Hwa-hyun Min and Jin Tao
Introduction
Recognizing the importance of academic quality assurance, South Korea and China have led higher education institutions to develop and utilize faculty recruitment strategies. This is because it contributes not only to achieve institutional goals, but also to improve effectiveness and efficiency of their performance. One of the key factors that determines quality of products and service provided by a university is the competence of the professors they employ. With the aim of attaining institutional goals as well as enhancing effectiveness and efficiency of performance, a majority of East Asian higher education institutions have increasingly paid attention to develop and adopt faculty recruitment strategies.
The purpose of this chapter is to describe general trends and limitations of East Asian tertiary education via two case studies: Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in South Korea and Tsinghua University in China. The institutions were chosen in consideration of the representative roles that South Korea and China hold in the East Asian higher education market as well as two universities' domestic prestige and international reputations. Both of them have also shown specific characteristics in their recruitment strategies. In particular, findings indicated that recruitment travel, incentives, inbreeding and networks are strategic commonalities that KAIST and Tsinghua University share. Additionally, they have been faced with similar challenges such as a reliance on personal connections and inbreeding, an absence of established planning mechanisms, and unproven competence of faculty. As a conclusion, suggestions will be made to overcome challenges including long-term strategic designs, and expanded recruitment scope.
Concepts of Faculty Recruitment Strategies
Faculty recruitment strategies refer to channels and incentives utilized to employ academic staff before, during and after the hiring process. Hindrawn (n.d.) categorized them depending on recruitment sites whereas Wang (2006) did it by methods. The former was initially designed for international student, yet if applying the same mechanisms to employ academic staff, they also can be seen as faculty recruitment strategies. Apart from their idea, Chapman (2009) and Deng (2013) mentioned “inbreeding” as another type of faculty recruitment strategies.
Hindrawn (n.d.) saw that there are three kinds of recruitment strategies. The “armchair recruitment” indicates activities that can be done at the office to invite teaching staff. In contrast to the past when advertising and mass mailing were commonly used, contemporary universities are able to run their own websites and to offer a virtual college fair for their potential employees. Collaborating with foreign schools has also been prevalent since overseas counselors and advising centers provide information on qualified academics. In conjunction, “backyard recruitment” takes place locally to serve the same purpose. As its literal meaning implies, “recruitment travel” is a trip planned at an institutional level to entice scholars who have good reputations. The travel can cover from domestic to international regions depending on its purpose. For a face to face recruiting, universities outreach to other locations even abroad. Taking part in university fairs is a practical way of exploring plentiful candidates for the position as well.
Wang (2006) classified the recruitment strategies into five types by recruitment methods: publicity strategy, information spread strategy, public relations strategy, communication strategy and program implementation strategy. Publicity of the university’s recruitment always has a long-term strategic goal; based on the general goal, the university conducts advertising work to build the image and create positive public opinion environment eventually expand the university’s influence. The “information spread strategy” plays the role of connecting employer and employee in the recruitment activities. The key is to use different media to attract potential employee's attention and then lead the candidates to support and finally join the university. The “public relations strategy” underlines the established relationship during recruitment; that is, the recruiters as representative of university should handle properly the relationship with the employees and even with the candidates who do not get in at last. The “communication strategy” emphasizes both written and oral communications, namely the proper way and proper timing to communicate and good communication skills. Recruitment activities always have certain procedures; therefore, the “program implementation strategy” stresses that there should be a corresponding strategy for each stage.
Chapman (2009) believed that inbreeding is a conventional recruitment strategy in many East Asian countries. “Inbreeding” demonstrates the practice that universities tend to employ their own graduates or hire internally by selecting from their existing pool of staff. Faculty and graduates are familiar with each other; the established connection makes the hiring more cost-effective, which explains why inbreeding is widely applied.
General Trends and Challenges of Faculty Recruitment Strategies: The Cases of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and Tsinghua University
Chapman (2009) identified common recruitment practice in East Asian tertiary education, of which pertinent to faculty recruitment strategies shared by Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and Tsinghua University are going to be written in this part.
Firstly, KAIST and Tsinghua University have a tendency to prefer to hire scholars who studied abroad (Chapman, 2009), which is the reason why two institutions often take recruitment travels. Secondly, they offer a variety of strong incentives to acquire competent academics. It is likely to motivate potential employees to decide to work at a certain institution. Thirdly, inbreeding is frequently selected as their hiring route so that they have many professors who graduated from home university (Chapman, 2009). Lastly, in both universities, networks play a critical role in exploring and recruiting faculty.
Case Studies
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and Tsinghua University are the first and top science and technology research universities in South Korea and China respectively. In 2014, KAIST was 51st in the world according to the QS world university ranking and was 52nd in the Times Higher Education world university ranking (QS website, 2015). Tsinghua University was placed 47th in the QS world university ranking and 49th in the Times Higher Education world university ranking (QS website, 2015).
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Faculty recruitment strategies of KAIST probed in this chapter were mostly devised under the leadership of one previous university president who was in office from July, 2006 to February, 2013. His approach to faculty hiring can be summarized as searching for competent young academics and foreign professors who have inter-disciplinary backgrounds (Jung, 2009). Since increasing the number of full-time faculty was one of the core objectives, KAIST employed more than 100 academics between 2006 and 2013 (KAIST, 2007). In order to secure world class scholars in its research priority fields such as natural science, mathematics, physics, biology, health care system and green energy (KAIST website, 2015), KAIST went through an experimental recruitment phase.
When hiring academics, KAIST focused more on their potentiality rather than feasible performance such as publications and experience. For instance, the first foreign female full-time professor and the youngest mathematics professor at KAIST were provided their teaching positions when they were still Ph.D. students in their twenties (Kaistar, 2011). The latter indeed was a unprecedented case as she neither wrote any thesis on Science Citation Index (SCI) journals nor worked as Postdoc (Kaistar, 2011). They were discovered through recruitment travels to the United States (Kaistar, 2011). No matter where talented academics were, KAIST sent the interviewers to check their abilities to research and teach (Kaistar, 2011). Also, when necessary, the head of the university accompanied the interviewers for finalized the decision on site with the effect being reduced recruitment process time (Kaistar, 2011).
KAIST arranged incentives for employees completely based on their abilities by means of a merit system, a salary increase and a distinguished professor system (Kaistar, 2011). Generous financial support for research projects, laboratories and private apartments was an attractive condition for the candidates to accept the job offer from KAIST (Kaistar, 2011). The amount of start-up funding that KAIST sponsored for new faculty was, more or less, comparable to that of Stanford University (Choi, 2007). Furthermore, KAIST granted substantial responsibilities to new academics as hiring incentives, notwithstanding their age or their length of employment at the university. One example is a professor who was appointed dean and given authority over appointing professors, managing curriculum, and the departmental budget immediately after he was scouted (Kim & Kim, 2008). Another scholar in his thirties was awarded tenure after only working at KAIST for a year (Kim & Kim, 2008).
Meanwhile, KAIST took advantage of its internal and worldwide networks. When screening profiles of its faculty, it is noticeable that KAIST filled a considerable number of teaching positions with alumni and foreign professors. It seems that individual networks, in particular, greatly affected KAIST’s international partnerships. As the president had graduated from and worked for Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), his connections performed as primary human resource pools for KAIST. In fact, the quantity of researchers coming from MIT was escalated. In 2006, 8 out of newly recruited full-time professors were from MIT; in 2007, it was 5 out of 26 (Oh, 2007).
Tsinghua University
In order to build Tsinghua into a world-class comprehensive university with high-level academic achievement, a large number of elites in teaching and research are called for. Key disciplinary fields, for instance, life science, medical science, material science, information technology, engineering, social science and humanity, take precedence in making the relevant academic disciplines become the top in worldwide rankings. To accomplish these goals, Tsinghua set its recruitment strategies on a program basis that accounted for different target groups. In each program, Tsinghua applies corresponding tactics such as different incentives and background requirements according to the audience it is aiming to attract.
Since 2006, Tsinghua has openly recruited staff worldwide (Sheng, 2008), a huge demand of academics with overseas backgrounds are called for. The Chang Jiang Scholar Program was designed to have scholars come to work and study at Tsinghua University and to support the university in attain a world-class ranking. It is hiring visiting professors who are actively engaged in teaching and researching at distinguished foreign universities. In another initiative, named 1000 Talents Program, international background is obligatory for candidates, which includes independent overseas working experience in famous international universities, research institutes or worldwide famous companies. In its sub-program targeted for young scholars under 40 with doctorate degrees, mostly the applicants should have overseas working experience for a minimum of 3 to 5 years (Tsinghua University, n.d.). During the general recruitment process, the employees with study or work experiences abroad have more advantages over other competitors. To this end, recruitment travel nowadays is playing a more and more important role as a strategy. However, because these programs put heavy emphasis on researchers’ potential in their research fields, special exemptions are permissible for those without overseas backgrounds. Nonetheless, allowances are only made when candidates have outstanding research achievements in their Ph.D. studies or in other areas.
Tsinghua University also implements incentives extensively as a method to generate fierce competition for employing the best academics. In the 100 Top Talent Program, successful candidates are provided with an amount of research funding up to 2 million yuan (around 300,000 euro) after being hired as his or her starting funds. In addition to their base monthly salaries, subsidies and bonuses, employed talents will obtain a job allowance special for 100 top talents during their full contract period (3 years), which is the same as the allowance given to full Tsinghua professors. Moreover, the university also provides newly hired professors with accommodation on campus at an affordable rental price. For the Chang Jiang Scholar Program, a research fund provided to the distinguished professor is up to 2 million yuan (300,000 euro). Allowance is provided to both distinguished professors and visiting professors, with an amount of 200,000 yuan/year (30,000 euro) and 30,000 yuan/month (4,000 euro) respectively. Housing is included as well; the distinguished professors are offered a three-bedroom apartment on campus to rent; the visiting professors can rent an apartment in Foreign Experts Building during their short stay in Tsinghua (Tsinghua University, n.d.).
In China, inbreeding is the main channel of recruitment. The university takes the pick of master and Ph.D. graduates; the professors are apt to nominate or retain their own students for a position (Deng, 2013). According to statistics by Wei (2005), the number of academic staff working at the university from which they graduated is 27.4%; 21.1% even work in the same program. In terms of the source of employees, like many other universities, Tsinghua employed its own graduates on a large scale; the Tsinghua Alumni Association is also well developed and gives support to recruitment. But, in the meantime as mentioned earlier, the demand for diversified applicants is growing and applicants with experience studying and working abroad are becoming more and more prevalent.
Challenges
As mentioned, KAIST and Tsinghua University have similarities in their recruitment strategies and practices. At the same time, several limitations have commonly been observed. In short, they both heavily rely on inbreeding (Chapman, 2009) and personal connections (Lai & Lo, 2007); lack of long-standing human resource plans; and capability of faculty is unproven.
Although exploiting their own networks as a recruitment channel seems helpful to save resources in a short period, it turned out to cause far more loss in the long-term. Soler (2001) deemed that rates of academic productivity and academic inbreeding are negatively correlated. For the same reason, personal connections may restrict creativeness of disciplines. When it comes to organizational management, newly employed academics already have a close relationship with the professors who made the recommendation for them. Such circumstances have a tendency to form isolated cliques and favoritism, which are surely obstacles to an overall management of an institution.
The reasons for an absence of consistent human resource plans vary from both institutions because of their different national contexts. In Korea, tertiary institutions are expected to adapt to new policies every few years following an election cycle of the university head. On the other hand, in Chinese universities, the plan is just a simple combination of recruiting information reported by departments during the hiring period. It neither gives much thought to the long-term development goals to discipline, department and employees, nor considers the matching problem between the organizational culture and the candidates.
As a result of taking risks of investing in potentially successful researchers, it is uncertain whether all of them will be able to prove their competence as expected. If universities failed to choose the right person who they require, it would bring about choose the right person who they require, it would bring about turnover costs and waste of resources (Li et al., 2006). Still, it is hard to undervalue their efforts to retain young, would-be-prominent scholars. It also remains to be seen how effective they have been at catching visionary academic talents.
Suggestions
One proposal against recruiting through inbreeding and personal connections is broadening the recruitment scope. Universities should seek concrete ways to open their recruitment to wider audiences throughout society, hire people internationally and strengthen cooperation among universities. By ‘exporting’ one's own graduates to other higher education institutions and reciprocate by ‘importing’ faculty, tertiary institutions can raise their academic diversity. Besides employing ‘imported’ scholars, operating an international exchange program also can lead to positive outcomes as displayed in the continuous development of KAIST and Tsinghua University's visiting scholar programs (Sheng, 2008). A certain solution going beyond politics is necessary for Korean universities. They need to prepare a clear long-term human resource plan, in spite of the changes of the leadership, based on the institutional mission. Concerning Chinese universities, recruiters should first be aware of the qualifications required for their employees as well as the current status and future development of the position. The human resource scheme should be made in accordance with the university’s strategic plan. On this basis, in depth analyze of academic department structures and emerging trends are essential along with the development of recruitment strategies that serve institutional needs and various other local factors (Li et al., 2006).
Conclusion
Hiring qualified professors is a key issue of human resources management in Korean and Chinese higher education. Thus, it is essential for universities to design and adopt the most suitable faculty recruitment strategies. As their common practice and general trends presented, they have already been accustomed to using certain approaches. Still, there are a few challenges left that should be overcome on their own. To sum up, expanding horizons of employment on the basis of the long-term plan will be great benefits, not only for attracting prominent scholars, but also for enhancing the core competitiveness of tertiary institutions.
References
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