Uproot to the Orient

For graduates anticipating a career as a senior academic, the possibility of uprooting from the west and going east ought to be considered according to a report from the Guardian this week. Chinese universities are currently involved in a multi million pound spending spree to tempt UK and USA academics to take positions in China.

With universities offering sumptuous salaries of between $100,000 (£61,000) to $200,000 per year for varying positions, increasing numbers of UK academics are struggling to resist utilising their talent to attain private, as well as professional, affluence.

For over a decade the Chinese government has put momentous investment into its universities, concentrating its spending on the top 10 Chinese higher education institutions. Over fourteen years ago the government commenced the incline of Chinese higher education with the launch of Project 985, a three year grant's programme of around £2.8bn, to be divided among flourishing universities. Deciding to continue with the numbers theme, the government then launched the 1000 Talents Programme, a scheme intending to recruit academics from all over the world, specifically those who were born in China and had since reached professional level. According to research conducted by Professor David Zweig of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, subsequent to such educational investment, the number of academic returnees to China increased rapidly from 7000 in 1999 to 30,000 in 2005. Though the Chinese Ministry of Science disputes the 2005 figure, maintaining that the totality of academic returnees was closer to 35,000, the success of the government's objective is undoubtedly apparent.

With the 1000 Talent's programme successfully tempting Chinese born academics to leave their positions as UK and USA academics to return to the east, the government has this year, revised the scheme with the creation of the Young 1000 Talents Programme. This programme hopes to lure over 400 young overseas academics in the fields of Natural Science and Physics to research and teach in China. Accepting academics will receive a living subsidiary of £50,000 and will additionally be entitled to research grants of up to £300,000 over a period of 3 years. Against a backdrop of job cuts and a severe deflation in the UK higher education system, such an offer is an increasingly attractive proposition to UK junior academics as well as university-leavers hoping to break into this field.

While it may seem to some that this is the beginning of the UK's headlong decline for harbouring the best research academics, Professor Cong Cao from the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham disagrees. Commenting, and consequently casting a dark cloud over this thus-far shining report of Chinese Universities, Cao says "Chinese Universities may be producing large numbers of scientific papers but the quality is still much lower than the UK & USA". This uncertainty in China's ability to become the next higher education superpower is also supported by the Executive Vice President of Peking University, Lin Jianhua who predicts that it would take two generations to produce a creative environment comparable to Harvard or Oxford.

While Cao and Jianhua predict that it is too early for the UK government to panic that the best researchers in the country will be rushing to catch the next plane to China, graduates aiming for a career in academia may wish to monitor this trend over the coming months.

Source: GraduateRecruitmentBureau.uk.com, Thursday 21st April 2011