Can overseas experience speed up career advancement? ——An empirical study on Changjiang Scholar Program

LI Feng; TANG Li

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Science Research Management ›› 2022, Vol. 43 ›› Issue (1) : 192-199.

Can overseas experience speed up career advancement? ——An empirical study on Changjiang Scholar Program

Li Feng¹, Tang Li²

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Abstract

Against the backdrop of global talent war, the international mobility of the highly-skilled is heatedly debated and receives growing attention from academia and policy makers. With the "Sending out and Attracting back" policy, an increasing number of domestically trained researchers go broad sponsored by the Chinese central or regional government, university or foreign hosting institutions as visiting scientists, postdoc fellows, or joint doctoral students. The growing phenomenon of different types of researcher mobility across national borders has made the demarcation line between returnees and locals increasingly murky. Yet such heterogeneous impacts, if any, due to various types of overseas experiences and characteristics of recruiting institutions have not captured sufficient attention in the extant literature. To fill in some research gap, this study utilizes a novel vitae dataset of Changjiang Distinguished Scholars (hereinafter CJS) to further explore this topic. We investigate the impact of different types and levels of overseas experiences on the speed of Chinese scholars′ career advancement moderated by recommending universities′ status when CJS titles were awarded.
Our finding reveals heterogenous impact of overseas experience on the speed of Changjiang Scholars′ career advancement. Overseas PhD training experience alone does not speed up scientists′ career progression. Only when overseas PhD training experience is combined with other types of overseas experience, the positive catalyst role of overseas experience can be observed. The impact of temporary overseas experience is insignificant either. The study also finds that ceteris paribus fulltime overseas experience speeds up scholars′ career advancement. Changjiang Scholars with more types of fulltime overseas experience tend to obtain the prestigious title at younger ages holding the other confounding factors in the model constant. Established returnee scholars who had got tenured abroad demonstrate slower career advancement than early-career returnee scholars. And finally, academic reputation of recommending universities matters. Scholars at dual first-class universities tend to be awarded with titles at younger ages.
This paper ends with a discussion of its implications on talents policies at both country and institution level. Our analyses suggest that the extant visiting scholar programs may involve negative self-selection of researchers. Scholars encounter career bottleneck period may be more likely to apply for and thus be selected into visiting scholar programs. Secondly, we argue at institutional level, the recruiting department should have a leveled playing field for applicants regardless where they got their Ph.D. degrees. Thirdly, in addition to attract the established highly-skilled, Chinese universities may also consider how to bring in early-career returnees with great potentials. In contrast with the high cost of attracting and retaining the established overseas scholars, recruiting early-career overseas scholars seems more cost effective. Last but not least, we appeal that Chinese universities should adjust their talent recruiting policies according to institutional status of research excellence.

Key words

international mobility / overseas experience / career advancement / high-end talent programs

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Li Feng, Tang Li. Can overseas experience speed up career advancement? ——An empirical study on Changjiang Scholar Program[J]. Science Research Management. 2022, 43(1): 192-199

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