International academic mobility and innovation: a literature review

U.S. Visa and Immigration Policy Challenges: Explanations for Faculty Perceptions and Intent to Leave

United States (US) immigration policies have increasingly focused on national security resulting in universities experiencing declines in international student applications, constraints on international scholar employment, and complications facilitating international research collaborations. The COVID-19 pandemic brought additional travel restrictions, embassy closures, and health and safety concerns that exacerbated these challenges. Science mobility is critical for science education, training, competitiveness, and innovation. Using a representative sample of US and foreign-born scientists in three STEM fields, we explore how recent visa and immigration policies have shaped research collaborations, work with students and postdoctoral scholars, and intentions to leave. We use descriptive statistics, analysis of variance, and logistic regression and find academic scientists report disruptions from visa and immigration policies; negative impacts of immigration policies on US higher education; negative effects on recruitment and retention of international trainees; and increased intentions to leave the US driven by negative perceptions of immigration policy.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11162-023-09731-0.

Analyzing academic mobility of U.S. professors based on ORCID data and the Carnegie Classification

This paper uses two open science data sources—ORCID and the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education (CCIHE)—to identify tenure-track and tenured professors in the United States who have changed academic affiliations. Through a series of data cleaning and processing actions, 5,938 professors met the selection criteria of professorship and mobility. Using ORCID professor profiles and the Carnegie Classification, this paper reveals patterns of academic mobility in the United States from the aspects of institution types, locations, regions, funding mechanisms of institutions, and professors’ genders. We find that professors tended to move to institutions with higher research intensity, such as those with an R1 or R2 designation in the Carnegie Classification. They also tend to move from rural institutions to urban institutions. Additionally, this paper finds that female professors are more likely to move within the same geographic region than male professors and that when they move from a less research-intensive institution to a more research-intensive one, female professors are less likely to retain their rank or attain promotion.

Can Higher Education, Economic Growth and Innovation Ability Improve Each Other?

This study argues that the coupling between higher education, economic growth, and innovation ability is of great significance for regional sustainable development. Through the experience of Jiangsu Province in China, this study establishes a coupling coordination evaluation index system and applies the coupling coordination model to evaluate interactive relationships among the three. It finds that during 2007–2017, the level of coupling of 13 prefecture-level cities in Jiangsu was increasing over time, which fully verified the previous scholars’ view that the three can improve each other over a long period. However, this study finds that there are obvious differences within Jiangsu. Inadequate investment in higher education has become a crucial constraint on sustainable economic growth in northern and central Jiangsu, which are backward regions of Jiangsu. By contrast, in southern Jiangsu, which is the advanced region of Jiangsu, although the resources of higher education are abundant the growth of innovation ability cannot support sustained economic growth well. Thus, the quality of higher education should be improved to meet the needs of the innovation-based economy. Accordingly, cross-regional cooperation and balanced investment in higher education are the keys to practicing a balanced and sustained regional development. The results of this study’s coupling coordination analysis and evaluation can serve as a reference for governments in enhancing regional sustainable development.

Mobility, Knowledge Transfer, and Innovation: An Empirical Study on Returned Chinese Academics at Two Research Universities

This study provides an in-depth analysis of the effects of academic mobility on higher education innovation through an empirical study on returned Chinese academics at two research universities in China. Based on data obtained through document analysis and semi-structured interviews with 15 academic returnees, this paper aims to examine the everyday interactions between individual returnees and their environment, with a focus on exploring how different institutional contexts affect returnees’ capacity for integration and innovation. It finds that returned academics play an important role in promoting higher education innovation in China through mobilizing their transnational capital and resources. However, their capacity to innovate is largely subject to their working environment. Evidence from the study suggests that differing institutional contexts make a substantial difference to the reintegration experiences of returnees and to their contributions to institutional changes. This paper provides a window into the changing institutional environment in China and the academic lives of returnees there. It also provides important implications for talent policy decisions.