Foreign-Educated Immigrants Are Less Skilled Than U.S. Degree Holders
By Jason Richwine on February 24, 2019
Summary
While the percentage of immigrants who arrive with a college or advanced degree has risen over the past decade, the extent to which foreign education translates into useful skills here in the United States is an open question. Based on English-language tests of literacy, numeracy, and computer operations administered by the Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), this report finds that, among test-takers with at least a college education, U.S.-degree holders out-score foreign-educated immigrants by a wide margin.
Graph: Percentile Scores by Test-Takers with College or Advanced Degrees
For example, among those with at least a college degree, native-born Americans score at the 74th percentile on literacy, while U.S.-educated immigrants score at the 66th percentile, and foreign-educated immigrants score at just the 42nd percentile. Policy-makers should therefore be cautious in treating foreign degrees as evidence of "high-skill" immigration.
Other key points:
https://cis.org/Report/ForeignEducated-Immigrants-Are-Less-Skilled-US-Degree-Holders
