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New WP: “University as a Melting Pot: Long-term Effects of Internationalization” Debates on international students often focus on capacity constraints, funding, or competition. In the paper, I show that the main effects of internationalization on natives are not academic or economic, but social.

I study the impact of exposure to international students in the first year of a bachelor’s program in the Netherlands. I exploit idiosyncratic cohort-to-cohort variation in the share of international students within programs. I use linked admin and survey data on one million students over 30 years.

Here is what I found: Social integration increases  Exposure to international students makes native students: - More likely to cohabit with a non-native 15 years later, - More likely to marry a non-native 15 years later.

Attitudes become more open and international  Native students exposed to more international peers report: - Greater satisfaction with learning about other cultures, - More positive attitudes towards migration and European integration, - Less agreement with anti-immigration neighborhood sentiments.

Effects on attitudes are sizable and comparable to those found in the contact hypothesis literature. Exposure also makes native students more internationally mobile: they become more likely to emigrate later in life.

No evidence of negative labor-market effects  Perhaps most important for current policy debates: increased exposure has precisely estimated zero effects on employment, income, entrepreneurship, and workplace diversity up to 25 years after enrollment.