Institutional prestige, academic supervision and research productivity of international PhD students: Evidence from Chinese returnees

Since the emergence of global university rankings in the 2000s, East Asian universities have been recruiting academics with doctoral degrees from Western countries to strengthen their competitiveness in the global university league tables. Governments offer scholarships to support students in their overseas doctoral studies and encourage graduates to return. Although much attention is given to researchers with overseas degrees, little is known about their experiences and pre-employment academic productivity. Drawing on a nationwide survey and bibliometric data, this study examines whether and how the institutional prestige of a host university and academic supervision contribute to the academic productivity of government-funded Chinese PhD returnees during their doctoral studies. Results show that supervisors’ research support and collaboration positively affect pre-employment academic productivity. However, a university's prestige does not exert such an influence. Moreover, co-authorship with a supervisor is a crucial mechanism in the influence of supervisors’ research support on PhD students’ productivity.

Research on Brain Tumors in Mexico: A Bibliometric Analysis from the Latin America

Background: Bibliometrics is a completive method of research and analyses useful to understand the collective contributions of a given scientific community. The detail of the quantity (productivity) and impact as a surrogate marker of quality can shed light on what we have done (number of articles) and how we impact others (citations). It also shows the direction the community can take for further research, guided by its shortcomings and successes. The publications of Latin American medical institutions on brain neoplasms have never been studied.Objective: Analyze a clinical and experimental approach, identifying core journals, type of article, increase of published material with time, number of citations. Additionally, we identified the most researched topics involved in brain tumor literature.Material and methods: We harvested the articles published by at least one author form the Instituto Nacional de Neurología y Neurocirugía form Mexico since its inception in 1964 to 2020. Key bibliometric parameters, as journal of publication, type of paper, number of articles and citations were recorded. Results: In cerebral neoplasms, our institution produced 291 articles (clinical versus experimental: 227 vs. 64). With a modest productivity before 2000, the production had increased 8-fold by 2019. The main topic is glioblastoma, also with the highest number of citations. Researchers prefer to conduct original investigations rather than to subject reviews. Most papers were published in Archivos de Neurociencias (institutional journal produced in Spanish), most papers published in English were in Journal of Neuro-Oncology. Discussion: Productivity had an encouraging growth in the last decade, but more emphasis should be given to target international journals, which offer a high number of readers and citations. Strategies to reach these goals have to be found and should be implemented.Conclusion: Research on brain tumors in Mexico has recently showed buoyancy and we should profit from this inertia to give a definitive boost to it, which might benefit authors and institutional prestige. But mainly, with a more robust research, we could find better solutions for our patients, applicable in the national and international context.

The dynamics of faculty hiring networks

Faculty hiring networks—who hires whose graduates as faculty—exhibit steep hierarchies, which can reinforce both social and epistemic inequalities in academia. Understanding the mechanisms driving these patterns would inform efforts to diversify the academy and shed new light on the role of hiring in shaping which scientific discoveries are made. Here, we investigate the degree to which structural mechanisms can explain hierarchy and other network characteristics observed in empirical faculty hiring networks. We study a family of adaptive rewiring network models, which reinforce institutional prestige within the hierarchy in five distinct ways. Each mechanism determines the probability that a new hire comes from a particular institution according to that institution’s prestige score, which is inferred from the hiring network’s existing structure. We find that structural inequalities and centrality patterns in real hiring networks are best reproduced by a mechanism of global placement power, in which a new hire is drawn from a particular institution in proportion to the number of previously drawn hires anywhere. On the other hand, network measures of biased visibility are better recapitulated by a mechanism of local placement power, in which a new hire is drawn from a particular institution in proportion to the number of its previous hires already present at the hiring institution. These contrasting results suggest that the underlying structural mechanism reinforcing hierarchies in faculty hiring networks is a mixture of global and local preference for institutional prestige. Under these dynamics, we show that each institution’s position in the hierarchy is remarkably stable, due to a dynamic competition that overwhelmingly favors more prestigious institutions. These results highlight the reinforcing effects of a prestige-based faculty hiring system, and the importance of understanding its ramifications on diversity and innovation in academia.

Elitism in Strategy Consulting: How Institutional Prestige Influences Recruitment

How and why do strategy consultancies prioritise graduates from elite universities, and is this practice doing them more harm than good? The association of top strategy firms with elite universities is well-known, but this study suggests that the practice is done more for signaling and ‘fit’ reasons than for recruiting outstanding talent. Using anonymous interviews with recruiters, partners, and consultants at strategy firms, and drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, this paper suggests that these practices may do more harm than good.

La rotación del personal en los Gobiernos Autónomos Descentralizados Municipales y su impacto en el clima organizacional/The rotation of personnel in the Municipal Decentralized Autonomous Governments and their impact on the organizational climate

Los cambios constantes en el nivel de las organizaciones públicas hacen que estas expandan su visión y la competitividad permanente lleva a los Gobiernos Autónomos Descentralizados (GAD) Municipales a desarrollar estrategias para alcanzar sus objetivos, es así como, la contratación y la continuidad de los despidos del personal representa un problema de gran magnitud para las instituciones, pues sin duda, limita el desarrollo eficiente que se desearía tener, ya que la productividad de la institución se ve significativamente afectada, evidenciándose un mal clima organizacional, restando la eficiencia eficacia y efectividad en los procesos, influyendo directamente en los resultados Esta investigación determina un análisis de las causas del clima organizacional en una institución pública. Debido a la alta tasa de rotación evidenciada dentro de los municipios según se constata en las encuestas realizadas, principalmente en el personal operativo, que son aquellos que trabajan directamente con los usuarios y pueden tener los efectos causados por el servicio ofrecido. En consecuencia, esta investigación conlleva aumentar el servicio al usuario proporcionado por los colaboradores públicos. Y una relación muy estrecha entre el clima organizacional medido y la rotación de personar también se define al analizar la premisa de que si el clima organizacional mejora la rotación de personal se reducirá el malestar entre compañeros de trabajo, ya que puede haber razones que no se conocen o están fuera del control y, por lo tanto, no se pueden mejorar el lineamiento de prestigio institucional. Constant changes at the level of public organizations mean that they expand their vision and permanent competitiveness leads the Municipal Autonomous Decentralized Governments (GAD) to develop strategies to achieve their objectives, such as hiring and continuity of layoffs The staff represents a problem of great magnitude for the institutions, because without a doubt, it limits the efficient development that one would like to have, since the productivity of the institution is significantly affected, evidencing a bad organizational climate, subtracting the efficiency effectiveness and effectiveness in the processes, directly influencing the results This research determines an analysis of the causes of the organizational climate in a public institution. Due to the high rate of turnover evidenced within the municipalities as found in the surveys carried out, mainly in the operating personnel, which are those that work directly with users and can have the effects caused by the service offered. Consequently, this research entails increasing the user service provided by public collaborators. And a very close relationship between the measured organizational climate and the turnover of people is also defined when analyzing the premise that if the organizational climate improves staff turnover, discomfort among coworkers will be reduced, since there may be reasons that are not they know or are out of control and, therefore, the institutional prestige guidelines can not be improved. Palabras Clave: desempeño, talento humano, rotación, clima laboral, decisiones. Keywords: performance, human talent, rotation, labor climate, decisions.

Perceived Challenges to Anglophone Publication at Three Universities in Chile

It is well documented that non-Anglophone scholars face enormous pressures to publish in peer-reviewed English-medium journals both for their own advancement and for institutional prestige. Yet many of them receive little support and face big challenges. Scholars’ perceptions of these challenges often differ from those of applied linguists. This study analyzes publication challenges at three universities in Chile. Research questions included the following: How much pressure to publish do Chilean scholars feel? What do they perceive as their biggest challenges? Do these differ from perceptions of applied linguists? Data come from surveys involving 191 respondents conducted shortly after the author was an English Language Specialist for the U.S. Department of State in 2015. Surveys were administered both as personal interviews and online through SurveyMonkey. Identified challenges include language issues, workload, feedback and networking, and rhetorical structure. Suggestions are given for mitigating these challenges and for further research on these issues.

An Examination of Differences between the Mean Indicator Ratings by Different Stakeholders in Distance Education Programme

The continued rapid growth of distance education programmes in higher education has brought concerns regarding how stakeholers perceive quality in distance education. The study examined the differences between the mean indicator ratings by different stakeholders in a distance learning programme. The study adopted a case study research design to collect data from 320 students, 56 facilitators and 24 administrative staff selected randomly from the Institute of Distance Learning, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana. The data collected through questionnaires were analysed using the statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) software, version 20. Mean indicator rating analysis revealed that students’ highest perception of quality was on support services and the lowest was academic integrity and institutional prestige. Whilst both facilitators and administrators rated support services as the highest, infrastructure scored the lowest. The results of the study therefore, revealed common benchmarks and quality indicator (support services) that all parties deem important in designing, implementing, and evaluating distance education programmes. Respondents noted the lack of appropriate tools and media; unavailability of reliable technology and technological plan; ineffective communication and co-ordination; and, time constraints as some of the quality challenges for distance education at the Institute. The study recommends monitoring and evaluation of service delivery for distance learning programmes to ensure fitness for purpose, value for money and customer satisfaction.

Education and employment in two Chilean undergraduate programs

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to determine which of the two variables would be a more reliable proxy for quality of university training: graduates’ satisfaction with their degree program, or institutional prestige. Design/methodology/approach Graduates of professional psychology and teaching programs from three Chilean universities responded to a questionnaire asking their perception of different aspects of their degree program and experiences in their first employment. The three universities differ significantly in the proportion of applicants admitted, and in their prestige. Findings Salary levels are highly related to profession, but unrelated to graduates’ ratings of quality of curriculum or teaching methods. Overall satisfaction with the university experience is not linked to job satisfaction. Job satisfaction, on the other hand, is highly influenced by salary and secondarily by instructional practices and perceived work relevance of the degree program. Research limitations/implications This study is based on data from 3 of Chile’s 60 universities, and graduates of two programs. Most employment in the two professions is regulated by labor agreements. Generalizability of results is limited. Graduates may not have been employed enough to demonstrate their capacities. Practical implications The findings offer more evidence that prestige ratings are an unreliable indicator of the quality of formation offered by universities. If the government seeks to reduce income inequality, public subsidies of higher education should be based on program quality rather than on institutional prestige. Originality/value The findings are directly relevant to the current debate in Chile about what might and what might not help to reduce severe economic inequality.