Academic Development Of Returned Scholars And The Influence Of Academic Relationship On It

In the last three decades,thousands of Chinese students going abroad and pursuing academic degrees overseas.Recently,with various talent policies and strategies attracting these group of scholars back to China,the number of Chinese scholars returning from overseas soars dramatically.Academic relationship is an important component of faculty's structure.Returning scholars received systematic academic training at overseas universities,with profound professional knowledge and relatively broad international perspective,they are well-informed the international forefront of scientific development in their research areas.Compared with the domestically trained peers,returned scholars has better international academic networks.Thus,it is of great significance to shift the focus of the study to the academic relationship of returned scholars.However,current research has not fully paid attention to the academic relationship of returned scholars at Chinese universities.Against this background,using a mixed method,this research aims at exploring returned scholars' status quo of academic development and how academic relationship influencing their academic development at Chinese universities.In the quantitative research section,this study conducts a survey and 359 returnees from 21 universities in Shanghai participate it;in the qualitative research section,10 returned scholars with overseas experience participate the interviews.Results indicate that returned scholars have confidence on their research ability,while they are unsatisfied with their performance in gaining competitive research grants and in publication respectively;the current research environment and evaluation system in general,the academic support provided by the faculty,as well as the familiarity with discourse system have important influence on their academic development;the academic relationship has no significant impact on returnees' academic development;the frequency of contact with supervisors abroad is positively related to the academic development of returnees,but contacting domestic supervisors and those students under the same supervisors both domestically and overseas has no significant influence on returnees' professional development.The research further suggests that universities should make the recruitment policy widely open to all candidates and establish a competitive talent selection mechanism;returned scholars should keep frequent contacts with supervisors abroad,maintain international academic network,and actively collaborate with colleagues to expand domestic academic network.