Can a doctoral degree be completed faster overseas than domestically? Evidence from Taiwanese doctorates

Does Holding a Postdoctoral Position Bring Benefits for Advancing to Academia?

“…Around 88% of Taiwanese pupils hold a master's degree before entering a doctoral program, while only 12% have a bachelor's degree only. Thus, the entire learning process towards obtaining a PhD degree in higher education for Taiwanese students lasts approximately 10.4 years, 19 which is close to that in Hoffer et al ( 2006) -the median time of all fields was 10.1 years from a bachelor's to a doctorate for those U.S. doctoral degree recipients in 2003.…”

“…With the deregulation of the education system in the early '90s, 5 the number of PhD recipients in Taiwan has dramatically increased from 410 (1989) to 3, 846 (2010) over the past 20 years, an amazing growth exceeding 800%. 6 Meanwhile, the number of students enrolled in PhD programs in Taiwan has also expanded sharply from 3, 799 in 1989 to 34, 178 in 2010 (Lin and Chiu, 2014). The existing job vacancies in both the private and public sectors are making it difficult to accommodate the new PhDs.…”

Mobility and Research Performance of Academics in City-Based Higher Education Systems

“…However, interest in the topic has grown in Asia and it is attracting the attention of researchers and policymakers alike. Thus far, studies on the topic in Asia have mainly focused on assessing state-sponsored 'reverse brain drain' policies, such as China's Thousand Talents Plan (e.g., Yang and Marini, 2019;Lu and Zhang, 2015), or on how Asian academics that have done their doctoral studies abroad perform in relation to those trained in their home country (Lin and Chiu, 2014). Only a few have considered the association between this educational mobility and the current research activities of academics (see Shin et al, 2014).…”

Using egocentric analysis to investigate professional networks and productivity of graduate students and faculty in life sciences in Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan

“…As such, the Singaporean graduate students in science spend more time on research than the U.S. students. Compared to these two countries, Taiwan’s graduate curriculum in science is heavily patterned after U.S. institutions given that most faculty and professors in Taiwan have obtained their doctoral degrees in the U.S. [ 33 ].…”