Research Productivity of Returnees from Study Abroad in Korea, Hong Kong, and Malaysia

Abstract

This study analyzes whether academics with advanced degrees from foreign universities are more research productive than their domestic counterparts in the three selected East Asian higher education systems -Korea, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. The three systems have relatively large proportions of foreign degree holders among their professoriates. The data for this study is drawn from the Changing Academic Profession survey. In our negative binominal regression analysis, we found that foreign degree holders are not more research productive than their colleagues with domestic degrees, and even slightly less productive than domestic degree holders in soft disciplines (arts, humanities, and social sciences) in Korea unless they have further foreign post-doc experience after their PhD. Furthermore, foreign degree holders are less productive in hard disciplines (natural sciences, engineering, and bio-medical sciences) in Malaysia. Finally, we discuss the findings and attribute them to contextual differences between the three localities.

Effects of mobilities on the research output and its multidisciplinarity of academics in Hong Kong and Macau: An exploratory study

“…Secondly, mobility experiences are increasingly discussed with regards to their effects on academics' scholarly output—more concretely, their research productivity—but the findings are mixed thus far (Bolli & Schlapfer, ; Shin, Jung, Postiglione, & Azman, ). The reason for these mixed findings is twofold.…”

Women academics and research productivity: an international comparison

“…There are a number of indicators to measure research productivity -number of publications, citation counts, doctoral students and competitive research funding (Litwin 2012), although there are differences between academic disciplines in terms of the importance attributed to these indicators (Becher and Trowler 2001). Nevertheless, the number of publications, particularly peer-reviewed journal articles, is the most widely used indicator of research productivity across academic disciplines (Toutkoushian and Bellas 2003;Horta, Dautel, and Veloso 2012;Shin et al 2014) since it is the most important stimulant of career progression and also allows for comparative analysis (Litwin 2012).…”

Challenges for doctoral education in East Asia: a global and comparative perspective

“…They have a promising future if these universities aggressively invest resources and upgrade A u s t r a l i a A u s t r i a B e l g i u m B r a z i l C a n a d a C h i n a F i n l a n d F r a n c e G e r m a n y H K I t l a y J a p a n K o r e a M a l a y s i a M e x i c o N e t h e r l a n d s N e w Z e a l a n d s P o r g u g a l R u s s i a S o u t h A f r i c a S p a i n S w e d e n S w i z e r l a n d their systems. As some studies (e.g., Shin et al 2014) have found, the research performance of the domestically trained doctoral degree holders in the region is not lacking in productivity compared with the doctoral degree holders from abroad. The rapid growth of doctoral training in the region has been helped by those graduates who returned from doctoral study at foreign universities as well as the increasing number of internationally mobile academics.…”