Point Systems, Migration Policy, and International Students Flow

The mobility of international students is currently an important policy issue in the world. Since 1960’s, Canada and other OECD countries started to use a point system to select highly skilled immigrants. Those point systems favor international students who received higher education in the host country. Therefore, the point system is believed to reshape the international students flow in the last decades. This study aims to examining the impact of using point systems to select immigrant on the international students flow, by comparing the international student stock in a certain country before and after a point system. The research indicates that using point systems in migration policy does increase the international student stock in the receiving countries. The analysis should help shed some light on understanding the pattern of international students flow, and the dynamics between migration policy and academic mobility. This research should be especially useful to professionals in International Education fields, or anyone else who may be interested in education and migration.