs

. Among them are Rao (1995) and Montecinos and Aslanbeigui (1997), which discuss the issues of time-to-completion and foreign students’ choice of country of residence. Valde´s (1995) has analyzed the trajectory of the ‘‘Chicago Boys’’ in Chile.

Move2: Problem
- In the second paragraph, the author pointed out although there are a lot of work about the flow of foreign student in U.S. has been done before, there still exits the gap, that is the still unknown about the concerntration of the foreign doctoral students in U.S. economics programs. It spotlights why this research should be conducted to fill this gap.

In this article, we use data from our survey as well as evidence from other sources to

present

a profile of

foreign students in U.S. doctoral programs

; to

explore the factors

behind the growing internationalization of U.S. graduate economics education;

to shed light on foreign students’ interests, career plans and assessment of the training they are receiving

; and to

draw attention to implications and questions

for further research in this area.

Move3: Response
- To fill this gap, in the first part of this paragraph it mentioned about the methodology of how this research filled the gap mentioned in the paragraph above and the scope of this research concerned about, like the data from the survey and the evidence from other sources to present .....foreign students in U.S. doctoral programs. And in the second part the author discussed about the purposes of this research.
-Besides, from the content of the second part of this paragraph, the audience of this research may be the administrators or the professors of U.S. doctoral program developement.