Where the share is highest
The same question asked at both degree levels: which institutions and which programmes award the largest proportion of their core-STEM degrees to students on temporary visas. Master’s is the larger population by roughly six to one and is where the growth happened, so it is shown first.
Every table is a ranking on a ratio, which is the easiest kind of number to mislead with — a programme awarding four degrees, all to non-residents, reads 100% and means nothing. So each table states the cohort floor it applies, how many units cleared it, and the denominator on every row.
Institutions
Pooled across the window, so a single unusual year cannot put an institution at the top.
Loading…
IPEDS Completions, CIP families 11, 14, 15, 26, 27, 30, 40 and 42. Award level 7 for master’s; level 17 for doctorates, with legacy level 9 added across the 2008–09 transition. Non-resident alien is the residency category the institution itself reports at graduation, not an inference from names or countries.
Programmes
Four-digit CIP codes pooled nationally — one field of study across every institution that offers it.
Loading…
The same university, two programmes
This is the comparison that is hardest to argue with, because it holds the institution fixed. Same university, same degree level, same admissions office — and two programmes at opposite ends of the range. Nobody can answer that a university is simply internationally oriented when one of its own programmes is 99% non-resident and another is near zero.
Loading…
A reading, not a finding
The pattern is consistent: the high side is computing, analytics, statistics and engineering; the low side is psychology, counselling and education. One plausible reading is that it tracks what a degree leads to — the high side is eligible for the STEM extension of Optional Practical Training and feeds the H-1B route, while the low side leads to state-licensed practice in the United States.
That is a reading. IPEDS records which degrees were awarded and to whom; it does not record who applied, who was admitted, or why anyone chose a programme. The gap is a measurement. The explanation is not.
Largest non-resident cohorts
Ranked by absolute count rather than share, because share alone favours small programmes. These are the places educating the most non-resident students in core STEM, whatever their proportion.
Loading…
No floor applies here — ranking by count already excludes small programmes by construction.