A largely invisible role of international students: Fueling the innovation economy
When Saisri Akondi arrived from India to pursue a master’s in biomedical engineering, business, and design at Carnegie Mellon University, she’d already founded one startup. Before graduating, she co-launched D.Sole, developing a smart insole to detect diabetic foot complications—conditions tied to an estimated 6.8 million amputations every year. Her story captures a larger truth: international students are quietly powering America’s innovation engine.
In Pittsburgh, tech firms now employ roughly a quarter of the local workforce and pay significantly higher wages than legacy industries. By one regional estimate, these companies distribute about $27.5 billion in salaries annually. Leaders in the city’s innovation ecosystem say a substantial share of this transformation stems from international talent trained at nearby universities.
Walk through the Pittsburgh Innovation District—anchored by Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh—and you’ll hear a mix of languages over coffee and code. Yet uncertainty clouds these conversations. Tighter visa scrutiny, funding pressures, and policy shifts have heightened anxiety among students, graduates, and employers who depend on a steady flow of global talent.
Public debate often centers on undergraduate enrollment and tuition dollars. But the less visible, high-impact roles are often in graduate programs and research labs, where international students conduct foundational work that becomes intellectual property, partnerships, and startups. In many cutting-edge labs, non-U.S. researchers form the backbone of daily discovery and development.
Consider the entrepreneurial impact: more than 100 U.S. companies valued at $1 billion or more were founded by people who first came as international students. On average, these firms employ hundreds of workers each. Whether they found startups or join established companies, international graduates are a vital source of specialized skills in short supply.
That scarcity is structural. Demand for STEM expertise outstrips the domestic pipeline, and American students have long struggled to meet readiness benchmarks in math and related fields. The result: international students earn over a third of all U.S. master’s and doctoral degrees in science and engineering. In AI and adjacent fields, foreign-born talent comprises a majority of graduate students and a significant share of the workforce.
This dynamic is especially visible in Pittsburgh. The city reinvented itself after the steel collapse, evolving into a robotics and AI hub. Tech giants opened or grew offices to tap university talent. The region now hosts firms advancing autonomous vehicles, robotics, language learning, and aerospace, alongside hundreds of startups tracked by local innovation groups. Duolingo—co-founded by former international students connected to Carnegie Mellon—stands as one prominent example of this global-to-local pipeline.
Universities have built pathways to convert ideas into companies. At Pitt’s Big Idea Center and Carnegie Mellon’s entrepreneurship programs, students workshop research with commercial potential, often asking the most practical question: how do you launch a startup on a student visa? Many international students extend their studies, secure employer sponsorship, or find other legal routes so they can keep building companies in the region.
But momentum is fragile. Even before recent political shifts, some institutions reported declines in new international graduate enrollment, citing visa delays and intensifying competition from other countries. Publicized visa revocations, arrests, and reduced research funding add to the uncertainty. Would-be founders are already hitting barriers: several students who planned to arrive this year report they cannot get visas. Akondi, for one, will continue her education in business while keeping D.Sole anchored in Pittsburgh—but she readily acknowledges that fear is higher than before.
The implications extend well beyond campus. Employers warn that without a reliable talent pipeline, hiring slows and expansion plans shift. That ripples into the broader economy—affecting everything from local real estate to small businesses on neighborhood main streets. University leaders and tech executives alike pose the same questions: who will staff research labs, co-author journal articles, file patents, and grow the next generation of startups if fewer international students can come—and stay?
There’s also a deeper benefit at stake. Complex, global problems—climate, health, energy, security, and AI safety—demand teams that bring varied perspectives and lived experiences. Students consistently say that learning alongside peers from around the world changes how they frame problems and solutions. That diversity of thought is not a bonus; it’s a prerequisite for breakthrough innovation.
Pittsburgh may be a vivid case study, but it’s not an outlier. Across the United States, regional innovation economies lean heavily on international graduate students and researchers who become inventors, founders, and high-impact employees. Without them, the pie shrinks: fewer discoveries, fewer startups, fewer high-wage jobs. With them, the country sustains its edge in the technologies shaping the future.
For cities like Pittsburgh, the choice is stark. Either nurture and retain global talent—or risk ceding ground to regions and nations that will. The evidence is clear: international students aren’t just participants in the innovation economy. They are among its principal architects.
