International Faculty in Asia: In Comparative Global Perspective (The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective, 21) 9813349794, 9789813349797

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The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective 21

Futao Huang Anthony R. Welch  Editors

International Faculty in Asia In Comparative Global Perspective

The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective Volume 21

Series Editors Timo Aarrevaara, University of Lapland, Helsinki, Finland Martin Finkelstein, Higher Education Department, Seton Hall University, Orange, NJ, USA Editorial Board Elisabeth Balbachevsky, Department of Political Science, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil Jung Cheol Shin, Department of Education, Seoul National University, Republic of South Korea Ulrich Teichler, International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER), University of Kassel, Germany William Cummings, Graduate School of Education and HD, George Washington University, USA Akira Arimoto, Kurashiki Sakuyo University, Okayama, Japan

The landscape of higher education has in recent years undergone significant change. This has been particular the case for research training, academic life, employment, working conditions and entrepreneurial activities of universities around the globe. The academy is expected to be more professional in teaching, more productive in research and more entrepreneurial in everything. Some of the changes involved have raised questions about the attractiveness of an academic career for today’s graduates. At the same time, knowledge has come to be identified as the most vital resource of contemporary societies. The Changing Academy series examines the nature and extent of the changes experienced by the academic profession. It aims to address these changes from an international comparative perspective, focusing at both the higher education system level as well as the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics in particular. It explores both the reasons for and the consequences of these changes. The series considers the implications of the changes for the attractiveness of the academic profession as a career and for the ability of the academic community to contribute to the further development of knowledge societies and the attainment of national goals. It provides analyses on these matters drawing initially on available data-sets and qualitative research studies with special emphasis on the international studies of the Changing Academic Profession and the national surveys in STEM fields. Among the themes featured will be: • Relevance of the Academy’s Work • Enrolment, graduation and the institutional setting of STEM • Research, development and technology policies with regards to STEM • Internationalization of the Academy Governance and Management • The new generation in the academic profession – the doctoral graduates Please contact Astrid Noordermeer at [email protected] if you wish to discuss a book proposal.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8668

Futao Huang • Anthony R. Welch Editors

International Faculty in Asia In Comparative Global Perspective

Editors Futao Huang Hiroshima University Hiroshima, Japan

Anthony R. Welch University of Sydney Sydney, Australia

ISSN 2214-5346 ISSN 2543-0378 (electronic) The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective ISBN 978-981-33-4979-7 ISBN 978-981-33-4980-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4980-3 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Preface

The purpose of this book is to explore key aspects of the personal, educational and professional characteristics of international faculty members, their work roles and challenges, in China, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Taiwan in Asia, compared to those from Africa, Australia, Portugal, the Netherlands, the UK in Europe and the United States. The book distils and analyzes the main characteristics of international faculty members, and their duties and responsibilities. Specific research questions are: 1. How do the personal, educational, and professional profiles of international faculty members differ from domestic faculty members? 2. What work roles do they play in their current universities? Do they form informal academic, social and cultural networks, including with academics back home, and/or with their own knowledge diaspora around the world? 3. What challenges and issues do international faculty members face in specific national contexts? 4. What similarities and differences can be identified between Asian countries, selected European countries and the United States, and other countries? 5. What are ideal strategies and best practice of attracting and hiring international faculty members with good quality to improve the quality of teaching and research, as well as international competitiveness of national higher education? The 14 chapters which make up the book are practically divided into four parts: in addition to Part I Introduction and Part IV Conclusion, Part II examines cases from East and South East Asian countries and systems, while Part III is devoted to cases from other regions and countries Hiroshima, Japan

Futao Huang

Sydney, Australia

Anthony R. Welch

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Contents

Part I 1

Introduction: The International Faculty: Changes and Realities . . . Futao Huang and Anthony R. Welch

Part II 2

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4

5

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Introduction 3

Asia

International Faculty at Chinese Universities Based on Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Xian Wu and Futao Huang

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Nonforeign Foreign Academics in Hong Kong: Realities and Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shuangye Chen

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International Faculty at Japanese Universities: Main Findings from National Survey in 2017 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Futao Huang

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International Faculty in a Research-Focused University in South Korea: Cultural and Environmental Barriers . . . . . . . . . . Jung Cheol Shin

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Retaining and Integrating International Faculty into Malaysian Universities: Issues and Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Muhammad Muftahu, Chang Da Wan, and Morshidi Sirat

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Recruitment of International Academics and Its Challenges in Taiwanese Higher Education Institutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dian-Fu Chang

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Contents

Part III

Other Regions and Countries

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International Academics in Australian Higher Education: People, Process, Paradox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Anthony R. Welch

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International Academics in African Universities: The Ethiopian Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Rose C. Amazan

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Institutional Policies to Attract International Academics in Portugal in an Adverse Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Teresa Carvalho, Sónia Cardoso, Sara Diogo, Cristina Sin, and Pedro Videira

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International Academics at Dutch Universities: Policies and Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Jos de Jonge

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The Rapid Increase in Faculty from the European Union in UK Higher Education Institutions and the Possible Impact of Brexit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 William Locke and Giulio Marini

13

Understanding International Faculty in the United States: Who Hires Them and Why? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 Dongbin Kim and Xiushan Jiang

Part IV 14

Conclusion

International Faculty in Higher Education – Here to Stay? . . . . . . . 225 Anthony R. Welch and Futao Huang

About the Editors

Futao Huang is Professor at the Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima University, Japan. Before he came to Japan in 1999, he taught and conducted research in several Chinese universities. His research interests include internationalization of higher education, the academic profession, and higher education in East Asia. He has published widely in Chinese, English and Japanese languages. Anthony R. Welch is Professor of Education, University of Sydney. His numerous publications address education reforms, principally within Australia, and the AsiaPacific, and mainly on Higher Education. An advisor to state, national and international agencies, governments, institutions and foundations in Australia, Europe, East, Central, and Southeast Asia and the USA., his project experience is largely in international higher education. His work appears in numerous languages, both European and Asian, and he has been Visiting Professor in the USA, UK, Germany, France, Japan, Malaysia, Turkey and Hong Kong.

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Contributors

Rose C. Amazan University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia Sónia Cardoso Agência de Avaliação e Acreditação do Ensino Superior – A3ES and CIPES, Lisboa, Portugal Teresa Carvalho University of Aveiro and CIPES, Aveiro, Portugal Dian-Fu Chang Tamkang University, New Taipei City, Taiwan Chang Da Wan Universiti Sains Malaysia, George Town, Malaysia Jos de Jonge Rathenau Instituut, The Hague, The Netherlands Sara Diogo University of Aveiro and CIPES, Aveiro, Portugal Futao Huang Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan Xiushan Jiang College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA Dongbin Kim Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA William Locke University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia Giulio Marini UCL Institute of Education, University College London, London, UK Muhammad Muftahu Universiti Sains Malaysia, George Town, Malaysia Jung Cheol Shin Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea Shuangye Chen East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

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Cristina Sin Agência de Avaliação e Acreditação do Ensino Superior – A3ES and CIPES, Lisboa, Portugal Morshidi Sirat Universiti Sains Malaysia, George Town, Malaysia Pedro Videira CIPES, Matosinhos, Portugal Anthony R. Welch University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia Xiang Wu Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

Part I

Introduction

Chapter 1

Introduction: The International Faculty: Changes and Realities Futao Huang and Anthony R. Welch

Abstract The purpose of this chapter is to provide a short introduction to main changes occurred in the international faculty and general trends of international mobility of academics. Also, the chapter illustrates the objective and organization of this book. Further, it simply summarizes major points of each chapter in the book. Keywords International faculty · Comparative and global perspective · Case studies · Internationalization of higher education

1.1

Changes in International Faculty

Historically, although the origins and early history of university are disputed, the mobility of faculty or masters, including students and other wondering scholars, across borders had a direct and profound impact on the emergence of the European medieval universities. For example, the universities of Paris and Bologna attracted a large number of students and academics from different parts of Europe and Britain in the early modern age. It is no exaggeration to say that the European university system could not have come into existence without these mobile faculty at a European or regional level. As argued by some historians, from a worldwide standpoint, the most important feature of the early modern period was its globalizing character (de Vries, 2010), the relatively peaceful European context, generally shared religion, and the commonly used language at the time all made it possible for faculty to move from one place to another. The competition by universities to secure the best and most popular faculty and scholars, leading to the marketization of F. Huang (*) Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan e-mail: [email protected] A. R. Welch University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 F. Huang, A. R. Welch (eds.), International Faculty in Asia, The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective 21, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4980-3_1

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teaching, further accelerated this cross-border movement (James, 1984). Although faculty were strongly motivated by their pursuit of, and dissemination of, Christian culture and values, their mobility was also affected by other factors. For example, the University of Paris, in which almost all educational programs were delivered, was something of an exception. Since few other European medieval universities could transmit all forms of higher learning, faculty and scholars also moved from one university to another to make available the seven liberal arts (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, mathematics, geometry, astronomy, and music), and professional or vocational programs such as law, medicine, and theology (De Ridder-Symoens, 1992a). In the strict sense, due to the fact that no nation states were established in the early medieval era, international faculty can be practically understood to be wandering academics who were involved in teaching activities across borders within the European region. Doubtlessly, these wandering faculty and scholars brought various knowledge from their places of origin to different parts of Europe and greatly facilitated the dissemination of higher-learning knowledge within Europe. Moreover, their movement also diffused ideas and practices of the University of Paris and other older universities to other parts of Europe, resulting in an increase in growth of universities and colleges around Europe in the fourteenth century (De RidderSymoens, 1996). It seems that the creation of nation states in Europe did not stop the movement of faculty from one country to another. Rather, strengthening national power and acquiring new and advanced knowledge actually facilitated the international mobility of faculty at a European dimension (De Ridder-Symoens, 1992b). We can truly say that the first decades of the sixteenth century were the golden age of wandering scholars. Intellectuals and humanists traveled all over Europe from east to west and north to south from one center of learning to another, attracted by famous professors or other men of renown.

From the fifteenth century, when some European states began to establish their colonies outside Europe, international academic mobility became more relevant and highly differentiated. Compared to the early medieval era, one of the biggest changes was that university faculty from European states also began to move to areas outside Europe, notably Asia and the Pacific, Africa, and North America and Latin America. Especially in the process of colonization, while colonizers from European countries and Britain imposed and exported their educational ideas and practices to colonies, university faculty and researchers traveled to these colonies, too. As Hastings claimed (1895), from the early modern period onward, this Western-style organizational form gradually spread from the medieval Latin west across the globe, eventually replacing all other higher-learning institutions and becoming the preeminent model for higher education everywhere. Another obvious change is that, although the academic world was sparsely populated by transient faculty, masters, or scholars in the early Medieval time, almost all of whom were clergymen, lawyers, or medical doctors, it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century when the German research universities were founded, did the academic profession was formed in the modern sense and a real international mobility occur worldwide cross all continents.

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The importance of the Western international faculty’s role in helping colonies and countries in other continents establish their modern universities cannot be overestimated, for the emergence of the earliest universities in North and South America, most countries in Asia, and almost all countries in Africa, let alone Canada and Australia, seem to be all significantly impacted by the educational ideas, conventions, and norms from the prevailing Western countries like France, Britain, Spain, and the United States (Altbach & Selvaratnam, 1989). For example, in 1876 alone, there were 78 foreign faculty members who worked in Japan and were involved in professional and language teaching activities, in most cases using foreign languages (MOE, 1992). Interestingly, since the 1920s, Japan started to export its academic values and standards, and university faculty, to Asian countries and areas, while objecting to undertake international exchange activities with Western countries, especially with the United States and the United Kingdom. For example, after Japan colonized Korea in 1910, the Japanese colonial administration laid a basis for the establishment of the first national university in Korea, Keijō Teikoku Daigaku (京城帝国大学) later Gyeongseong Daehak (경성대학, 京城大 学, Gyeongseong University), subsequently reformed and changed to Seoul National University. The other example is Taihoku Imperial University (臺北帝國 大學) – the predecessor of National Taiwan University – which was founded by the Japanese colonial administration in 1928. After the World War Two, two broad worlds were formed. Basically speaking, university faculty only moved from one country to another within two different worlds, respectively: one world was led by the United States and the other was dominated by the USSR. Typical examples show that soon after the World War Two, with an introduction of the US general education ideas to Japanese universities, many language teachers from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany come to Japan and were engaged in providing foreign language courses for Japanese students (MOE, 1980). In contrast, many experts and scholars from the USSR were invited to come to China to help China to establish its modern higher education system and train scientists and university faculty in the early 1950s (Hayhoe, 1996; Huang, 2003). Since the 1990s, diverse factors, including the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, economic globalization and the “knowledge economy,” growing academic competition worldwide, and rising demand for greater internationalization of national higher education systems, have greatly facilitated the expansion of international mobility of university faculty and researchers and diversified its forms and dimensions, as well as its characteristics (OECD, 2002, 2008). It has occurred not only in most OECD countries but also in Latin America, parts of Africa, and selected Asian systems like Malaysia, India, and China. The latter two are also now significant sources of academic talent for a number of systems worldwide. Hence, international faculty are an increasingly important part of the global academic environment of the twenty-first century. Hiring international faculty, researchers, and talents has become an important strategy for maintaining and improving university competitiveness, especially Western faculty members with advanced research capabilities, who can improve institutional quality and boost publications

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output in international journals. Indeed, the latter is often regarded as the primary measure of their value. Compared to the era before the 1980s, not only have the numbers of international faculty members increased significantly but also their demographic profiles and work roles have become more diversified, in most countries and societies. It appears that the growing numbers of these “new players” have gradually changed the portrait of international faculty members in individual countries and higher education systems (Altbach & Yudkevich, 2017).

1.2

The Purpose of This Book

Except for some earlier research into international faculty (Welch 1999; Huang, Finkelstein, & Rostan, 2014), too little is still known of their work roles in specific countries and higher education systems, as well as what challenges and issues they face, particularly from international and comparative perspectives. The purpose of this book is to explore key aspects of the personal, educational, and professional characteristics of international faculty members, their work roles and challenges, in China, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Taiwan in Asia, compared to those from Australia, Africa, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom in Europe and the United States. Important reasons why both Portugal and the Netherlands are selected as two European cases include: firstly, relatively more research has been undertaken into France and Germany while little is known of the two case studies; secondly, both Portugal and the Netherlands are non–Englishspeaking countries in Europe (although the latter offers more English language programs than any other European systems), so findings based on the two cases may provide more direct and practical implications for non-English-speaking countries and societies in Asia such as China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Further, while Portugal confronts similar issues of brain drain and loss of high-level academics to some Asian systems, it has also sought top academics from other countries. Moreover, it has gone through a generational transformation from a more Francophoneoriented second language environment, including connections to the French research system, to a greater emphasis on English as the major second language system. As one of the most internationalized systems in continental Europe, the Netherlands has used both national and institutional strategies to attract more international academics and researchers through both national and institutional strategies. These qualities may offer implications for several Asian case countries in which almost similar problems exist and related strategies implemented. As for the cases of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia, the countries have drawn a large number of international academics from different parts in the world. The United Kingdom may be viewed a good example of how an English-speaking country from Europe has hired a large number of international faculty from its former colonies, European continental countries, and other parts of the world and what types of international faculty were hired at the UK universities, and what new

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challenge such as “Brexit” has made negative impacts on its hiring international faculty especially from the EU countries. The United States can provide a typical example of studying how international faculty is defined in the most popular destination of employment for international faculty, changes occurred in the hiring pattern of international faculty over time, and drivers for the US universities and colleges to expand the recruitment of international faculty. Largely different from either the United Kingdom or the United States, Australia represents a unique and interesting case of change: from a country where the faculty from the United Kingdom dominated its universities before WWII to a country where more and more international faculty from Asian countries have been hired especially since the late 1990s. Consequently, despite few of these English-speaking country cases, the strategies and practices of these different countries may largely relate to Asian systems in terms of attracting and hiring international faculty from other regions and countries. This is especially true in the cases of China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. As suggested in the case studies of these countries and societies in the following individual chapters, all these countries and societies have made huge efforts to boost the level of internationalization of higher education, enhance academic excellence, and improve the international competitiveness of higher education and research by expanding the size of international faculty and attracting global talents to work in their universities and colleges, especially since the twenty-first century. The book focuses on distilling and analyzing main identities of different types of international faculty members, and their duties and responsibilities. Specific research questions are as follows: 1. How do the personal, educational, and professional profiles of international faculty members differ from domestic faculty members? 2. What work roles do they play in their current universities? Do they form informal academic, social, and cultural networks, including with academics back home, and/or with their own knowledge diaspora around the world? 3. What challenges and issues do international faculty members face in individual national contexts? 4. What similarities and differences can be identified between Asian countries, selected European countries, and the United States, and other countries? 5. What are ideal strategies and best practice of attracting and hiring international faculty with good quality to improve the quality of teaching and research, as well as international competitiveness of national higher education?

1.3

Terminologies

It is true that several definitions can be attributed to the phrase international faculty, and it appears that there is no generally acknowledged definition of international faculty in higher education. As reviewed earlier, from an historical perspective, there

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was not a real international mobility of university faculty in the current sense, neither did the phrase “international faculty” exist in the sense we use it today. Certainly, there were wandering scholars and faculty moving from one university to another or from one place to another place within Europe, and mobility associated with major centers of higher learning in Asia, but in a strict sense, it is extremely difficult to call such mobile masters, scholars, or even university faculty. A clear country of origin for international faculty only came to be used widely after modern nation states were established, and the academic profession was formed in the early nineteenth century. It is probably more appropriate to consider these wandering masters to be mobile scholars or faculty across borders. In the strict sense, inbound international or foreign faculty who came from their original countries to host countries did not exist in the early medieval ages. The constant shift from one center of higher learning to another in the late medieval era, the subsequent rapid process of colonization, and modernizing higher education systems pushed the movement of faculty from one country to another and from one continent to another on a larger scale and in a more complex form. In war time, and even during the cold-war period, despite many restrictions on the international mobility of faculty, there was a quick growth in international faculty in some countries and areas. On one hand, the expansion of immigrants and international students from Korea, Japan, India, Taiwan, and even European countries such as Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany to the United States and the United Kingdom resulted in a massive number of inbound international faculty from these areas and countries in the 1960s in the host countries. On the other hand, with the introduction of the educational patterns from the United States and the United Kingdom in particular, there was also a swift rise in the numbers of inbound international faculty, often as language teachers or faculty in professional studies, from these countries to Asian countries, especially in East and South East Asia. It goes without saying that the progress of economic globalization and the competition for talents by both advanced countries and emerging countries since the 1990s have greatly facilitated the global movement of faculty and led to the unprecedented growth in the number of inbound international faculty in many countries (Wildavsky, 2010). All these social changes have made it incredibly difficult to give a precise definition of international faculty. To illustrate, some research defines international faculty by place of birth (foreign-born) or by citizenship (nonlocal citizens). Among a range of existing research, Kim’s team also reviewed relevant literature and stated that much prior research uses foreign-born status as an indicator of international faculty – the broad definition of this approach yields the largest pool of international faculty, particularly given the large number of immigrants who cross national borders after they were born (Kim et al. 2011). By using this definition, Kim et al. (2011) indeed found that the location of undergraduate education matters in faculty’s subsequent research productivity and satisfaction with professional life. Further, some of the latest research defines international faculty broadly, as academics who hold appointments in countries where they were not born and/or where they did not receive their first postsecondary degree. In most cases, they are not citizens of the country in which they hold their academic

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appointment (Yudkevich, Altbach, & Rumbley, 2017). Obviously, these cases are especially true in Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. By contrast, other systems prefer to describe them as nonnational citizens or foreign passport holders such as in China, Japan, and the Netherlands. A more complicated case is the term used in Hong Kong, in which both foreign and international faculty without Chinese nationality or citizenship of Hong Kong, and those only holding the passports of mainland China are hired at local universities. In most cases, these faculty are defined as nonlocal faculty or academics. Based on the historical analysis and a brief review of prior literature above, the phrase international faculty in this book is used in both the broad and narrow sense. In some cases such as Japan, this not only excludes numbers of part-time international faculty but also those international faculty who earned their bachelor degrees from Japanese universities and colleges (Huang, 2018). In other case countries like Australia and the Netherlands, the phrase international faculty is deployed in a broader sense: those born outside Australia, and even some doctoral students from outside the Netherlands, may be termed international faculty.

1.4

Organization of This Book

The book consists of 14 chapters which are practically divided into four parts: in addition to Part I and also Chap. 1 Introduction and Part IV and also Chap. 14 Conclusion, cases from East and South East Asian countries and systems as Part II, and cases from other regions and countries as Part III. The main points of all chapters are as follows: Chapter 1 presents an outline of historical changes in international mobility of faculty, discusses the definition of international faculty, and makes a brief introduction to the organization of the book. Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 address the main characteristics of international faculty and issues they face in six East and South East Asian countries and societies. Of Part II, Chap. 2 explores the main characteristics and motivations of international faculty in China based on some national data of inbound international faculty, and case studies of four leading universities in Shanghai. Chapter 3 concentrates on the analysis of foreign academics in Hong Kong. It analyzes strategies and realities whereby foreign academics are hired and integrated in one case university in Hong Kong, based on in-depth interview data from several key personnel. Chapter 4 examines full-time international faculty at Japanese universities based on main findings from national survey of these faculty in 2017. It depicts recent changes in the numbers of full-time faculty in Japanese universities, their demographic profiles, and professional roles, and it identifies main categories of these international faculty at Japanese universities. Chapter 5 is mainly concerned with the analysis of international faculty in a research-focused university in South Korea. More specifically, this chapter discusses how international academics bring changes that attract international students, as well as the research productivity of

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international faculty, their influences on the changes in academic culture, and major barriers that international scholars confront in the selected university. Chapter 6 examines the issues and challenges of retaining and integrating foreign talents in the Malaysian context. It argues that three potential strategies can be considered to retain and integrate foreign talents into the Malaysian higher education ecosystem in striving to fulfil the aspiration of becoming an international education hub. Chapter 7 provides an overview of international faculty in Taiwan’s higher education institutions. Current recruitment patterns of 20 selected universities were reviewed. Based on the analysis of both national and institutional policies and strategies of attracting international faculty to Taiwan, the chapter summarizes the main findings and offers implications for research, policy, and practice in higher education settings. Among the Part III, Chap. 8, on international academics in Australian Higher Education, focused on people, process, and paradox. It reviews the contribution of international academics to the development of the Australian higher education system, including how this has evolved substantially since the inception of formal institutions of higher education in the mid nineteenth century. Particular emphasis is given to the change in the post-WWII era, from a dependence on the British (Oxbridge) model. It describes today’s much more heterogeneous staffing mix, with academics from around the world peopling Australian universities. The chapter argues that, although there is increasing national recognition that Australia and its future lie with Asia, a focus on Asian academics within the higher education system reveals that there are still signs of lag in fully acknowledging the varied and valuable contributions of the growing number of academics drawn from Asia, within Australian universities. Chapter 9 focuses on the unique nature and trends of foreign academics in African universities. In addition to the depiction of general trends, it presents a detailed case study of Ethiopia that reveals how one of the Africa’s more significant higher education systems deals with the issue and clearly illustrates the challenges and dynamics in the relationships between foreign, returnees, and national academics in African universities. Both Chaps. 10 and 11 deal with international faculty in two European countries. Chapter 10 examines the institutional policies used to attract international academics in Portugal in an adverse context. It introduces an overview of the situation of international academics in Portugal and analyzes, based on a case study of two universities, the institutional policies that have been defined to recruit these academics. It reveals how institutions experience difficulties in defining clear policies in this matter, although differences can be found between institutions. Chapter 11 investigates international academics at Dutch universities focused on their policies and statistics. Based on the available evidence, the chapter suggests that the Dutch academic environment is very dynamic. It concludes that it is not a country with a significant brain gain, but neither is it experiencing much brain drain. Chapter 12 focuses on the profile of foreign faculty in the United Kingdom, their characteristics and current situation, their influence on their institutions and higher education as a whole and the issues facing them. “Brexit” is considered as a possible disruption to the internationalization of UK academia. Chapter 13 investigates international faculty in the United States: who

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hires them and why. Based on a review of prior research, it further identifies gradual changes in major employers of international faculty, a shift from research-extensive universities to less research-oriented, master’s comprehensive universities. Chapter 14 summarizes main findings from all the cases and draws implications for research, policy, and practice. It reviews something of the evolution of international scholarly mobility, reminds us that it was by no means restricted to the West, and illustrates that mobility is by no means always voluntary. Highlighting key themes from this volume, and from related research, it also points to the limits of mobility, including the contemporary rise of nationalist sentiments, China–US rivalries, and impact of the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020.

References Altbach, P. G., & Selvaratnam, V. (Eds.). (1989). From dependence to autonomy: The development of Asian universities (p. xii). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Altbach, P. G., & Yudkevich, M. (2017). Twenty-first century mobility: The role of international faculty. International Higher Education, 90, 8–10. De Ridder-Symoens, H. (Ed.). (1992a). A history of the university in Europe. Volume 1 – universities in the middle ages. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. De Ridder-Symoens, H. (Ed.). (1992b). A history of the university in Europe, Vol. II. Universities in early modern Europe (1500–1800) (pp. 417–418). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. De Ridder-Symoens, H. (Ed.). (1996). A history of the university in Europe. Volume 2 – universities in the early modern Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. De Vries, J. (2010). The limits of globalization in the early modern world. Economic History Review, 63(3), 710–733. Hastings, R. (1895). The universities of Europe in the middle ages 1. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Hayhoe, R. (1996). China’s universities, 1895–1995: A century of cultural conflict. New York: Routledge. Huang, F. (2003). Policy and practice of internationalization of higher education in China. Journal of Studies in International Education, 7(3), 225–240. Huang, F., Finkelstein, M. J., & Rostan, M. (Eds.). (2014). The internationalisation of the academy: Changes, realities and prospects (The changing academy – The changing academic profession in international comparative perspective) (Vol. 10). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Huang, F. (2018). International faculty at Japanese universities: their demographic characteristics and work roles. Asia Pacific Education Review, 19(2), 263–272. James, M. K. (1984). Rebirth, reform and resilience: Universities in transition 1300–1700 (p. 164). Columbus, OH: Ohio State University. Kim, D., Wolf-Wendel, L., & Twombly, S. (2011). International faculty: Experiences of academic life, productivity in U.S. universities. Journal of Higher Education, 82(6), 720–747. MOE. (1980). Japan’s modern education system. Retrieved from https://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/ hakusho/html/others/detail/1317276.htm MOE (Ministry of Education). (1992). Gakusei hyakunijyuunenshi [History of 120-Year School System], Kabushiki kaisya gyousei. Tokyo. pp.39-40 (in Japanese). OECD. (2002). International mobility of the highly skilled. Paris: OECD. OECD. (2008). The global competition for talent: Mobility of the highly skilled. Paris: OECD. Welch, A. (1999) ‘The peripatetic professor: the internationalisation of the academic profession’ Higher Education, 34, 3: 323–345

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Wildavsky, B. (2010). The great brain race. How global universities are reshaping the world. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Yudkevich, M., Altbach, P. J., & Rumbley, L. (2017). International faculty in higher education: Comparative perspectives on recruitment, integration, and impact. New York: Routledge.

Part II

Asia

Chapter 2

International Faculty at Chinese Universities Based on Case Studies Xian Wu and Futao Huang

Abstract To attract and hire high-level international faculty to leading universities is an important task in building world-class universities in China. However, there is much left to explore and to understand about international faculty in China. Based on a brief review of China’s higher education system and international faculty, findings from case studies of four leading universities in Shanghai, this chapter explores the main characteristics and motivations of international faculty in China by discipline, age, gender, and so forth. More specially, it explores the individual, educational, and professional characteristics of international faculty at Chinese colleges and universities, how these characteristics vary among different groups of international faculty, and why they came to Chinese leading universities? Keywords International faculty · Shanghai · China · Survey · interview

2.1

Introduction

International faculty members are an increasingly important part of the global academic environment of the twenty-first century. Hiring high-level international faculty members is an important task in building world-class universities in China. In September 2017, China officially launched its Double World-Class project, which replaced two previous initiatives – the 211 Project (introduced in 1995) and This chapter is the revised version of the previously published article (Xian Wu & Futao Huang (2018). International faculty in China: case studies of four leading universities in Shanghai. Asia Pacific Education Review. (2018) 19:253–262). X. Wu (*) Graduate School of Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China e-mail: [email protected] F. Huang Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 F. Huang, A. R. Welch (eds.), International Faculty in Asia, The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective 21, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4980-3_2

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1999’s 985 Project. The Double World-Class project includes building world-class universities with Chinese characteristics and Chinese academic disciplines with a first-class reputation at the global level. It aims for China to have 42 world-class universities and approximately 456 world-class disciplines in 95 universities by mid-century (Huang, 2017a). The first specific task of the project was to attract outstanding global academic talents, to build a first-class academic faculty. International faculty members have played a key bridging role in linking Chinese universities to the international scholarly community and have been a substantial resource in the development of Chinese universities. As such, they are important tools for China’s human resources development, enabling the country to improve its domestic productivity and international competitiveness through both the direct transfer of knowledge and the indirect benefits brought by overseas professional and trade networks (Cai, 2012; Welch & Cai, 2010; Welch & Hao, 2013; Welch & Zhang, 2008). Therefore, attracting high-level international faculty members to Chinese universities is an important task in building world-class universities in China. However, very limited research has been conducted on international faculty members in China, largely because there are little data available and the number of international faculty members at Chinese colleges and universities is relatively small. Thus, the main purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of current international faculty members at four-year Chinese colleges and universities, by developing a profile of their individual, educational, and professional experiences, with emphasis on alternative definitions of international faculty members. We focus on international faculty members of foreign nationality, divided into “Overseas Chinese faculty members” (ethnic Chinese scholars of foreign nationality) and “Foreigner faculty members.” This study aims to identify the major characteristics and motivations of international faculty members at Chinese universities. After a brief review of the relevant literature on China’s higher education system and international faculty members, the study examines the policies on and changes in international faculty members at Chinese universities and colleges since 1980. Then, this study expands upon the major characteristics of international faculty members at Shanghai’s four leading universities (Shanghai Jiaotong University, Fudan University, Tongji University, and East China Normal University). These universities were chosen for three main reasons. First, Shanghai is an international metropolis, and both its economic status and the internationalization level of its higher education are among the highest in China. It is also one of the preferred working places for international faculty members in China. Second, the four leading universities, despite having different characteristics, all well-established, and have highly qualified faculty with a reputation for scientific achievement. Finally, these four leading universities have hired much more international faculty members than any other universities in Shanghai in recent years. Therefore, they can represent, to some extent, the main characteristics of international faculty members at Chinese leading universities.

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Moreover, this study will explore various factors – for example, academic rank, age, discipline, and gender – that may influence international faculty members, and then analyze their motivations for working in the four leading universities by means of face-to-face interviews. The study concludes by summarizing its major findings and offering implications and suggestions for policy and practice. Therefore, this study may not only provide feedback on the policy of introducing international faculty members but also shed light on what can be done better in the future recruitment, training, and development of international faculty members.

2.2

Review of Literature and Research Method

The study of international faculty members comprises two broad research areas – the internationalization of higher education, and university faculty or the academic profession. Studies on the academic profession have gained importance since 1992, when the first international survey of academic professions was carried out. Since then, numerous studies have focused on academics, especially the 2007 follow-up survey, Changing Academic Profession (CAP), which featured a similar questionnaire and was launched in 18 countries, including Hong Kong (Huang, 2017b). Academic research on the internationalization of academic profession in Western countries has mainly focused on the areas of international academic mobility (Hoffman, 2009; Kim & Locke, 2010; Rostan & Hohle, 2014) and international activities of academic profession (El-Khawas, 2002; Welch, 1997). However, very few researchers have focused on international faculty members. Huang, Finkelstein, and Rostan (2014) analyzed the interrelationships among some 20 different factors and identified seven dimensions of the academic profession’s internationalization: (1) research collaboration with foreign colleagues; (2) physical mobility for study; (3) publication and dissemination outside one’s native country of origin or in another language; (4) openness to job mobility outside national borders; (5) a general orientation toward internationalizing both teaching and research; (6) teaching abroad and/or in another language; and (7) exposure to international student mobility. Cheng, Zhang, and Zu (2014), using data collected from 71 Chinese higher education institutions (HEIs) in 2013, found that their degree of internationalization was still low. Compared with other developed countries whose native language is not English, the number of full-time international faculty members in China’s key universities is still small, with an average of fewer than 40 teachers per school, accounting for only 2.3% of all full-time faculty members. By comparison, in 2008, full- and part-time international faculty members accounted for 3.4% and 6.6%, respectively, of all HEI faculty members in Japan and for 9.5% of those in Germany in 2009.

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In recent years, Chinese researchers mainly focused on how to manage international faculty members in the face of government policies and the internationalization of China’s higher education. For example, Wang (2015) focused on the problem of intercultural teaching by international faculty members in higher education and proposed some creative means of refreshing pathways for intercultural teaching management at Chinese colleges and universities. Yang (2015) aimed at not only the theoretical application of management elements from system management theory to international faculty members’ management, but also the further study and analysis of the elements of faculty management. Li, Yu, and Shi (2015) interviewed 82 international faculty members over a six-month period and found work pressures negatively influenced their physiology, psychology, and behavior; they argued it was necessary to change aspects of Chinese HEIs’ hiring, teaching, scientific research, personnel, and logistics management to improve foreign teachers’ work performance. Shi and Li (2015) systematically investigated foreign teacher assessment systems in 20 universities and found such problems as insufficient attention to the job, unsystematic or unreasonable assessments, disorganized assessment indices, and unapplied assessment rules. Previous studies on international faculty members have not extensively examined the main characteristics and motivation of international faculty members at Chinese colleges and universities. By utilizing part of the main findings from case studies of four leading universities in Shanghai, this study will expand our current understanding of the main characteristics (discipline, age, gender, etc.) of international faculty members in China, and how these characteristics vary among different groups of international faculty members. Specifically, it addresses the following research questions: 1. What are the individual, educational, and professional characteristics of international faculty members at Chinese universities? 2. How do these characteristics vary among different international faculty members groups? 3. Why did these international faculty members come to Chinese universities? We employed two main research methods in this study. The first was a quantitative analysis of the personal educational and professional characteristics of 236 international faculty members at Shanghai’s four leading universities, based on data collected from their university homepage profiles and other publicly available sources from June to August 2017. The second approach involved semistructured, face-to-face interviews with five international faculty members from the four leading universities, carried out from October to November 2017.

2.3

Polices Attracting International Faculty Members

Since the 1978 implementation of its wide-ranging reform and opening-up policies, China has seen overseas talent recruitment as key for strengthening its national competitiveness and has promoted polices to attract overseas talents to study abroad.

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Various strategies, projects, and funding initiatives have led to a quick rise in the number of international faculty members at Chinese colleges and universities (Kim, 2017). Since 1980, international faculty members at Chinese universities and colleges have been gradually expanding. In the 1980s, to realize the so-called four modernizations, the number of international faculty members increased, and their specialized fields changed from language centered to the natural sciences (science, engineering, agriculture, and medicine). Chinese colleges and universities accepted faculty from more than 50 countries, mainly developed countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the former Soviet Union, Japan, and Australia. Since the 1990s, to introduce high-level overseas talents, the Chinese government has announced a series of oversea recruitment policies and launched various returnto-home projects. In 1990, to support the teaching and scientific research work of returned overseas Chinese scholars, the Ministry of Education (MOE) set up a special research fund (the Scientific Research Support Foundation for Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars). In 1994, China expanded its research funding to support scholars selected through the “Hundred People Plan,” a high-goal, highstandards, high-strength talent recruitment and training program launched by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In the same year, the National Natural Science Foundation (NNSF) established the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, an overseas-talent attraction policy targeting young international Chinese students who had not decided whether to remain abroad after acquiring a degree or return to China. The NNSF encouraged young Chinese scholars studying overseas to return to China to work, to accelerate the cultivation of outstanding young academic leaders in advanced science and technology (Kim, 2017). In 1998, the MOE’s Education Promotion Action Plan for the twenty-first century directed prestigious universities and departments to work at an advanced level and build world-class universities by drawing world-class talents into the country. The plan called for inviting prominent overseas scholars, especially professors from the world’s top universities, to be visiting professors who would offer short lecturers and do high-level research in China. On one hand, the Chinese government’s policy was to encourage Chinese students employed overseas to return to China, and students still at school to study overseas and then return. The Chunhui Program (chunhuijihua), launched by the MOE in 1996, has supported more than 10,000 outstanding overseas students to work short-term, attend conferences, or conduct site visits in China (Cao, 2008). In August 1998, the MOE and Hong Kong businessman Rijyacheong together established the Cheung Kong Scholars program, to attract and cultivate outstanding talents who could improve the academic status of China’s HEIs and revitalize Chinese higher education. Up to 2014, 1546 distinguished professors and 705 professors received Cheung Kong Scholars achievement awards. Over 90% of Cheung Kong Scholars have overseas study or work experience (People’s Daily Online 2014).

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Attracting talented people has become the most important element of China’s twenty-first century science and technology policy. In 2006, the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs of the People’s Republic of China (SAFEA) and the MOE jointly launched the Program of Introducing Discipline-based Talent to Universities (also called the 111 Project). The 111 Project is designed to establish 100 innovation bases at Chinese universities by gathering 1000 overseas scholars from the world’s top 100 universities and research institutions. Its goal is to enhance China’s innovation capacity and cultivate talent by inviting high-caliber foreign scholars, particularly diasporic academics, to collaborate with domestic scholars for 1- to 3-month periods (Cai, 2012). The Recruitment Program for Global Experts (also known as the Thousand Talents Plan), established in 2008, is a national-level strategic talent-attraction plan controlled directly by the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, through its purpose-created Talents Training Cooperative Office. To attract outstanding foreign scientists to perform short-term cooperative research, the Chinese Academy of Sciences established a visiting professorship for senior international scientists and a fellowship for young international scientists in 2009. In the same year, in addition to short-time support programs, the NNSF established the National Science Fund for Foreign Young Scholars, to promote long-term, stable academic cooperation and exchanges between foreign young scholars and Chinese scholars. In 2010, the Chinese National Medium- and Long-term Planning Framework for Education Reform and Development (2010–2020) clearly put forward the strategy of “strengthening the country by introducing international experts and increasing the proportion of international faculty members in universities.” The following year, China started the Recruitment Program for Foreign Experts and the Recruitment Program for Young Professionals, which introduced more than 4180 overseas highlevel talents by the end of May 2014. When the recruits return to China, they play a positive role in scientific innovation, technological breakthroughs, discipline construction, talent training, and hi-tech industry development, and are an important force in constructing an innovative country (http://1000plan.org/en/history.html). As the Chinese government executed its internationalized education strategy, colleges and universities laid more emphasis on employing well-known overseas academics, and the number of international faculty at Chinese colleges and universities has continued to increase rapidly in the past 10 years. Information on international faculty was first recorded in the 2005 Education Statistical Yearbook in China. As shown in Fig. 2.1 and Table 2.1, the number of full-time international faculty has increased from 6228 in 2005 to 11,567 in 2010 and to 16,958 in 2016—a nearly three-fold growth in the last decade. Over the same period, the percentage of international faculty with doctoral degrees also increased at roughly the same pace, growing from 16.7% in 2005 to 47.6% in 2016. At the institutional level, as leading Chinese universities, these four universities have made significant efforts to implement the strategies, projects, and funding plans

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20000 15000 10000 5000 0 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 Total

Doctor

Master

Bachelor

Fig. 2.1 Number of academic qualifications of international faculty members in HEIs Source: Educational Statistics Yearbook of China Note: Data of nongovernment HEIs are not included

Table 2.1 Number of academic qualifications of international faculty members in HEIs (unit: person)

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Total 6228 9464 10,114 11,056 11,131 11,567 13,191 13,801 14,945 15,521 15,767 16,958

Doctor’s degrees Number Percent (%) 1037 16.7% 1674 18.0% 1670 16.5% 2533 22.9% 2547 22.9% 2885 24.9% 4442 33.7% 4765 34.5% 5812 38.9% 6269 40.4% 7040 44.7% 8071 47.6%

Master’s degrees Number Percent (%) 1770 28.4% 2768 29.3% 3100 30.7% 3028 27.4% 3143 28.2% 3353 29.0% 3701 28.1% 4034 29.2% 4296 28.8% 4532 29.2% 4233 26.9% 4356 25.7%

Bachelor’s degrees and under Number Percent (%) 3421 54.9% 5022 53.1% 5344 52.8% 5495 49.7% 5441 48.9% 5329 46.1% 5048 38.3% 5002 36.2% 4837 32.4% 4720 30.4% 4494 28.5% 4531 26.7%

Source: Education Statistical Yearbook in China (2005–2016)

mentioned above and have recruited numerous first-class international faculty members to meet the country’s major strategic needs. Table 2.2 shows the data for top-talent international faculty members attracted by these four universities by 2016/2017.

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Table 2.2 Number of the top talent international faculty members in four leading universities (unit: person)

Shanghai Jiaotong University (2016.12) Tongji University (2018.9) Fudan University (2017.12) East China Normal University (2017.9)

Thousand Talents program 105

Cheung Kong Scholars Program 14

42 142 20

27 94 39

Source: Four universities’ website (accessed on Sep 21, 2017)

2.4

Data Analysis

Analyses of descriptive statistics were conducted to understand the international faculty members in terms of their individual, educational, and professional characteristics. Because an increasing number of ethnic Chinese scholars of foreign nationality have returned to China in recent years, we divided the international faculty members into “Overseas Chinese Faculty” and “Foreigner Faculty.” Comparative analyses were also conducted to see if the two types of international faculty members showed different distributions of individual, educational, and professional characteristics. About the number of international faculty members by gender, we found that the international faculty members are almost seven times more likely to be male than female. Furthermore, most male international faculty members are foreigners, while most female international faculty members are overseas Chinese. About the distribution of international faculty members by highest degree, we found that the overwhelming majority of international faculty members hold a doctoral degree; indeed, all overseas Chinese faculty members are doctoral degree holders. In terms of academic rank, Fig. 2.2 shows that most international faculty members are full professors (63.3%). The percentage of foreigner international faculty members who are associate professors or lecturers is almost the same; in contrast, twice as many overseas Chinese are lecturers than associate professors. This is because, in addition to well-known professors, attracting more young scholars to return China is also a key goal of the oversea recruitment policies and return-tohome projects mentioned in the previous part. Data from Fig. 2.3 show that 90.4% of international faculty members earned their highest degree outside of China, including 46.2% of them who received their highest degree from the US universities. The remaining 9.6% of international faculty members obtained their highest degree from Chinese universities. Among overseas Chinese faculty, 21.1% earned their highest degrees from Chinese universities, including 12.2% of them who earned their highest degrees from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan.

2 International Faculty at Chinese Universities Based on Case Studies

100%

23

6.7% 14.4% 15.6%

6.1% 20.4% 10.2%

6.6% 15.7% 14.4%

63.3%

63.3%

63.3%

Foreigner

Overseas Chinese

Total

80% 60% 40% 20% 0%

Professor

Associate Professor

Lecture

Others

Fig. 2.2 Distribution of international faculty members by academic rank

Total

7.7% 7.7%

46.2%

Overseas Chinese

0%

10.0% 5.6% 2.2%

52.2%

Foreigner

10%

20%

8.5%

5.9% 9.3%

41.5%

30%

5.8%

40%

50%

60%

70%

USA UK Germany Italy Korea Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions of China France Israel China Finland New zealand

5.8%3.8%

5.8%

8.9%

12.2%

8.5%

80%

0.8%

90% 100%

Canada Australia Switzerland Japan Poland Danmark Netherlands India Spain Sweden

Fig. 2.3 Distribution of international faculty members by country in which their highest degree was earned

About the distribution of international faculty members by employment situation, we can know over 80% of all international faculty members were full-time employees, while 92.5% of overseas Chinese faculty worked full-time. Figure 2.4 reveals that international faculty members were concentrated in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields, followed by the humanities and social sciences, economics and management, and medical science, respectively; very few international faculty members came from such disciplines as law, literature, education, linguistics, and English. To a certain extent, this reflects recent changes in

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47

Humanities and Social Science Law LIterature Education Natural Science Economics and Management Medical Science Liguistics English Engineering and information science

6 5 2 47 36 17 3 3 68 0

Total

10

20

30

Overseas Chinese

40

50

60

70

80

Foreigner

Fig. 2.4 Distribution of international faculty members by discipline

China’s national correlation policy intended to prevent brain drain and to strongly attract international hi-tech talents. International faculty members held a wide range of nationalities. Figure 2.5 indicates that a plurality of international scholars were American (41.9%), while the remainder were citizens of the Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan regions of China (15.8%), Canada (9.3%), Germany (5.5%), Japan (4.8%), and the United Kingdom (3.6%). The Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan regions of China were also home to 28.6% of overseas Chinese faculty. These faculty members not only have a very deep background of studying abroad but also have practical work experience in prestigious universities in their respective fields. About the distribution of international faculty members by working experience, we can see most international faculty members, and all the overseas Chinese faculty members worked in foreign countries after earning their highest degree. International working experience is preferred when universities recruit new faculty. Figure 2.6 shows the largest proportion of international faculty members came to China after working in the United States (43.1%); Germany (11.7%); the United Kingdom (6.6%); the Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan regions of China (6.6%); and Japan (5.8%). The previous working countries in which the foreigner faculty were employed were generally similar among the entire international faculty members. By contrast, overseas Chinese faculty came to China after working in eight countries – the United States (55.6%); the Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan regions of China (19.4%); Canada, Germany, and Korea (5.6%); and the United Kingdom, Australia, and Singapore (2.8%).

2 International Faculty at Chinese Universities Based on Case Studies

Total

42.4%

9.1%

Overseas Chinese

44.0%

9.9%

Foreigner

40.5% 0%

10%

20%

25

15.8% 28.6%

8.1% 30%

40%

50%

0.0% 60%

70%

80%

USA UK Germany Italy Korea Egypt Poland Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions of China France Russia South Africa

90% 100%

Canada Australia Switzerland Japan Argentina Singapore Malaysia Danmark Netherlands Israel India

Fig. 2.5 Distribution of international faculty members by nationality

Total

43.1%

Overseas Chinese

6.6%

55.6%

Foreigner

38.6%

0%

11.7%

5.6%

7.9%

13.9%

5.8%

6.6%

5.6%5.6%

19.4%

7.9%

10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

USA

Canada

UK

Australia

Germany

Switzerland

Italy

Japan

Korea

Singapore

Poland

Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions of China

Danmark

France

Netherlands

Spain

Finland

Sweden

Norway

Esthonia

Fig. 2.6 Distribution of international faculty members by previous working countries

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2.5

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International Faculty Members’ Motivations

The study interviewed five international faculty members at four leading universities in Shanghai from October to November 2017. Table 2.3 shows the personal background and professional situation of each interviewee (all interview data were anonymized to protect interviewees’ privacy). All interviewees were male and between 35 and 45 years of age. Two came from the humanities and social sciences, one from mathematics, one from the physical sciences, and one from engineering. Two had dual nationality – one French and German, the other American and Italian. The other three were from the United States, Germany, and Canada. Among them, two were associate professors, and three were lecturers. Although their employment contracts were different, they all had worked full-time at their institutions for between 2 and 10 years. Based on the earlier studies mentioned previously, this study identified several factors closely related to international faculty members’ movement from their home country to another: academic or professional reasons; fondness for Chinese life and culture; difficulty finding employment in their home country; better living conditions than in their home country; family reasons; political reasons; chance; and “other.” Table 2.3 Personal background and professional situation of the five international faculty members Gender Age Nationality

Academic rank Discipline

A Male 40 French and Germany

B Male 42 Germany

Associate professor Mathematics

Lecturer Physical science

C Male 45 The United States and Italy Associate professor Engineering

D Male 35 The United States

E Male 39 Canada

Lecturer

Lecturer

Humanities and arts

Humanities and social science Full-time employed Fixed-term employment without permanent employment prospects 3

Employment situation Employment contract

Full-time employed Tenure-track

Full-time employed Continuously employed

Full-time employed Permanently employed (tenured)

Full-time employed Tenuretrack

How many years have you been employed in the current institution?

2

5

10

5

Note: All interviewees were “foreigner faculty”

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Each interview normally began with a general question, such as “Why have you decided to teach/do research at a university in China?” While listening to interviewees’ responses, the author asked follow-up questions, confirmed their responses, or commented on their answers by focusing on these main factors. The contents of each interview were recorded for analysis. By summarizing the interview contents, this study explains why and how the interviewees came to be hired by the four universities and provide clear evidence of their motivations. Two international faculty members mentioned that they had come to Chinese institutions for academic and professional reasons. The Italian-American scholar, who had worked in industry or private institutions for 8 years after earning his doctorate, said: I wanted to go to a university. I applied to different ones everywhere. I came to China just because this was the best university to offer me a job.

The lecturer from Canada mentioned: I was particularly interested in this university, because I know the quality of the institution and also know, from my parents and family friends, that this university is very famous one. So, I was very interested in working at this institution because I felt able to provide expert teaching that would be valued in China. But at the same time, I would also be helping students who needed and would benefit from my education.

The lecturer from Canada also mentioned his fondness for Chinese life and culture: I have experience teaching in Asia, for a very long time. I was born in North America and I received all my education in North America, but my parents came from Hong Kong. It is very important for me to get reacclimatized to different cultures in Asia, and I am especially interested in China, because, of course, I feel there are more job opportunities, but also [because] it is easier for me to make a difference, and I personally feel like that I should give back to the culture or the community that helped me.

The lecturer from Germany worked in China for family reasons; his wife was Chinese, and they worked in the same institution: I decided to go to China because I want to do something different after my PhD in Germany, so I definitely wanted to go to Shanghai. I was not clear whether I would be teaching or doing something else. . . I tried one or two other things at the same time, but then I found that the other things did not work out very well, so I chose teaching here. So basically, I wanted to go to Shanghai, I wanted to do something, and one of my options was teaching. . . I had several things at the same time, and then I chose teaching. I was young, and I didn’t worry so much; if I wanted to go to somewhere then [I would] go there, so I did not have too many reasons.

Two faculty members said they came to their Chinese university by chance. The lecturer from the United States said: Initially, it was just a job. The last year of my PhD, I got a fellowship, so at that time I went to France, because my background was French philosophy. So, I missed the time to apply for an academic job in America. You know, [when] you apply for an academic job, you only apply for the next academic year, and I had already missed the time to apply for this year’s job. So, that summer I came to China for a conference at Henan University, and I passed through Shanghai at that time. I thought, China is ok, and lots of my friends are Chinese, we are all in the language school together, and my dad had been doing business in China, he

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X. Wu and F. Huang really likes China. . . So, in the USA, I would have to wait another year to apply for academic jobs, and my background was philosophy and it is very hard to get philosophy jobs, and it was the last minute I sought this job; I applied for it, and then I interviewed, and then I got the job. So, initially, I thought I’d just come here for one year, it just means I’d have a job, it was like a job offer, so I applied. It was just by chance I got this job. After I came here, I thought China was interesting, because I want to know more about China. I got my Master’s degree in Belgium, I finished my PhD in France; I like going abroad and learning different languages, so it was very interesting to come to China. So, initially, it was a kind of mistake, but the last four years I have been here by choice.

The associate professor from France and Germany said: The main reason was that it is a good adventure; I mean, it is totally different. Actually, I knew a professor here; he invited me to work here. First, he told me to come here for a week and give a talk, and then we could discuss. That was my first time to come to China, so I did not know anything, I didn’t know how the university worked, and there were very few contacts in China in my field. Nobody in China is working in my field, not even in Hong Kong; Singapore was not clear, the closest would be Sydney, but it’s just quite far away. So, it was a little bit difficult, but prospected. I knew that China was going to build up research on finance and mathematics, which is my field, and I know that since the market is going to open, we are needed for education, for research, for globalization in industry. Although I still don’t know how it works very clearly and so on, after seeing Shanghai, I decided to have a try. This may be very interesting. But I knew from the very beginning it would be very difficult; I have no experience moving to other country. Because I don’t know the language, I don’t know how it works, it took me almost six months to a year for that.

2.6

Concluding Remarks

The key findings are outlined to answer each research question. The first question (“What are the individual, educational, and professional characteristics of international faculty members at Chinese universities?”) sought to understand the distinguishing characteristics of international faculty members. The analysis showed most international faculty members were male, full-time professors, mainly in the natural sciences and engineering fields. Although a majority of international faculty members originally came from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, most had received their doctoral degree outside of China. Moreover, they had a background of studying abroad and of practical work experience in foreign universities in their respective fields. The second research question (“How do these characteristics vary among different international faculty groups?”) focused on differences among the faculty, of which there were few. Looking further at the findings yields some predictable conclusions, and some that are more noteworthy. The latter includes that all overseas Chinese faculty were doctoral degree holders, and all had experience working abroad. This study makes it clear that being highly educated and having lived and/or worked abroad were the main criteria for academic hiring, especially in leading universities. The third research question (“Why did these international faculty members come to leading Chinese universities?”) revealed most international faculty members came

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to the Chinese leading universities for either academic or professional reasons, or due to their fondness for Chinese life and culture. Although some initially came to work in China by chance, after they had taught or done research in a Chinese leading university for a year, they liked the academic atmosphere enough to continue doing so. To sum up, compared to previous studies, this study presents a more detailed description of the personal, educational, and professional identities of international faculty members at Chinese institutions. This study also identifies the motivations of international faculty members for choosing employment in Chinese institutions, based on interviews, and reveals that the job opportunities created by academic and professional development in Chinese universities have not only encouraged many overseas Chinese faculty members to return to China but also more foreigner faculty to consider working in China. As international faculty members make up a growing portion of academic hires in Chinese HEIs, understanding their main characteristics and prior academic life has significant implications for the internationalization of Chinese higher education. Therefore, this study offers useful insights for policy-makers and individual institutions. For policy, designated policy and strategies have strongly affected the sharp increase in the number of full-time international faculty members at Chinese universities in recent years. Hiring “elite” international faculty members is considered a quick and effective means of enhancing the international competitiveness of leading or “elite” Chinese universities, and of improving their global ranking or reputation. Therefore, the government should develop a variety of measures to attract “elite” international faculty members to Chinese universities. For practice, institutions should correctly understand the special status and role of international faculty members in the internationalization of higher education, think deeply about effective measures of recruiting and managing international faculty members, provide more favorable working conditions, and form more appropriate support systems for international faculty members. Finally, despite these findings, there are several limitations to this study. This study was primarily limited by its small sample size. The reliability and validity of the main variable used in the article need to be illustrated further, and the linkage between the data analysis and conclusion could be further strengthened by more research. Follow-up studies addressing these limitations could provide improved results.

References Cai, H. X. (2012, September). Deploying the Chinese knowledge diaspora: A case study of the 111 Project at Peking University. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 32(3), 367–379. https://doi. org/10.1080/02188791.2012.711242 Cao, C. (2008). China’s brain drain at the high end: Why government policies have failed to attract first-rate academics to return. Asian Population Studies, 4(3), 331–345. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 17441730802496532

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Cheng, Y., Zhang, M., & Zu, Y. (2014, August). Statistical analysis of indicators of internationalization for key higher education institutions in China. Journal of Higher Education, 35, 46–54. (In Chinese). El-Khawas, E. (2002). Developing an academic career in a globalising world. In J. Enders & O. Fulton (Eds.), Higher education in a globalising world. International trends and mutual observations (pp. 241–254). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Hoffman, D. M. (2009). Changing academic mobility patterns and international migration: What will academic mobility mean in the 21st century? Journal of Studies in International Education, 13, 347–364. Huang, F. (2017a). Double World-Class Project has more ambitious aims. University World News, 29 September, 2017. Issue No: 476. Huang, F. (2017b, October). Who are they and why did they move to Japan? (Centre for Global Higher Education working paper series. Working paper No. 27) http://www.researchcghe.org/ perch/resources/publications/wp27.pdf Huang, F., Finkelstein, M. J., & Rostan, M. (Eds.). (2014). The internationalisation of the academy: Changes, realities and prospects (The changing academy – The changing academic profession in international comparative perspective) (Vol. 10). Dordrecht: Springer. Kim, H. (2017). The higher education policy of global experts recruitment program: Focused on China. In Current business and economics driven discourse and education: Perspectives from around the world BCES conference books (Vol. 15, pp. 151–158). Sofia, Bulgaria: Bulgarian Comparative Education Society. ISSN 1314–4693 (print), ISSN 2534–8426 (online), ISBN 978–619-7326-00-0 (print), ISBN 978–619-7326-01-7 (online). Kim, T., & Locke, W. (2010). Transnational academic mobility and the academic profession. London: Centre for Higher Education Research and Information, The Open University. Li, G., Yu, G., & Shi, W. (2015). The analysis about the sources, influence and management strategy of foreign teachers’ work pressure in colleges and universities. Modern Education Management, 9, 78–83. (In Chinese). People’s Daily Online. (2014). The Cheung Kong Scholars Program for sixteen years. http://edu. people.com.cn/n/2014/0606/c1006-25110831.html Rostan, M., & Hohle, E. (2014). The international mobility of faculty, the internationalisation of the academy: Changes, realities and prospects. In F. Huang, M. Finkelstein, & M. Rostan (Eds.), The changing academy – The changing academic profession in international comparative perspective (Vol. 10). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. The Recruitment Program for Global Experts. History and Background. http://1000plan.org/en/history.htm Shi, W., & Li, G. (2015, April). An analysis of the College Foreign Teachers Assessment System: Based on the theory of working load. Journal of National Academy of Education Administration, 4, 27–32. (In Chinese). Wang, W. (2015). A study on Innovation of Management Elements in Intercultural Teaching of Foreign Teachers in Colleges and Universities. Dissertation. Northeast University, China, Shenyang. April, 2015. (In Chinese). Welch, A. (1997). The peripatetic professor: the internationalization of the academic profession. Higher Education, 34(3), 323–345. Welch, A., & Cai, H. X. (2010). Enter the Dragon: The internationalisation of Chinese higher education. In J. Ryan (Ed.), China’s higher education and internationalisation (pp. 9–33). London: Routledge. Welch, A., & Hao, J. (2013). Returnees and diaspora as source of innovation in Chinese higher education. Frontiers of Education in China, 8(2), 214–238. https://doi.org/10.1007/ BF03396972 Welch, A., & Zhang, Z. (2008). (2008). Higher education and global talent flows: Brain drain, overseas Chinese intellectuals, and diasporic knowledge networks. Higher Education Policy, 21, 519–537. https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2008.20

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Wu, X., & Huang, F. (2018). International faculty in China: Case studies of four leading universities in Shanghai. Asia Pacific Education Review, 19, 253–262. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-0189535-8 Yang, H. (2015). A study on management elements of foreign teachers in colleges and universities based on the system management theory. Dissertation, Northeast University, China, Shengyang. Jun 2015. (In Chinese).

Chapter 3

Nonforeign Foreign Academics in Hong Kong: Realities and Strategies Shuangye Chen

Abstract Higher education system in Hong Kong is quite unique in its small size, global competitiveness, excellence, and high level of internationalization. This chapter aims to reveal strategies and realities of how foreign academics are hired and integrated in one case university in Hong Kong. Based on the in-depth interview data from two senior administers and five academics in various career stages and disciplines, the preliminary findings have shown that foreign academics in the case university were satisfied with their job and the institution, despite various reasons underlying their choices. There is no stated difference between local and nonlocal colleagues in promotion, appointment of administrative position, and other differentiated treatment. Finally, an explanatory quadrant of foreign academics’ satisfaction and integration is constructed around the two dimensions of immediate context and connections. As Hong Kong has advantages in supportive immediate contexts, as well as open and inclusive social environment to access, those foreign academics have brought along multiple connections and capitals to fit in and play. Therefore, the foreign academics have felt “nonforeign” in their work and life in Hong Kong. Keywords Hong Kong · International and foreign academics · Case study

This chapter is modified from a workshop presentation in the international workshop on Foreign Academics Recruitment and Integration in the International and Comparative Perspectives (27 June, 2017), hosted by the Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima University, Japan. S. Chen (*) Institute of Curriculum & Instruction, Faculty of Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 F. Huang, A. R. Welch (eds.), International Faculty in Asia, The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective 21, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4980-3_3

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3.1

S. Chen

Introduction

Hong Kong (HK) has been known as a cosmopolitan city with East–West cultural mix. With its colonial legacy lasting for over 100 years, higher education system in Hong Kong has also been well recognized of high level of internationalization in the world. QS 2015–2016 statistics reveals that all eight public universities in Hong Kong have more than 40% international academics. According to the CAP research (Teichler, Arimoto, Cummings, 2013), this indicates a very high level of internationalization of academic faculty in the world. It is worth of a close study on why there are such a high proportion of foreign academics in Hong Kong and how they work and live as a foreign faculty in Hong Kong. In a recent book chapter, Professor Postiglione and Dr. Xie (2017) used the case of the University of Hong Kong to elaborate the policies and strategies supporting international faculty. However, there were few in-depth studies found in the past to focus on international academics in Hong Kong (HK) higher education system. Little was known about the policies and actual work-life of those international academics in the HK higher education system. This creates an obvious knowledge gap from the HK case. Therefore, this chapter aims to explore how international academics are recruited and integrated from cases of lived experiences in one case university in Hong Kong. The research finding would shed light on how to integrate international faculty from an exemplary higher education system.

3.2

Background

Hong Kong is a unique higher education system with eight public-funded institutions. The system is quite small in its number of institutions as well as size of students and faculties. There have been fewer than 100,000 students and around 12,000 staff supported by public funding through the University Grants Committee of Hong Kong by 2015 (Tables 3.1 and 3.2). In the year of 2015–2016, there were 1,872 senior and 2,877 junior academic staff among 11,933 full-time staff fully supported by the public funding in Hong Kong (UGC, n.d.). Teacher–student ratio in the HK higher education system is roughly 1:20. This elite system has been heavily subsidized by public money. For example, calculated from annual reports of the University of Hong Kong (2016) and the Table 3.1 Total student enrolment in HK UGC-funded programs (2011–2015)

Source: http://cdcf.ugc.edu.hk/cdcf/searchStatSiteReport.do

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Table 3.2 Number of staff in HK UGC-funded universities (2015–2016)

Source: http://cdcf.ugc.edu.hk/cdcf/searchStatSiteReport.do

Chinese University of Hong Kong (2016), income from the UGC ranged from around 50% to 60%. Added by 20–25% income from the collected tuition, HK universities comparatively have no pains in the global financial cuts with a government to support 70–80% of their annual income. Despite a decoupling with the civil servant salary scale, average academic pay in HK is still globally competitive (Altbach and Postiglione, 2015). Given its colonial legacy of using English as a dominant working language, and the globally competitive pay to attract academics from the global market, this small higher education system is powerful in producing world-class universities. By QS ranking 2015–2016, four of eight HK universities were listed within top 100 and six within top 300. The rest two institutions are topped in their own specialized fields as liberal arts education and the subject of education. That means the whole higher education system in Hong Kong has been well recognized of its academic excellence and educational quality. Few higher education systems in the world can surpass Hong Kong in the intensity and extensity of the systemic excellence. Public money has been well paid off in this aspect.

3.3

Foreign Academics in Hong Kong: How Foreign Is Foreign

Although Hong Kong higher education system has been regarded of high proportion of foreign academics, no accurate statistics can tell how many they are indeed. In other words, it is not a “yes/no” answer to who is foreign academic and who is not. But it is a continuum of how foreign is foreign in the social context of Hong Kong. This is partly due to the inherent and common difficulty in defining international/ foreign academics by various criteria such as birth place, first postsecondary degree place, or claimed citizenship (Altbach and Yudkevich, 2017). But the unique colonial history and the one-country-two-systems political reality of Hong Kong also contribute to the challenges of the definition. For example, although dual citizenship is not allowed by law, quite a number of HK permanent citizens virtually hold two or more than two passports. In practice, they can choose to claim either citizenship to their own or their institutional advantage in different situations.

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Table 3.3 Foreign faculty in seven HK institutions by QS 2015–2016 Foreign faculty Total faculty Percentage of foreign faculty

HKUST 834 1,092 73.4%

HKU 2,018 3,054 66%

CUHK 1,004 2,155 46.6%

CityU 951 1,352 70.3%

PolyU 1,235 2,417 51.1%

BaptistU 386 831 46.5%

LingnanU 98 230 42.6%

Source: QS 2015–2016

Therefore, in the following, several reliable data sources of foreign academics will be listed to show the data discrepancy as well as the challenge to define “foreign” academics in Hong Kong. This also creates the “visibility” and “invisibility” of foreign academics in Hong Kong. Source 1: QS internationalization data. Those data are usually collected from the institutions, either from official reports or from voluntary submission. By claimed passport citizenship, QS 2015–2016 reveals the number of international and total faculty in seven HK institutions and I calculated the percentage. In general, based on the data from the seven institutions, there were 6,526 foreign academics, consisting of 58.6% of the total faculty (Table 3.3). Source 2: CAP data. From the CAP research (Teichler, Arimoto, Cummings, 2013), 51% senior and 35% junior HK academics at the survey time hold the citizenship or passport other than that of Hong Kong, while 36% senior and 25% junior HK academics were not born in Hong Kong. These data further revealed the differentiated grouping of foreign academics between senior and junior levels. In general, HK higher education system has already been a top system hosting foreign academics in the world. Source 3: Institutional annual report or institutional statistics open to the public. Not every HK university would release this type of data to the public. Currently, the University of Hong Kong sets an example to make such kind of information available online. According to HKU Quick Statistics 2015, there were 674 international professorial staff (61%) based on their nationalities among all 1,107 full-time academics. Those Mainland Chinese professors were counted as 32.6% of all foreign academics in the University of Hong Kong, the largest group followed by those from North America (23%) and Europe (22%). To take HKU statistics 2015–2016 as an example, there is an obvious discrepancy between data from various sources as UGC, QS, and the self-disclosed statistics. Even for the total number of faculty in HKU is not clear, not to mention the number of international faculty. Moreover, there is a peculiar problem in Hong Kong as whether the Chinese Mainland professors (those who are holding P.R. China passports) should be counted as “foreign” or “local.” In the common practice in Hong Kong, they are usually regarded as “nonlocal” and “foreign,” although they are of Chinese ethnicity.

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Realities and Strategies in the Case University

The above data and statistics provide a general impression of how many foreign academics in Hong Kong, but they fail to offer a detailed and thick mapping of which disciplines/faculties they belong to and how they feel and live. The following part is based on an institutional case study in 2015–2016 and reveals what realities the foreign academics faced and what strategies were used by individuals and the institution for adaptation and integration.

3.4.1

Number of Foreign Academics

Beyond the officially released statistics, I ventured to explore an alternative method to calculate foreign academics, that is, to calculate the number of academics belonging to “local Cantonese,” “non-Chinese,” and “Chinese Mainland” from alphabetic name spelling in the university directory. This method is inspired by the practically used strategy to identify staff for the first contact. As simplified and traditional Chinese and English are derived from separate spelling systems, name spellings could be a convenient tool to estimate academics’ birth places or family origins. There are two advantages of using it as an alternative and inspirational method. First, it could provide supplementary information when the official statistics are not available. Not many universities are ready to share their personnel statistics for the sake of privacy protection. Usually, the general statistics of the whole institution could be found, but the detailed data request by gender, disciplines, age, and positions would not be entertained. Without such detailed dataset, the analyses are superficial and limited by dimensions. Second, this method is derived from our intuitive social knowledge to identify people. It creates biased impression or even stereotyped judgment, but in this research, it helps illuminate two types of foreign academics as “visible” and “invisible.” The visible foreign academics bring obvious message from their appearance, names, spoken language, and other overt identifiers. The invisible foreign academics are not easy to identify as “foreign.” To identify the name spellings in alphabets is an easy-to-use method in the HK context to offer an alternative estimation of foreign academics by two categories as “non-Chinese” and “Chinese Mainland” in contrast with “local Cantonese.” At the same time, it serves a sampling strategy for “visible” and “invisible” foreign academics. This method is not without problem. As Hong Kong is a place of long history of migration, those who bear “local Cantonese” names could be born and receive first degree out of Hong Kong, and hold foreign passports. This group of academics could be underestimated under this method. I looked through the internally circulated university directory 2015–2016 and found 271 names of Chinese Mainland, 119 of non-Chinese out of 1,053 professorial faculties in the case university. With this measure, the percentage of “visible” foreign academics in the case university is only 38%, fewer than the officially

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Table 3.4 Distribution of “Chinese Mainland” to “non-Chinese” foreign academics in various faculties

Faculty of Arts Faculty of Business Administration Faculty of Education Faculty of Engineering Faculty of Law Faculty of Medicine Faculty of Science Faculty of Social Science

Chinese Mainland 15 46

NonChinese 29 15

Ratio of Chinese Mainland to non-Chinese 1:1.9 1:0.3

7 44 15 54 37 46

3 7 22 24 5 22

1:0.4 1:0.16 1:1.5 1:0.4 1:0.14 1:0.48

released statistics. The gap might be caused by the underestimated “invisible” foreign academics of local Cantonese name spellings. In each faculty, the number and the ratio of “Chinese Mainland” to “nonChinese” academics are quite interesting. Please refer to Table 3.4 for details. In the Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Law, non-Chinese academics outnumber Chinese Mainland colleagues, while in the rest faculties, the situation is reversed. In Faculty of Science and Faculty of Engineering, Chinese Mainland academics constitute the majority of foreign colleagues in the faculty. The distribution of foreign academics guides the initial sampling of interviewees in the following case study.

3.4.2

Interviewees and Interview Data: Sampling and Analysis

This case study uses qualitative research strategy and mainly collects data from interviews. There are two university administrators and five foreign academics contacted and interviewed formally or casually during March–May 2015. Each interview lasted more than 30 min under the permission of the interviewees. Interviews were conducted by myself around the interview guidelines provided by the project investigator. Interviewees were notified of the interview questions at the initial contact. Only one interviewee allowed audiorecording and the rest declined. The two university administrators are female, one serving senior faculty secretary for nearly 30 years and the other department secretary for over 10 years. They are the frontline administrators who are familiar with the university personnel policies and proficient in dealing with related recruitment, promotion, and integration. The five foreign academics are sampled by considering the varied distribution of foreign academics in different faculties, gender, positions, career stage, and the visibility of personal background. They are anonymized with modified characteristics to protect their identity (Table 3.5). In this case study, the data have covered

Names (anonymized) AL BD CE DT EJ

Table 3.5 Interviewees

Birth place Europe Mainland China Mainland China Europe North America

Citizenship North America Chinese Mainland Chinese Mainland European North America

Gender M F F F F

Faculty Arts Science Education Social science Business

Service Over 25 years, tenured, retiring Over 10 years, tenured 1 year, untenured 2 years, untenured Over 25 years, tenured, retiring

Position Associate professor Associate professor Assistant professor Assistant professor Associate professor

Visibility Visible Visible Visible Visible Invisible

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experiences from five faculties, especially from a non-Chinese academic in Faculty of Arts and a Chinese Mainland academic in Faculty of Science, of various service durations and positions in the case university. There is only one male and one invisible foreign academic included.

3.4.3

Findings

3.4.3.1

Policies and Strategies

From the policies and strategies perspectives, according to informants, the case university has practiced similarly as other HK higher education institutions in the four aspects. First, wider local and international recruitment practice. The case university requires every academic recruitment advertisement should be enlisted both in the local and international newspapers or websites. Local advertisement should appear in both Chinese and English media, for example, Chinese on Mingpao and English on South China Morning Post. The international advertisement should appear on the renowned academic media, for example, Times Higher Education, or other important academic events, major international conferences, for example, AERA. Such policies on recruitment advertisement have ensured the coverage of potential local and international applicants. The practice is not ad hoc but regular and institutionalized. Second, equal treatment of academics. The case university emphasizes herself as equal employer, in which no prejudice or unfair treatments based on gender, ethnicity, citizenship, etc. are allowed. The legal system and governmental regulations in Hong Kong also protect equal treatment of employees. It is illegal of any kind of differentiated treatment in recruitment, promotion, and retirement. Therefore, the interviewed foreign academics did not feel any obstacles or privileges of promotion, advancement to leadership positions, or other personnel decisions based on colleagues’ citizenship. Currently, salary package, leaves, benefits, and travel allowances are provided regardless of citizenship or identities. Third, favorable considerations for foreign academics. Under the rule of equal treatment, foreign academics could only enjoy once-off nonlocal employee’s travel/ luggage allowance at their first arrival. In early days, nonlocal academics received housing allowances, while local academics could not. But this policy was removed in 1995. These favorable considerations were offered to the needs rather than unfair privilege. Last, there is a rising policy concern to increase the number of international faculty for the sake of global higher education ranking competition. Recently, a strategic head-hunting project has been prompted toward competitive international applicants. Under such a scheme, the head-hunted international faculty might enjoy better package and favorable leadership positions.

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3.4.3.2

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Realities and Issues

The realities and issues faced by the interviewed foreign academics can be concluded from language, motivations, future plan, and the felt differences. First, language. Hong Kong as a global city with colonial legacy, English is assumed of its linguistic and intellectual primacy in the Hong Kong higher education system. Any academic employed is at least linguistically capable in English. English is a medium for teaching and working in any Hong Kong university. In the case university, any official document will provide both English and Chinese versions. In some occasions, only English version is provided. In the daily practice of department/faculty meetings, English is the working language. Therefore, foreign faculty can understand no Chinese at their arrival, but the deficit of local language would not affect their work with colleagues. They have no obvious troubles with local colleagues, either linguistically or culturally. However, when working with their students, the interviewed foreign academics are surprised to discover that their students’ English is not as good as they have imagined. Because they are unconfident in using English as a medium of instruction, “students are usually troubled with total English teaching and learning” (quoted from Professor AL). Student–teacher interactions are also impaired in some way. Three interviewees expressed their concerns and struggles in using English with their local students. Second, motivations. The reasons for the five academics to move to Hong Kong can be summarized as family reason, and geographical, cultural, and academic proximity. These reasons are quite similar to what have been identified by Professor Rumbley and Professor de Wit (2017). In the real decision situations, these considerations are compounded and evaluated intuitively. However, there seem existing gender differences behind the decisions. Female academics in this case study weighted more on family. Professor CE and Professor DT clearly explained their choices of HK for family reasons. Added on that, diversified cultures as well as international school places have facilitated their settlement with family members. There are also practical attractions from the competitive package as well as academic reputations of Hong Kong higher education. These are not the foremost attractions to the interviewees, but no one denied such attractive factors to affect their decisions. Third, future plan. All five interviewees claimed that they would like to stay as long as they can. The tenure system in HK universities has an age limit. Professor AL and Professor EJ had to retire when they reached retirement age. Any foreign academic who is employed by an institution can easily obtain working visa. By law, anyone who has legally stayed in HK over 7 years can apply for permanent residence. However, according to the interviewees, the status of HK permanent residence and HK passport do bring some convenience of traveling but not so attractive to them. Professor AL and Professor EJ as senior members raised their concerns of retirement benefit scheme in HK. One interviewee mentioned that some of their foreign colleagues in their 50s would consider to move back to Australia or United Kingdom so as to ensure their pension while there is no retirement protection in HK.

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Last, the felt differences of the foreign academics. Apart from the differences felt from students, the interviewees did feel no obvious differences or strangeness in their work and life in HK. Only one new member mentioned the detached and notso-warm office culture compared with her previous experiences in the United States. In general, they have effortless acculturation in the case institution. In this sense, they are paradoxically the nonforeign foreign academics in Hong Kong. Overall, they have been satisfied with their choice and their work.

3.5

Discussions

Although the number of the interviewees is limited, the case institution does have typical policies and practices of recruiting and treating foreign academics in Hong Kong. From this preliminary study, an explanatory framework for understanding why foreign academics are well integrated and highly satisfied in HK institutions can be proposed as in Fig. 3.1. There are two dimensions in the quadrant as immediate contexts around the foreign academics and the connections/capitals they bring with. The immediate contexts include (1) the general institutional policies of recruitment and promotion,

Immediate context – Connections +

Immediate context + Connections/capitals + (HK)

Immediate context – Connections -

Immediate context + Connections -

Fig. 3.1 An explanatory quadrant of foreign academics’ integration and satisfaction in HK

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(2) departmental administration, colleagues in the same unit, and students to teach, (3) living support, for example, apartment and daily chores, and kids’ educational arrangement. Hong Kong as an international metropolitan has advantages in providing international school places, transparent and fair employment opportunities, as well as affordable household helper services to support family. Although the price of apartment is quite high in HK, foreign academics can afford decent places with generous housing allowances provided by institutions. Therefore, not only the globally competitive package itself to attract international faculties to Hong Kong universities, but also the wider and institutional inclusive and supportive contexts could easily accommodate them. Moreover, individual foreign faculties bring along their connections and various capitals to facilitate their settlement in Hong Kong. Those connections include family members, previous friends, and research partners. These constitute strong social capital to help them quickly fit in a new place. Hong Kong is a place to let the East meet the West. Either people from Western societies or from Eastern, especially those originally from the Chinese Mainland, would favor HK as an easy place and a middle point to settle down. They also bring along English as a kind of linguistic capital which is highly valued in Hong Kong. With positive and supportive contexts in HK, foreign faculties bring along strong and positive linguistic and social capitals in the process of integration and acculturation. Metaphorically, the contexts themselves are a “socket” with various adaptors and the incoming foreign academics are multifunctional plugs. Both sides meeting in HK make the acculturation easy and effortless. As a result, the level of their satisfaction and integration is quite high, compared with other systems. The proportion of international faculties in HK higher education system is almost the highest in the world.

3.6

Limitations and Suggestions for the Future Study

Given the small sample size and the qualitative case method used, this preliminary study has the following limitations to be noted. First, it is a tricky question of asking how satisfied in the face-to-face interview. The five academic interviewees replied with high satisfaction of their work and life, but I still hold in question their embarrassment of telling their dissatisfaction in front of a colleague. Moreover, there might be higher level of dissatisfaction of the left foreign academics. According to the senior members interviewed, some foreign academics chose to go back to their home countries for the sake of pension. This clue might suggest a new research on those who have left and the reasons behind. The second limitation of this study is that the senior male foreign academics are hard to access. I have contacted two senior male foreign professors with email but no reply was received. Last, this case study lacks samples from faculties of engineering, medicine, and law. Therefore, no data could be obtained to analyze how much different disciplinary backgrounds would matter in the integration of foreign faculties. However, those

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limitations from this study could suggest more sophisticated researches on this issue in the future. Finally, based on this study, future research is suggested to consider the following: (1) the left foreign academics, senior male foreign academics, as well as foreign academics from different faculties are worth of careful and sophisticated study and (2) a comparative case country study is needed to verify and modify the explanatory quadrant proposed. With those extended and in-depth studies, the understanding of foreign academics’ work and life can be raised and uplifted for better practices and better theories.

3.7

Epilogue

When this chapter is revised for final production in the book, the social-political situation in Hong Kong has changed tremendously since 2019. The campus of the case university was damaged and tragically suspended for some time in 2019. This unprecedented political turmoil did have a direct and negative impact on the foreign academics and their immediate contexts. It is still open to watch the changing trend of academic mobility in Hong Kong after the double attacks from the local politics and the COVID-19 pandemic. Acknowledgment This research was partly supported by the Program for Professor of Special Appointment at Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning, and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2017ECNU-HLYT001).

References Altbach, P., & Postiglione, G. (2015). Can Hong Kong keep its lead in the brain race? International Higher Education, (45), 24–26. Altbach, P., & Yudkevich, M. (2017). International faculty in 21st-century universities: Themes and variations. In M. Yudkevich, P. G. Altbach, & L. E. Rumbley (Eds.), International faculty in higher education (pp. 1–14). New York: Routledge. Postiglione, G., & Xie, A. (2017). International faculty in two top-tier Chinese universities: On country, two types of internationals. In M. Yudkevich, P. G. Altbach, & L. E. Rumbley (Eds.), International faculty in higher education (pp. 76–100). New York: Routledge. Rumbley, L., & de Wit, H. (2017). International faculty in higher education: Common motivations, disparate realities and many unknowns. In M. Yudkevich, P. G. Altbach, & L. E. Rumbley (Eds.), International faculty in higher education (pp. 267–287). New York: Routledge. Teichler, U., Arimoto, A., & Cummings, W. K. (2013). The changing academic profession: Major findings of a comparative survey. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. University Grants Committee (Hong Kong). (n.d.). Statistics. http://cdcf.ugc.edu.hk/cdcf/ searchStatSiteReport.do

Chapter 4

International Faculty at Japanese Universities: Main Findings from National Survey in 2017 Futao Huang

Abstract The purpose of this chapter is to analyze and discuss the most striking features and main academic work of full-time international faculty at Japanese universities based on the analysis of national statistics, previous studies, and the major findings from the national survey of them in 2017. Main findings include: firstly, the international faculty in Japan experienced a rapid growth in scale and complexity in relation to demographic profiles, academic activities, and professional roles; secondly, three broad categories of international faculty can be practically divided—the Chinese and Korean, the American and the British, and other groups; finally, international faculty not only transmitted and diffused knowledge, especially in foreign languages, culture and other fields in humanities and social sciences, but also were engaged in R&D and innovation activity. Keywords International faculty · Survey · Japan · Mobility · Academic profession

4.1

Introduction

With the advancement of economic globalization, increased internationalization of higher education and research, and growing academic competitiveness at a global level since the late 1990s, hiring international talents, including university faculty, researchers, or academics, has become of growing importance in most countries (OECD, 2008). Not only the OECD area but also other countries have adopted various policies and strategies of attracting the highly skilled talents, including international faculty or foreign-born and foreign-educated faculty, researchers, or academics. For example, hiring international faculty in some non-English-speaking countries is used as one of quick and efficient means of levelling internationalization of national higher education, raising the standing of their universities in global F. Huang (*) Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 F. Huang, A. R. Welch (eds.), International Faculty in Asia, The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective 21, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4980-3_4

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rankings, and the international competitiveness of national higher education in the world (Hazelkorn, 2007; Cantwell, 2011; Stephan et al., 2016). Earlier studies suggest that international faculty has played an important role in producing university graduates and improving the quality of higher education systems. Some researchers argued that international faculty or foreign-born faculty made exceptional contributions to science in the USA, and they were more academically productive than local faculty in the US universities (Levin and Stephan, 1999; Stephan and Levin, 2001). Some researchers emphasized that international faculty could create a more international atmosphere in campus, and they usually incorporate more international perspective and content into university education (Altbach and Yudkevich, 2017; Yudkevich et al., 2017). Compared to an extensive body of studies that are mostly US-based, recently, research has also been undertaken into the role and responsibilities of international faculty at Japanese universities. For example, prior research reveals that international faculty in Japan have been playing specific roles which can hardly be assumed by domestic faculty in teaching, research, services, and other activities (Horta and Yonezawa, 2013; Huang, 2018a). Despite increased research into more aspects of international faculty in Japan, for example, studies in the key incentives for migration of academics and researches in science and engineering to Japan (Murakami, 2009) and main challenges facing full-time international faculty at Japanese universities (Huang et al., 2019), little is known of their academic work, especially teaching and research activities, their preferences, and satisfaction with current overall professional environment based on the analysis of date from national survey of them. The purpose of this study is to investigate the most striking features and main academic work of full-time international faculty at Japanese universities based on the major findings from the national survey, which was implemented in 2017. As very few studies have been conducted in full-time international faculty’s professional situation, general work situation, and teaching and research by country of origin, this chapter is primarily concerned with analyzing these aspects. The chapter consists of four parts. The next part makes a brief introduction to context and key policies relating to international faculty in Japan. The third part is mainly concerned with analyzing the data from the national survey of full-time international faculty and discussing the meanings of the data. The study concludes by summarizing main findings and offering implications for research and policy. As for the term of international faculty, different from the definition of foreignborn and foreign-educated faculty or academics that is widely used in the USA, it only refers to full-time faculty at Japanese four-year universities who hold foreign passports or possess foreign citizenship. In a strict sense, those faculty holding foreign passports who were born and educated in Japan until they obtained their bachelor’s degree from Japanese universities are not included.

4 International Faculty at Japanese Universities: Main Findings from. . .

4.2 4.2.1

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Context and Policies Characteristics of Japanese Higher Education

Compared to the USA, the UK, many European continental countries, and some East Asian countries and societies like China, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, and Taiwan, typically, the main characteristics of Japanese higher education can be summarized as follows. Firstly, both private institutions (universities and junior colleges) and students make up the dominant share of all higher education institutions (HEIs). For example, in 2018, the proportion of private universities and junior colleges comprises 77.1% and 94.9% of the total, respectively, and the proportion of students in these universities and colleges constituted, respectively, to 73.7% and 94.8 % of the totals. Within private universities, the largest number of students belonged to Social sciences (36.3%), followed by those from Humanities (15.5%) (MEXT1, 2019). Secondly, there are three different sectors of HEIs by administration or founder. National universities that became national university corporations since April 2004 are established, funded, and administered by the MEXT. Local public universities are established, administered, and funded by local governments, and private universities and colleges by school corporations. These three different sectors play different roles and fulfil distinctive functions according to their spirits of establishment, educational ideas, and missions. For example, as the modern Japanese universities were developed on the German research-oriented model, this tradition has dominated Japanese universities, especially the national sector, for a long time. According to the results of the International Survey of the Academic Profession, which was conducted by the Carnegie Foundation in 1992, Japanese faculty completed more scholarly publications than faculty in any of the other countries surveyed. Moreover, approximately 75% of Japanese faculty members think that it is important for a faculty member to have a strong record of successful research activity, a proportion much higher than in most of the other countries (Arimoto, 1996). Even after they became corporations, the national universities are still expected to carry out basic and large-scale (with substantial funding, often supported by the national budget) scientific research, produce and train doctoral students, and undertake more academic research activities. Except for a very few private universities, the vast majority of private sector are primarily engaged in undergraduate educational activities. Besides, more of them accept female students and provide degree programs in humanities and social sciences. As local public universities are established, administered, and mainly funded by local authorities, they recruit more students from places in which they are located and produce more graduates who can serve the local economic development and prosperity. Thirdly, although there is no clear-cut category of research and nonresearch universities determined by government or public authorities, the so-called former 1

MEXT refers to Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Science and Technology.

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seven imperial universities that were founded before World War Two, several national universities with a long history, and very few private universities like Waseda and Keio universities, which came into existence in the late nineteenth century, are regarded as research universities. The reminding universities and colleges are normally viewed as teaching-centered institutions, especially a majority of private universities and colleges are primarily concerned with undergraduate studies.

4.2.2

Policies and Practices of Hiring International Faculty

As early as the late nineteenth century, the government of Meiji Japan already began to invite and hire a large number of international experts, scholars, and faculty members to work in Japan. Most of them came from the UK, the USA, Germany, France, some from other countries, including China (Amano, 2009). For example, in 1876 alone, there were 78 foreign faculty members who were involved in professional and language teaching activities, and in most cases taught in foreign languages (Ministry of Education, 1992). It is generally agreed that the contributions made by international scholars and academics or experts in various fields to the formation of Japan’s modern higher education and even modernization of Japanese society are significant and obvious (MEXT, 2018). With the introduction of the US general education ideal to Japanese universities soon after World War Two, as all university students were required by the Ministry of education to earn academic credits of English language that constituted one part of the compulsory programs in general education studies, Japanese universities hired many international faculty, especially those from English-speaking countries, to provide foreign language programs for Japanese students. The massification of higher education since the early 1960s and the realization of near universal access to higher education since the 1980s have facilitated the employment of language teachers in Japanese universities. However, international faculty were only employed as foreign teachers until the early 1980s. Because all full-time faculty in both national and local public universities were civil servants, according to the Japanese law, international faculty were not allowed to take tenured positions at national and local public universities. Neither could they participate in administrative governance and management activities in their universities like domestic faculty. For example, they were not allowed to participate in professors’ meetings, let alone becoming institutional leaders at the national or local public sector (RIHE, 1980). In order to attract more international faculty and change their legal status, the Japanese government passed the Act of “Employing Foreign Full-time Faculty at National and Local Public Universities” in 1982. The significance of the implementation of the Act cannot be overestimated. It not only made it possible for both national and local public institutions to employ international faculty full-time and with tenure, and allowed them to be involved in administrative matters of their institution, but also allowed all Japanese higher education institutions, including

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national and local public universities, to treat international faculty the same as the domestic academics. Since the 1990s, Japan has made greater efforts to attract international faculty, researchers, and talents by implementing several national-level policies and strategies. They include the ninth Employment Measures Basic Plan (1999), The e-Japan Strategy (2001), The Basic Plan for Immigration Control (2nd edition in 2000 and 3rd edition in 2005), and The Three-Year Plan for the Promotion of Regulatory Reform (2004). As mentioned in Introduction, attracting international faculty has become an increasingly important strategy for improving the quality and international competitiveness of national higher education systems in the OECD areas and also many East Asian countries such as China and Singapore, and Malaysia, since the early 2000s, the Japanese government implemented more national policies and strategies to attract global talents. Differing from the previous policies and strategies that are indirectly relating to the employment of international faculty, recruiting international faculty is considered to be an effective way to enhance the quality and international competitiveness of Japanese higher education. For example, expanding the numbers of international faculty is viewed as one of the most effective ways of delivering English-taught degree programs for inbound international students from English-speaking countries and especially enhancing Japanese universities’ presence in the major global ranking systems. In recent years, important strategies include the twenty-first-century COE program, which was started in 2002, the Global 30 project in 2010 and the Top Global University project in 2014. Further, in 2017, the Japanese government implemented the Designated National University Project and awarded six national universities—the universities of Tokyo, Kyoto, Tohoku, Nagoya, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and Hitotsubashi University—the title of “Designated National Universities” by the time when this chapter was completed. These universities have been funded with a specially allocated budget and given more autonomy over governance and management arrangements to elevate them to the world’s highest status. As a result, remarkable changes occurred in the quantitative and qualitative aspects of international faculty since the early 1980s. Quantitatively speaking, as suggested in Fig. 4.1, there has been a rapid growth in full-time international faculty from 1980 to 2018; the number of full-time international faculty alone showed fast, continuous growth. Compared to 1979 when there were 940 full-time international faculty (0.9 % of all faculty), as of 2018, the total was 8609 (4.6% of overall faculty) (MEXT, 2019). Qualitatively speaking, clear changes also occurred in the demographic profiles and composition of international faculty for the last decades. Based on the analysis of the data from the 1979 and 2017 national surveys of full-time international faculty at Japanese universities, it was reported that the proportion of female academics increased; more international faculty occupying high academic ranks, researching the hard sciences and originating from China and Korea were hired in Japanese universities; Japanese universities attracted more international faculty from neighboring countries than 30 years ago and became more of a regional hub; and international faculty have come to play more similar work roles to local faculty,

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Fig. 4.1 Changes in the proportion of full-time international faculty at Japanese universities MEXT (2019). Statistical Abstract 2019. Retrieved from https://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/toukei/ 002/002b/1417059.htm (in Japanese)

rather than predominantly engaging in language teaching activities as the majority did in the late 1970s (Huang, 2019).

4.3 4.3.1

Data Analysis and Discussion Research Methods

The study uses relevant data from the national survey of full-time international faculty at Japanese universities, which was carried out from June to August 2017. The target population was created based on the websites and other publicly available sources of international faculty who worked in Japanese universities. Those who were employed at junior colleges and other higher education institutions were not included. By looking at the websites and other publicly available sources of approximately 185,000 faculty at all the Japanese universities from October 2016 to the end of March 2017, this study gathered the profiles of 5351 faculty who appear to be international by name. In late June, 5351 paper questionnaires in English and Japanese were sent out to their affiliated institutions. Based on feedback, by excluding the numbers of retired and naturalized international faculty, as well as Japanese faculty who were included by mistake, by the end of August 2017, 1285 valid responses were received from 4076 faculty (return rate 31.5%). By excluding numbers of part-time international faculty, this study uses the data of 1233 international respondents.

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The main objective of the national survey of full-time international faculty at Japanese four-year universities was to obtain a better understanding of the actual situation of international faculty in all Japanese universities. Specifically, it aimed to identify their career paths, living and working conditions, academic life and work, their roles, duties and responsibilities, and the challenges facing them. The questionnaire that was used to survey international faculty consists of seven sections: Career and Professional Situation, General Work Situation and Activities, Teaching, Research, Governance and Management, Academics in Formative Career Stages, and Personal Background. As some findings have previously been published from responses to several sections, and the focus of this study is to explore international faculty’s teaching and research activities, the study concentrates on analyzing the data from the sections of General Work Situation and Activities, Teaching, Research, and Personal Background.

4.3.2

Main Characteristics of Respondents

As for descriptive statistics of these respondents, by gender, like international faculty in many other countries, there were more male (73.6%) than female faculty (26.4%) in Japanese universities. By country of origin, as indicated in Fig. 4.2, the greatest number of international faculty came from China (22.2%), followed by those from the USA (18.8 %), Korea (13.2 %), the UK (8.2%), Canada (4.8%), Germany (3.8%), Australia (2.8%), France (1.8%), Taiwan (1.7%), and other countries and regions (22.9 %). Due to the fact that the proportions of international faculty from Canada, Germany, Australia, France, and Taiwan are much lower than the proportions of international faculty from China, Korea, the USA, the UK, and other countries and regions, the study practically Others, 22.7% Chinese, 22.2% Taiwanese, 1.7% French, 1.8% Australian, 2.8% Germany, 3.8%

American, 18.8%

Canadian, 4.8% British, 8.2% Korean, 13.2% Fig. 4.2 Distribution of international faculty by country of origin

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categorizes the composition of international faculty into five groups: those from China, the USA, Korea, the UK, and Other. By academic rank, as shown in Table 4.1, the largest numbers are Professors (40.4%), followed by Lecturers (31.1%), Associate Professors (26.2%), and Other (2.3%). Generally speaking, it suggests that a majority of international faculty were high-level academics. Across the four groups of international faculty, the largest numbers of Professors are Chinese (42.0 %), followed by Korean (38.3%), American (37.6%), and British (37.4%). Further, by country of origin within the four groups, the second largest numbers of Chinese faculty were Lecturers (33.3%), while the numbers of Associate Professors accounted for the second largest category of Korean faculty (31.1 %), American (35.0%), and British faculty (32.3%). By university sector (Table 4.2), the largest numbers of international faculty were in private universities (59.0%), followed by those in national universities (33.6%) and local public universities (7.5%). One of the most important reasons for this is that, as mentioned above, the numbers of both private students and universities accounted for the largest proportion of all Japan’s higher education enrollments and universities. However, the distribution of international faculty by country of origin among the three sectors of universities was different. By sector, the largest numbers of Chinese faculty worked in national universities (46.5%), followed by those in private universities (43.8%). In contrast, the largest numbers of the Korean (56.4 %), the American (66.2%), the British faculty (74.7%), and Other (53.9%) were attached Table 4.1 Distribution of international faculty by academic rank and country of origin Nationality Chinese Korean American British Other Average

Professor 116 42.00% 64 38.30% 85 37.60% 37 37.40% 125 27.30% 40.40%

Table 4.2 Distribution of international faculty by sector and country of origin

Associate professor 66 23.90% 52 31.10% 79 35.00% 32 32.30% 135 29.50% 26.20%

Nationality Chinese Korean American British Others Total

Lecturer 91 33.00% 49 29.30% 60 26.50% 26 26.30% 195 42.60% 31.10%

National 46.5% 33.8% 27.2% 18.7% 41.6% 33.6%

Other 3 1.10% 2 1.20% 2 0.90% 4 4.00% 3 0.70% 2.30%

Total 276 100.00% 167 100.00% 226 100.00% 99 100.00% 45 S 100.00% 100.00%

Local public 9.7% 9.8% 6.7% 6.7% 4.5% 7.5%

Private 43.8% 56.4% 66.2% 74.7% 53.9% 59.0%

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to private universities. Further, by sector of universities and country of origin, while the largest numbers of the Chinese faculty worked in national universities, the largest numbers of the British faculty were employed in private universities. Table 4.3 shows the distribution of international faculty in research universities and nonresearch universities. After the “Other” category, Chinese faculty (23.5%) formed the largest group in research universities, followed by the British (16%), Korean (15 %), and the America faculty (13.8%). On average, only 19.9% of international faculty belonged to research universities: the large majority of them worked in nonresearch universities (80.1%). By disciplinary distribution (Table 4.4), the largest number of international faculty was found in the Social sciences (21.5%), followed by those from Engineering (18.0%), Humanities (17.6%), Health and Medical sciences (14.4%), Life sciences (10.3%), and Natural sciences (7.6%). As mentioned in Table 4.2, since more than half of them worked in private universities in which the largest enrolments are found in the social sciences, it is easy to infer why the largest numbers were in the social sciences. However, by country of origin, significant differences can be confirmed between different countries. For example, while the largest number of the Chinese faculty was employed in Engineering (32.2%), the largest number of the

Table 4.3 Distribution of international faculty by type of university Type Research Nonresearch

Chinese 51 23.5% 166 76.5%

Korean 20 15.0% 113 85.0%

American 27 13.8% 168 86.2%

British 12 16.0% 63 84.0%

Other 85 23.7% 273 76.3%

Total 195 19.9% 783 80.1%

Table 4.4 Distribution of international faculty by discipline and country of origin

Nationality Chinese Korean American British Other Total

Humanities 53 19.2% 30 18.1% 101 44.9% 50 51.0% 128 28.0% 583 17.6%

Social sciences 66 23.9% 57 34.3% 66 29.3% 27 27.6% 118 25.8% 712 21.5%

Natural sciences 12 4.3% 6 3.6% 9 4.0% 4 4.1% 34 7.4% 253 7.6%

Life sciences 14 5.1% 12 7.2% 4 1.8% 3 3.1% 22 4.8% 343 10.3%

Engineering 89 32.2% 36 21.7% 7 3.1% 2 2.0% 94 20.6% 596 18.0%

Health medical sciences 29 10.5% 8 4.8% 5 2.2% 1 1.0% 20 4.4% 479 14.4%

Other 13 4.7% 17 10.2% 33 14.7% 11 11.2% 41 9.0% 349 10.5%

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Table 4.5 Final degree of international faculty by country of origin

Nationality Chinese Korean American British Other Total

Bachelor 0 0.0% 6 3.6% 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 8 1.8% 89 2.7%

Master 25 9.1% 19 11.4% 101 44.9% 48 48.5% 93 20.4% 592 17.8%

Doctor 250 90.9% 142 85.0% 124 55.1% 51 51.5% 356 77.9% 2643 79.5%

Korean faculty was in Social sciences (34.3%), while the largest numbers of both the American (44.9%) and the British faculty (28.0%) stayed in Humanities. When examining the international faculty by final degree (Table 4.5), in total, the majority were doctoral-degree holders (79.5%), followed by those with master degrees (17.8%); only 2.7% of them had bachelor degrees. This is true in the case of all five groups. Among the Chinese faculty, over 90.9% held doctoral degrees. This was followed by the Korean faculty of whom 85% held doctoral degrees, 55.1% of the American faculty, and 51.5% of the British faculty. This is largely because a vast majority of both American and British faculty came from humanities in private universities. In most cases, their major responsibility is the provision of English language lectures for undergraduate students, and they were not required to hold doctoral degrees when being recruited.

4.3.3

Perceptions of Teaching and Research, and Overall Professional Environment

Regarding international faculty’ preferences, as Table 4.6 reveals, interestingly, in general despite the largest numbers of international faculty stayed in nonresearch universities, nearly 70% of them revealed a preference for research (68.8%); only 31.2% of them answered that their interest lay primarily in teaching. However, by country of origin, while more of both the American (65.0%) and the British faculty (53.1%) confirmed that their preferences primarily lay in teaching, more of both the Chinese (69.3%) and Korean faculty (74.1%) expressed a preference primarily for research. With respect to international faculty’s satisfaction with their current overall professional environment (Table 4.7), because half of them answered with “High” and “Very high,” and only 23.8% of them answered with “Very low” and “Low,” more numbers of the international faculty seem to be satisfied with their current

4 International Faculty at Japanese Universities: Main Findings from. . . Table 4.6 Teaching or research preference

Nationality Chinese Korean American British Other Total

Primarily in teaching 84 30.7% 43 25.9% 147 65.0% 51 53.1% 167 36.5% 1036 31.2%

55 Primarily in research 190 69.3% 123 74.1% 79 35.0% 45 46.9% 290 63.5% 2283 68.8%

Table 4.7 Level of satisfaction with overall professional environment*** Satisfaction level Nationality Chinese Korean American British Other Total

Very low

Low

Average

High

Very high

7 2.5% 10 6.0% 8 3.6% 8 8.1% 23 5.1% 232 7.0%

20 7.3% 24 14.4% 31 13.8% 14 14.1% 47 10.4% 560 16.8%

94 34.2% 39 23.4% 48 21.3% 28 28.3% 119 26.2% 869 26.1%

107 38.9% 70 41.9% 92 40.9% 38 38.4% 168 37.0% 1254 37.7%

47 17.1% 24 14.4% 46 20.4% 11 11.1% 97 21.4% 410 12.3%

***p