International graduates and the region - the example of Göttingen/Germany

There is a growing demand for highly skilled labour force in Germany. The ability of regions to attract sufficient labour force becomes more and more important, considering the aging and shrinking working population. It can be assumed that places with universities have an advantage in attracting highly skilled labour because of the continuous inflow of students. Among them, one can find more and more international students. Understanding which factors have an influence on their intention to stay or leave the region is the focus of this study. Based on the creative class theory a case study was conducted among 253 international Master and PhD students at the University of Göttingen, Germany. Using descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression analysis, we established that the majority of international students can imagine staying in the region after graduation, while most of them are not familiar with regional companies. These results show that international students and companies do not have sufficient access to each other and imply that efforts have to be made to promote the publicity of regional companies in order to retain international talents.