![]() In traditionally educational resource-strapped parts of the country, some schools offer up to 10 times the average local professorial salary to talent-plan awardees, creating huge salary gaps within faculties in the process. ![]() ![]() Among equally ranked professors at select Shanghai universities, Changjiang Scholars-recognized experts earn more than twice as much as ordinary professors, and are eligible for up to 8 million yuan in housing subsidies. In other words, wearing a talent hat to the table can make a big difference in job searches and salary negotiations. And because the number of talent hats at a university can affect everything from the school’s ranking to enrollment, subject evaluations, and societal reputation, schools are incentivized to chase after as many talents as possible. More than nine out of 10 respondents said they were dissatisfied with their salaries, and nearly half believed that what they earned was insufficient to meet their family’s basic consumption needs while also making housing payments.Īs part of a 2006 higher education reform, universities began tying scholars’ base salaries to their academic output, research performance, and involvement in talent programs. ![]() According to a 2014 survey on the living conditions of young university faculty jointly conducted by Tencent and the human resources site M圜OS, 73% of teachers at undergraduate institutions reported earning less than 5,000 yuan a month. In 2017, leaked salary data for professors at Fudan University in Shanghai caused a stir online when it showed that a number of teachers at the school - one of China’s best, in one of its most expensive cities - were making less than 200,000 yuan a year. Yet even with the proliferating talent hats, salaries for professors, especially those without talent hats, have not kept pace with the cost of living. Together, they have attracted or retained thousands of skilled researchers and technicians to work in China. There are currently at least 200 such schemes - and corresponding talent hats - spread across the country. Local governments, universities, and research organizations around the country quickly began copying this model. At a time when even a top university professor with almost 40 years of teaching experience could earn less than 10,000 yuan a year, this was a massive windfall. In 1998, the Ministry of Education and the Hong Kong-based charitable organization Li Ka Shing Foundation teamed up to launch the Changjiang Scholars Program, which sought to strengthen China’s domestic research capabilities by providing worthy honorees with a 100,000 yuan yearly subsidy - since raised to a maximum of 200,000 yuan - and access to research funding. At the time, the low pay of university professors and researchers was a widely recognized and often criticized phenomenon: Some academic jobs paid even less than blue collar work, and many scholars left academia or took their talents abroad. In the 1990s, only a handful of professors had honorary titles - “academician,” for example - and these were rarely tied to pay. The current obsession with talent hats is a relatively recent phenomenon. Recently, however, talent hats have come under increasing scrutiny for warping scholastic incentives and turning the ivory tower into a veritable vanity fair. Originally aimed at attracting, retaining, and motivating high-level scientific research personnel, these titles typically come with hefty stipends that help to supplement often meager academic salaries. The catch: They must come wearing the right “talent hat.”Īt Chinese universities, “talents” - officialese for highly accomplished academics, researchers, or professionals - are often ranked according to so-called talent hats: honorary titles awarded by various levels of government and academia in recognition of an individual’s academic exploits. This March, Ningxia Normal University, a small school in the remote, northwestern Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, made headlines for offering so-called high-level talents up to 1 million yuan ($145,000) a year in salary, up to 20 million yuan in startup grants, and resettlement allowances as high as 2 million yuan to join the school’s faculty. China’s universities are in the midst of a full-blown talent war.
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