Softening up While Abroad. Soft Skills and International Student Mobility

Abstract

Soft skills are important determinants of labour market outcomes and their relevance is growing over time. Existing studies have underscored their significance, emphasized their malleability during young adulthood and their persistent undersupply in the labour market. Despite these findings, the production function of soft skills remains under explored. This paper investigates whether international student mobility, during university studies, can produce soft skills. I compile a new data source at the graduate-occupationemployer level using administrative data augmented with the importance of both hard and soft skills across occupations. My identification strategy instruments the decision to become mobile by exploiting exogenous variation in exposure to past mobility through a fine degree by cohort level. My results show that international student mobility allows mobile graduates to sort themselves into jobs where soft skills are more relevant. Being mobile during university studies helps graduates find jobs where communication (+10.6%), creativity (+16.3%), team working (+10.1%) and problem solving (+9.6%) skills are more important. Estimates suggest more pronounced effects for degrees in STEM, longer stays, universities with more international faculty and student bodies and for mobile students travelling to smaller and more culturally distant cities. I characterize the complier subgroup responding to my exposure instrument and show that my estimates refer to graduates coming from a negatively selected socioeconomic background.

Keywords: soft skills, labour market outcomes, tertiary education, instrumental variable

JEL Classification: I23, I26, J24