Higher Education

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-00383-7

Attractiveness of jobs in academia:

a cross-country perspective

Jürgen Janger 1 2
& David F. J. Campbell & Anna Strauss
1

# Springer Nature B.V. 2019

Abstract
Asymmetric international mobility of highly talented scientists is well documented. We contribute
to the explanation of this phenomenon, looking at the Bcompetitiveness^ of research universities in
terms of being able to attract talented early stage researchers. We propose a new hybrid quantitative-
qualitative methodology for comparing the top tier of national higher education systems: We
characterise a country’s capability to offer attractive entry positions into academic careers building
upon the results of a large scale experiment on the determinants of job choice in academia, using a
mix of data and expert-based assessment. We examine salary level, quality of life, career perspec-
tives, research organisation, balance between teaching and research, funding and the probability of
working with high quality peers. Our results in the form of a job attractiveness index indicate that
overall, the US research universities offer the most attractive jobs for early stage researchers,
consistent with the asymmetric flow of talented scientists to the US. By comparison with rankings
that use survey results or bibliometric data, our methodology offers the advantage of comparing
structures and factors shaping the process of research rather than results of research. The findings are
hence directly relevant for policies aiming at improving the attractiveness of research universities.

Keywords Brain drain . Competitiveness in science . Comparative higher education . Academic

labour market . Job attractiveness index

Introduction

Talented scientists are likely to be internationally mobile (Hunter et al. 2009). International
mobility is often asymmetric, as migration flows by scientists from many regions of the world,
not only Europe, to American research universities are well documented (Docquier and

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-

00383-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

* Jürgen Janger
Juergen.janger@wifo.ac.at

1
WIFO – Austrian Institute of Economic Research, Arsenal 20, A-1030 Vienna, Austria
2
Department for Continuing Education Research and Educational Technologies, Danube University
Krems, Krems an der Donau, Austria
 Higher Education

Rapoport 2009; Grogger and Hanson 2013; Laudel 2005). This is likely to impact on
university research performance, and more generally on the European economy and society
(Foray and Lissoni 2010; Mowery and Sampat 2005; Salter and Martin 2001).
As a result, being able to offer attractive jobs to academic researchers matters for countries to
achieve Bbrain circulation^ rather than Bbrain drain^. But how can such attractiveness be measured
or compared between countries? In this article, we build on the results of a recent study on the
determinants of academic job choice (Janger and Nowotny 2016) to classify higher education
systems according to their capability to offer attractive jobs to academics, focusing on early stage
academic positions in research universities. We propose a new hybrid qualitative-quantitative
framework which assigns scores to each area of relevance for the capability to offer attractive jobs,
culminating in a summary index of job attractiveness. As every country will have a range of
different jobs even within research universities, our attractiveness scores can be understood as
indicating the probability that a researcher applying for a job in a specific country, without knowing
the institution hosting the job, will be offered an Battractive^ job.
Our assessment methodology is necessarily broad and involves expert judgement as higher
education systems – even limited to research universities - are peculiar. We take account of this
by submitting our results to higher education experts of each country examined, as well as
using possible ranges for the Btrue^ values of our attractiveness scores. While there are
considerable difficulties in comparing higher education systems (Teichler 2014), our advantage
is that we use a limited set of criteria which were confirmed as relevant in a large-scale study
(Janger and Nowotny 2016).
While we acknowledge our Bbird’s eye^-perspective, we think that there are valuable insights to
be gained from comparing a segment of higher education systems in such a structured, but also
Bexperimental^ way. By contrast with country or university rankings based on survey results or
bibliometrics, our approach compares structures and factors shaping the process of research rather
than results of research. As a result, it can identify best practice and directly pinpoint areas where
policies to improve attractiveness can make a difference.
Our results indicate that among the countries examined, US research universities overall
seemed to be most able to offer attractive jobs to early stage researchers at the time of data
collection. Basically, the US offers a triplet of advantages which are difficult to emulate in the
short term: attractive salaries, attractive working conditions and high quality peers. Especially
the latter works as a factor of inertia, as talented researchers will attract more talented
researchers. Change will need time and certainly not less attractive working conditions than
in the US if EU countries want to achieve symmetric researcher mobility.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: Assessing the capability of countries to
offer attractive jobs introduces the relevant literature and then describes our methodology and data.
Section Index of job attractiveness presents our main results and some robustness analysis.
Section Discussion: options for improving the attractiveness of jobs discusses some options for
improving job attractiveness and section Conclusions concludes.

Assessing the capability of countries to offer attractive jobs

Mobility and job choice determinants: a review of the literature

Several studies using a variety of surveys among researchers agree that voluntary international
mobility choices by individual researchers are driven by career and research considerations
Higher Education

(Franzoni et al. 2012; Geuna 2015; IDEA Consult 2013a, 2013b): researchers move because
they aspire for better conditions for their research, such as working with leading scientists, or
gaining more autonomy over their research agendas; career paths leading to a tenured position
are also very attractive. By contrast, once established at a prestigious research institution,
researchers are less likely to move back to their country of origin and if they do, the motivation
is rather related to personal or family reasons (Franzoni et al. 2012; IDEA Consult 2013a,
2013b). This also implies that international mobility is higher for younger researchers (Laudel
2005), who are less motivated by higher salaries than by good conditions for research.
These survey-based results on individual motivations for mobility could however not establish
the relative importance of various reasons to move, or how the existing job offers in various
countries correspond to researcher motivations: are researchers willing to trade off various job
features such as perspectives for tenure, working with leading scientists or research autonomy? How
do they perceive the attractiveness of existing Breal^ jobs which will always be a mixture of more
and less attractive features? Some results for these questions were found by Janger and Nowotny
(2016), who asked more than 10.000 early and later stage researchers (ESR and LSR) worldwide in
a quasi-experimental approach to choose a job among three randomly allocated job offers. ESR
correspond to researchers in the career stages R1 (PhD-students) and R2 (PhD-holders, post-docs)
as defined by the European Commission (2011). LSR correspond to established researchers in the
career stages R3 (associate professors) and R4 (full professors, leading researchers).
The job offers consisted of 12 attributes, split in 3 broad categories: remuneration, country
characteristics and working conditions. From the chosen jobs, the impact of the job attributes on
the probability of job choice can be estimated. Importantly, the results of the paper also allow for
calculating trade-offs between various job attributes – e.g., how much salary researchers are
willing to forego in exchange for attractive job attributes such as a high research autonomy and
working with leading scientists, or how much more salary they will ask for to compensate for
less attractive job features such as e.g. a high teaching load. Table 1 shows the impact of a
selection of various job attributes for ESR – those which serve as a basis for our comparison of
countries – both verbally and on the odds or likelihood of choosing a job in percent. E.g.,
working with peers who are among the top 5 worldwide would increase the likelihood of a job
being chosen by 82% relative to a job where peers are not among the top 50 worldwide.
According to these results, ESR perceive as attractive those jobs which offer career
perspectives and research autonomy, in short early independence with a career path purely
dependent on research performance. In terms of financial autonomy, ESR prefer jobs where
they can obtain funding by the university without strings attached to jobs where they have to
negotiate funding with their chair-holder or university management.
Attractive jobs also require a fair distribution of tasks between teaching and research to be
attractive; the results suggest a weekly total of 10 h teaching for ESR. ESR in addition want
attractive grants systems and cooperation with high-quality peers, the quality of life in the
country of the chosen job must not be worse than in the current country of residence so that
country characteristics or the country context matter(s). Salaries do matter for ESR, however
less than for LSR; and, as noted, in results not shown here, ESR show Bwillingness-to-pay^ for
attractive job features such as research autonomy or tenure.
Differences among respondents based on gender and field of science are overall limited.
Female researchers are somewhat more responsive to differences in country characteristics
(such as quality of life), to the availability of funding and to the opportunity of working with
leading scientists. The availability of funding matters more to researchers from natural or
medical sciences than for researchers in the humanities.
 Higher Education

Table 1 Impact of selected job attributes on the probability of job choice by early stage researchers

Verbal interpretation of results Quantitative impact

Remuneration
Net salary p.a. (incl. bonuses): the more the better Net salary p.a. (+10.000 Euro) 36%

Country characteristics
Quality of life: must not be worse in country of new job Quality of life worse −51%
Quality of life better 13%

Working Conditions
Career perspectives I: Length of initial contract: the Career perspectives I: length of initial 17%
longer, the better (up to 6 years) contract (+ 2 additional years)
Career perspectives II: Extension of initial contract: Career perspectives II: 3 years contract 72%
tenure track contingent only on research performance extension after positive evaluation
very attractive Career perspectives II: tenure based on 97%
research performance and on
availability of position
Career perspectives II: tenure based on 115%
research performance only
Research autonomy: Time for own research Research autonomy (+ 50 percentage 38%
(independence) - the more, the better points)
Research autonomy (+ 100 percentage 76%
points)
University-internal funds for research (accessibility - Financial autonomy (funding by −12%
financial autonomy): funds provided by university university relative to negotiation
without strings attached very attractive with chair-holder)
Financial autonomy (funding by quality −18%
proposal to university relative to
negotiation with chair-holder)
University-external funds for research - good availability Availability of short-term grants good, 14%
of short-term and long-term basic research grants im- of long-term grants poor
portant feature of attractive jobs Availability of short- and long-term 32%
grants good
Quality of peers (research reputation): the better, the more Peers among top-50 worldwide 30%
attractive a job Peers among top-25 worldwide 45%
Peers among top-5 worldwide 82%
Split between teaching and research tasks: a fruitful Balance between teaching and research −14%
balance including approx. 10 h of weekly total teaching (+20 percentage points teaching)
load in a 40 h week

Janger and Nowotny (2016)

Methodology and data: Building a structured framework for country comparison

To translate the study results into an assessment of the capability of national higher education
systems to offer attractive jobs to early stage researchers, we have developed a framework allowing
for the calculation of a summary index, going significantly beyond existing efforts to compare the
differences between countries in terms of prospects for young faculty.1 We have complemented the
job attributes in one important aspect: we add the ability to teach in English, as this is a
precondition in all non-English speaking countries to be able to offer jobs to academics worldwide.
1
Finkelstein et al. 2015 build an analytical framework to provide country profiles informing future prospects for
young faculty in 10 selected countries. They use demand and supply prospects as well as hiring processes. Most
related to our framework is the analysis of quality of demand, which consists of compensation, career paths and
academic freedom; however they do not include the quality of peers, funding and do not measure academic
freedom or the teaching load.
Higher Education

Jobs which would require an academic to first learn a new language are certainly less attractive
than a job where teaching in English is possible. This may be regarded as unfair, but it is a major
advantage of English speaking countries for their potential recruitment pool.
What we are looking out for is the main type of job a PhD-holder or post-doc would apply for,
or a first employment position in an academic setting, e.g. an assistant professor in the US; these
jobs were chosen based on our analysis of the national higher education systems, reviewed by our
country experts (section Sources and country experts for country analysis). Table 2 shows the
criteria retained to compare countries’ higher education systems and their sources. Some criteria
are based on purely statistical data, others are based on qualitative analysis of legal frameworks and
regulations using the existing comparative higher education literature, own desk research (e.g.
university websites) and country experts (section Sources and country experts for country
analysis). Our results on attractiveness are hence not related to any perceptions by researchers
on attractiveness, but come from Breal^ data and regulations. For most of the data, the year of
reference is 2013. The time lag between data collection and the most recently available research
performance measures enables us to relate the attractiveness of academic jobs to subsequent
research performance as a robustness analysis of our proposed framework (section Job
attractiveness and research performance).
Table 2 Framework for the assessment of job attractiveness

Area Components Source Year

Salary Net salary p.a., in USD PPP Statistical 2011

Quality of life Quality of life Index Statistical 2013
Career Perspectives Share of tenured researchers below Statistical/Qualitative 2010
the level of full professor
Ability to teach in English Qualitative 2013
Existence of tenure track model 2013
Characteristics of tenure track model 2013
Recruitment for tenure track positions 2013
Research Organisation Research autonomy of assistant Qualitative 2013
at working unit level professor/first position of academic
career
Accessibility of university internal 2013
funding for ESR (financial autonomy
of ESR)
Organisation of working units 2013
(departmental vs. Chair-based)
Recruitment of assistant prof./entry 2013
position in academic career vs.
recruitment full professor
Balance teaching Average teaching load in hours per week Statistical/qualitative 2012
research Mechanism to adjust student numbers Qualitative 2013
to teaching capacity
ESR vs. LSR teaching load 2013
Funding Higher education funding per student in Statistical 2010
US PPP
Acceptance rates of basic research grant 2012, 2011:NL,
proposals DE, PL,
2009: IT
Predominance of university-internal 2011
sources of funding for research
Quality of peers Probability of working with high Statistical 2012
quality peers

Authors. A detailed description of the sources is in the online resource material

 Higher Education

In the following, we briefly describe each area of our main items for assessment. A full
wording of the criteria, a detailed account of the sources used to describe the countries and all
the statistical methodologies can be found as an online resource to this article.

Salaries

The inclusion of salary ranges is straightforward. We have separate data for ESR and LSR; as
we focus on ESR, we use the ESR data for the calculation of the index.

Country characteristics - quality of life

We use the OECD Better Life Index which consists of the categories housing, income, jobs,
community, education, environment, civic engagement, health, life satisfaction, safety and
work-life balance. We take the simple, unweighted average of all of these categories for each
country.

Career perspectives

We measure the prevalence of tenured employment contracts in academic career positions

below the position of full professor, which is usually tenured in all higher education systems.
BTenure^ refers to a continuous employment contract rather than to the strength of protection
against dismissal.
Moreover, we want to know if there is a tenure-track model in the countries under review
and what the characteristics of such a model are, including the recruitment of candidates and
whether tenure track is the dominant career path in research universities. The recruiting
element is a proxy for the Bquality^ of the tenure track model, as best-practice tenure-track
models will usually only be accessible via strict selection from amongst suitable candidates.
We define such a model as the option for ESR to be able to get an entry job with clear-cut
career perspectives, solely based on (research) performance evaluation. That means that young
researchers have the perspective of a permanent contract at a research university, given that
their research performance is evaluated positively. It is important to differentiate this tenure
track-model from the overall Btenure^-characteristic of higher education systems described
above. The latter refers to the share of academics in a tenured position, independent of how
they achieved such a position; the first to a particular career model, whereby fixed-term
researchers can enjoy clear career perspectives all the way up to full professor based on their
research performance.
An important determinant of career perspectives is the simple availability of jobs, whatever
their characteristics. We have no data on job openings relative to the number of job seeking
researchers. While we do use funding data as a proxy for job openings (section Funding), our
results should be regarded under the premise that there are actual job openings: they are more
relevant for the quality than for the quantity of jobs offered and can be interpreted as the
probability of being offered an attractive job on the condition that a job is being offered.2

2
It is well known that cohort effects matter for research careers, i.e. that the academic labour market conditions at
the time of entry of a cohort of academic researchers significantly impact on that cohort’s chances to make it to a
tenured position (Stephan 2012). Moreover, jobs must also be offered to applicants from outside of the university
rather than be filled by Binbreeding^.
Higher Education

Research organisation at the working unit level

We look at the level of research autonomy of ESR compared with full professors. This is likely
to be substantially determined by research organisation at the working unit level, where we
differentiate between a chair-based system in which the chair (full professor) has some form of
authority over ESR chair members and a department system, where assistant professors enjoy
in principle levels of research autonomy similar to full professors (Ben-David 1968; Clark
1983; Höhle 2015).
We use the similarity of recruitment procedures (in terms of selection standards) between
assistant (or equivalent) and full professors as a proxy for levels of autonomy, as similar
procedures are likely to be chosen if the assistant professor can conduct independent research
and contributes to the reputation of the university. This complements our qualitative assess-
ment of research organisation. For financial autonomy, we try to ascertain how ESR can access
university internal funding – are they dependent on a hierarchically superior chair-holder, do
they have to write a proposal for funding or does the university provide them with funding
without strings attached?

Balance between teaching and research

The balance between teaching and research significantly affects the chances of ESR to
successfully enter priority contests, i.e. to be the first to publish results of research
activities, bolstering claims to a tenured position and boosting career prospects
(Dasgupta and David 1994). We collect data from the MORE2-survey (IDEA Consult
2013a, 2013b) on average teaching load in hours per week. The results by Janger and
Nowotny (2016) suggest non-linearity, i.e. some teaching is an attractive job characteristic
presumably because researchers are genuinely interested in teaching and because it keeps
their interests broad, as well as giving access to PhD-students who may be potential
research contributors.
To assess whether there are big differences between disciplines, we use as a proxy the right
by universities to adjust student numbers to teaching capacity (admit students according to
Bseats^). In several European countries, universities cannot limit student intake. As a conse-
quence, there are study fields showing very poor teacher-student ratios, severely limiting
research time.
We also verify how teaching loads differ between ESR and LSR jobs, as especially for ESR
on fixed-term contracts – e.g. assistant professors trying to make a mark – it is important to
contain the teaching load, whereas for LSR on tenured contracts teaching load can increase,
also due to their higher experience.

Funding

First, we want to assess the overall funding of higher education systems as a proxy for total
available research funding. We choose OECD data on overall funding per student rather than
the survey-based data on the split between research and teaching funds which we have found
to be questionable. Overall funding per student is also intended as a proxy for job availability
(job openings relative to job seekers).
To measure the generosity of the grant system for basic research in each country, we use
acceptance rates of principal investigator grant proposals reviewed by peers. We collect this
 Higher Education

data from the principal funding agencies of such grant types in each country, to the best of our
knowledge for the first time.
Lastly, we include the share of General University Funds as a measure of the share of
research funding which can be allocated based on mechanisms internal to a university.

Quality of peers

The probability of working with high quality peers is a significant attractor in particular for
ESR. To proxy the probability of working with high quality peers, we use a modified measure
of university research performance at the country level suggested by Aghion et al. (2008). We
take the data from the CWTS Leiden ranking, which is based purely on bibliometric indicators
and controls for university size.

Scores for the individual items

For each item based on qualitative assessment (some or all items of career prospects, research
organisation, balance teaching research), we set five levels of possible answers which are
intended to be equidistant, mirroring a Likert-scale, assigning scores from 1 (e.g., poor levels
of autonomy) to 5 (e.g., high levels of autonomy), with 3 referring to an intermediate level. In
percentage terms, one could think of the five levels as referring to 0–20%, 21–40%, 41–60%,
61–80% and 81–100%. Taking account of uncertainty and within-country heterogeneity when
assigning numeric scores to qualitative phenomena such as higher education systems, we build
an interval with a width of ± 0.5 around each score. Then we divide by the number of intervals
which brings the items to a range from 0.2 to 1. This makes the scores commensurable with
items based on statistical data, which we normalise between 0 and 1 using a standard rescaling
method (see online resource).
The score of a total area, composed of several items, is simply the average of the items, with the
exception of the item tenure track, which is weighted by the characteristics of and the recruitment
for the tenure track position. We have introduced weights for each item, but we leave them simply
at 1 for our main results. When there are a lot of items in an area, individual items get lower
weight, so that in some cases, some items may merit a higher weight according to the results by
Janger and Nowotny (2016). We explore the impact of different weights on the summary index in
our robustness analysis (section Sensitivity to changes in data and methodology). Finally, the
summary index of job attractiveness (SIJA) simply reflects the average of the individual areas.

Choice of country and within-country heterogeneity

We examine 11 countries: the US as a main benefactor of asymmetrical researcher mobility

and 10 European countries reflecting both EU research funding as well as the significant
workload which comes with each additional country to be included in our framework. Among
the European countries, we aim to get a representative picture of EU diversity by looking at the
five biggest countries Germany, France, Italy, Spain, UK; the biggest Central Eastern Euro-
pean and former transition country Poland; a number of small, well-performing European
countries – the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland; and Austria due to previous research.
The choice of country does not affect our methodology which is in principle open to any
country worldwide, provided that suitable data are available. While it would have been
interesting to include non-EU countries other than the US, we leave this for further research.
Higher Education

We are aware of the issue of within-country heterogeneity at the university level. This is
going to be less an issue in countries with very autonomous universities which are subject to
intense competition, such as the US. There, the competitive pressure should lead research
universities to adopt similar structures (Ben-David and Zloczower 1962; Clark 1983). It should
also be less of an issue at the other end of the spectrum, in centralised, state-led higher
education systems such as Italy. University level heterogeneity is more pronounced in systems
which fall somewhere in between, which have embarked on the road towards autonomy and
more competitive steering of universities such as Austria, or which are governed by the
regional level such as in Germany.
We take account of heterogeneity following several steps: first, we focus on research
universities, disregarding public research organisations or universities of applied sciences.
Within research universities, we focus on top-tier research universities, e.g. the 900 universities
ranked by the Leiden Ranking. Second, our results for each country include a broad confidence
interval; third, our approach should be understood as leading to an assessment of the probability
of being offered an attractive job, rather than to an assessment of the actual jobs offered so that it
inherently deals with varying distributions of scores around the mean; as an example, if among
the top tier research universities in a country there would be one very different university in
terms of the jobs it offers, it would barely affect the country score, as the number of jobs of this
university would be very small by comparison with the total number of jobs offered by the top
tier research universities. Fourth, in cases where ambiguity remains, we resort to our country
experts (see annex) – in most cases, the jobs offered are strongly determined by nation-wide
frameworks (e.g., on teaching or university funding) while in others, such as in the US, intense
competition leads to similar jobs offered to early stage researchers. Fifth, we will perform
robustness checks of our results to see whether our attractiveness scores are related to country-
level scientific performance (section Sensitivity to changes in data and methodology). Large
deviations would speak in favour of within-country heterogeneity which we miss.
Overall, we are confident however that our framework is robust to within-country hetero-
geneity and more nuanced than existing cross-country comparative studies (Finkelstein et al.
2015) or country rankings of scientific performance, as e.g. research performance indicators
used in the EU’s European Innovation Scoreboard (Hollanders and Es-Sadki 2018).

Index of job attractiveness

In the following we present a discussion of the overall results. A more detailed account
discussing each area of the summary index is provided in the online resource to this article.

Overall results: summary index and components

Figure 1 shows the mean of the summary index as well as the minimum and the maximum. At the
time of data collection, the US seemed to be most able to offer attractive jobs in particular for ESR.
Switzerland is behind the US, but still within the confidence interval; the Netherlands follow, as
well as Sweden and the UK. Next is a pair of countries quite similar in their higher education
structures, i.e. Austria and Germany, as well as France. Italy’s mean is a bit behind these three
countries, but taking account of the range of uncertainty, it could be on par with France. Spain in
turn is significantly different from Austria, Germany and France, but not from Italy. Poland comes
out as being least able to offer attractive jobs to researchers at the time of data collection.
 Higher Education

0,00 0,20 0,40 0,60 0,80 1,00

Austria
France
Germany
Italy
Netherlands
Poland
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
UK
USA
Fig. 1 Mean and confidence interval of summary index of job attractiveness (SIJA), 2013. Source: Authors’ own
calculations. Normalized scores (0–1); higher scores reflect more attractive conditions for researchers

The US enjoys several attractive job features (Table 3): high salaries (responding to extrinsic
economic motivation), working conditions which foster clear career perspectives and through
early research autonomy an early entry into contests for priority, potentially giving ESR in US
research universities a head start at the beginning of their career (responding to extrinsic and
intrinsic academic career motivations). This may set in place processes of cumulative advan-
tage, leading to a BMatthew^ effect in science, meaning that past success fosters success in the
future, inter alia related to better chances for obtaining external funding (Merton 1968; Petersen
et al. 2011). Success in the contest for priority is furthermore supported by a high probability of
working with high-quality peers and a fair balance between teaching and research.
Sweden, the Netherlands, the UK and Switzerland owe their summary scores to different
strengths: the first three countries are more similar to the US in terms of career prospects and
research organisation, while Switzerland compensates for weaknesses in these areas with very
attractive funding and high salaries. Sweden and the Netherlands show less attractive research
organisation than the UK, however funding is much more attractive in these countries than in
the UK. The probability of working with high quality peers is above the median in all of the
four countries.
Germany and Austria are close to, if somewhat below the average of the summary index.
Austria and Germany show high salaries as well as above average scores for the quality of life
and funding. The probability of working with high-quality peers is in both countries below the
average; it is lower in particular for Germany due to its Max Planck institutes not included in
our measure of peers. However, we do want to capture research universities’ capabilities of
attracting able researchers rather than Public Research Organisations’ capabilities. Germany
and Austria scored below average in career perspectives and research organisation. This is
linked to the similar organisational structure of these two higher education systems, which are
partly based on the hierarchical chair-system limiting the autonomy of ESR.
Areas in which France shows strengths as regards the capability of its higher education
system to offer jobs which researchers find attractive include its research organisation, due to
the fact that the first job in the academic career enjoys substantial academic autonomy. France
is close to the average in the balance of teaching and research. Areas in which France is below
the average include salaries, funding for research, career perspectives, the quality of life and
working with high quality peers. This last measure is lower for France, as similar to Germany
the basic research centres run by CNRS are not included in our measure. The low score
Higher Education

Table 3 Mean of summary index of job attractiveness (SIJA) and its constituting components, 2013

SIJA Salary Quality Career Research organisation Average Funding Quality

of life perspectives at working unit level teaching of peers
load

Austria 0,44 0,58 0,71 0,33 0,45 0,71 0,39 0,03

France 0,37 0,48 0,41 0,40 0,65 0,61 0,10 0,02
Germany 0,42 0,63 0,59 0,33 0,40 0,54 0,33 0,03
Italy 0,31 0,71 0,00 0,33 0,56 0,37 0,07 0,02
Netherlands 0,65 0,58 0,83 0,63 0,60 0,74 0,35 1,00
Poland 0,12 0,08 −0,19 0,35 0,38 0,08 −0,09 0,00
Spain 0,28 0,23 0,20 0,35 0,48 0,27 0,26 0,01
Sweden 0,55 0,44 1,00 0,65 0,74 0,75 0,37 0,07
Switzerland 0,72 0,73 0,95 0,42 0,65 0,77 0,65 0,73
UK 0,58 0,59 0,80 0,63 0,86 0,69 0,18 0,20
USA 0,77 0,70 0,87 0,87 0,89 0,77 0,31 0,77
Mean 0,47 0,52 0,56 0,48 0,60 0,57 0,27 0,26

Authors’ own calculations. Normalized scores (0–1); higher scores reflect more attractive conditions for
researchers. Poland can have negative values as it is treated as an outlier. Detailed information can be found in
the online resources to this article

concerning the quality of life is due to low scores for jobs, civic engagement and safety. This
may seem surprising when thinking about quality of life in more Btouristic terms^ such as the
quality of food or attractive landscapes. The OECD index refers however not to such tourism-
oriented country properties but to the probability of being employed, personal safety etc. (see
online resource to this article).
With the exceptions of salaries and the teaching load, Italy shows elements of job
attractiveness below average, in particular, the quality of peers, funding and career perspectives
as well as the quality of life. Spain is quite substantially below average in most of the areas
investigated, with the exception of funding, where it is close to average. Poland represents the
country with the lowest scoring on the summary index, including the lowest scores on funding,
the teaching balance, peer quality and salaries. Some of this is related to Poland’s catching up
status as an economy, where salaries and funding cannot yet compete with the levels seen in
advanced countries. The below average scoring in the components of career perspectives and
research organisation however reflect structural features of Poland’s higher education system
which is closer to a chair-based system.

Robustness of results

To examine the robustness of our results, we first relate them to measures of university
research performance and then examine how sensitive our results are to changes in data and
methodology.

Job attractiveness and research performance

When our job attractiveness scores are illustrating real phenomena, they should be statistically
positively associated with measures of university research performance, as a superior capabil-
ity to offer attractive jobs to talented researchers should lead to higher numbers of talented
researchers working in a country’s universities, increasing research performance. We take as a
proxy of research performance our measure of the probability to work with high quality peers
 Higher Education

which we lag by two years to allow for an impact of job attractiveness on research perfor-
mance.3 The resulting correlation is strong, and shows a value of 0.71 (other measures
documented in the online resource lead to similar results, with a correlation range between
0.54 and 0.79).4 As we do not control for other factors impacting on research performance
such as competition between universities and the level of university autonomy, our results
cannot be interpreted in a causal way. However, we note that there is a positive statistical
association between our measures of job attractiveness and of university research performance.
We take this as an indication that our new hybrid approach to comparative higher education is
not completely wrong footed and that within-country heterogeneity is limited or controlled for
by our methodology (Fig. 2).

Sensitivity to changes in data and methodology

We look at the impact on the summary index of the following changes:

& We increase the range of the interval around the qualitative scores from 0.5 to 1 (Fig. 3).
This only affects the boundaries of the range around the mean. The results show that our
grouping of countries essentially holds but that fewer countries are statistically different
from each other.
& We use different calculation methods for the quality of peers (Table 4 in the annex); in
essence, there is little change, with the US and Switzerland changing rank in two measures,
the Netherlands losing and Sweden gaining ranks according to some measures.
& We change the weights for some particularly important areas, based on Table 2 (Table 5 in the
annex). A particular high impact on the odds of job choice was registered for the option of tenure
track (+115%) and for peers among the top 5 worldwide (+82%); to these items we attach a weight
of 3 instead of 1. In addition, we look at overall expenditure per student (again weight of 3 instead
of 1); and at the possibility to teach in English (weight of 2 instead of 1). The changes of the
summary index are limited (Table 5). The US always stays on top, Switzerland is most affected in
losing ranks. The impact of changing the weight of all of these items on the summary index at the
same time yields a similar picture. Changing the weight of categories is also a straightforward way
to take account of differences between fields of sciences in terms of which job features matter how
much, or of gender differences (see section Mobility and job choice determinants: a review of the
literature). E.g., the funding category could receive a higher weight for jobs in equipment-intensive
sciences such as medicine. This would boost Switzerland, which by far achieves the best funding
score.

Discussion: options for improving the attractiveness of jobs

The results of our analysis can be used to outline options where countries can improve the
attractiveness of the jobs the top tier of their research universities offer, possibly turning a
situation of brain drain into one of brain circulation. It is not a question of copying a single

3
Associating lagged values of the variable to be explained with current values is a frequently used method when
path-dependence is important.
4
A value of 1 indicates perfect positive correlation, a value of 0 the absence of any correlation.
Higher Education

1,00

0,90

0,80
United States
Switzerland
I ndex of job attractiveness 2013

0,70
Netherlands
United Kingdom
0,60

0,50 Sweden
Austria
Germany
0,40

France
0,30 Italy
Spain

0,20

Poland
0,10

0,00
0,00 0,10 0,20 0,30 0,40 0,50 0,60 0,70 0,80 0,90 1,00
University research performance 2017

Fig. 2 Correlation of measure of university research performance 2017 to summary index of job attractiveness
(SIJA) 2013. Source: CWTS Leiden Ranking 2013 and 2017, as well as sources in section on methodology and
data; authors’ own calculation

country, as also the US or Switzerland had elements regarded as less attractive by academics at
the time of data collection. For each research university segment within a higher education
system, it is thus important to develop its job attractiveness starting from the existing set-up.

Funding

Funding is a basic requirement for attractive jobs. The amount of spending per student on
tertiary education in the US was 4 times higher than in Poland, 3 times higher than in Italy, and
twice as high as in several high-income European countries such as Austria, France and
Germany. Without a clear commitment to increased funding of higher education relative to the
amount of students enrolled, European research universities will struggle to be Bcompetitive^,
in terms of universities experiencing difficulties to attract the most talented researchers in their
field.

Research organisation at the working unit level

A departmental organisation would make it easier to have both a larger share of independent
academics of the same rank in one operating unit, improving career prospects; and more
research autonomy, also improving job attractiveness, as academics are particularly motivated
by the perspective of being able to autonomously carry out their research.
 Higher Education

Fig. 3 Sensitivity analysis: Changing the interval around the mean for qualitative items from 0.5 to 1. Source:
Authors’ own calculations. Detailed information can be found in the online resources to this article

Career paths

Both the probability of getting tenure and the path to the top of the career ladder matter a
lot to job choice of academics. The tenure track-model is attractive in that it combines a
clear career perspective already from the position of a fixed-term researcher with clear
criteria for promotion to a tenured position, in the shape of scientific productivity only.
The Bup or out^ characteristics of this model (Enders and Musselin 2008) make it fairer to
young academics because they know at an early stage whether a career in academia is
possible or not. The compulsory change of university follows in the US after the PhD-
studies; academics on a tenure track position can then stay at the university, rather than
having to switch to another university in the Bhabilitationssystem^. Particularly for
women, the earlier option to stay at a university may be beneficial in terms of work life
balance.
Turning the tenure-track-model into the dominant career model in Europe would both
increase the share of tenured academics below the level of full professor and provide clear
career paths in countries currently characterised by the Bsurvivor^ model, such as Germany,
and partly Austria and Switzerland (Enders and Musselin 2008). For countries already
showing high shares of tenured academics (the Bprotective pyramid^), such as France, Italy
and Spain, the tenure track option would bring a clearer transition from the status of tenured
researcher to full professor.
From a system wide perspective aiming at improving overall research performance of
universities, there are potential problems arising out of large shares of tenured academics, in
that incentives for continuous scientific productivity over the life cycle might be diminished
(Levin and Stephan 1991),5 creating negative feedback effects for the ability to attract talented
scientists. To make high shares of tenured academics compatible with incentives for
5
Note that low shares of tenured academics not only reduce the attractiveness of jobs, reducing the probability of
being able to hire the most talented, but may also reduce the incentives for a young scientist to invest in human
and social capital accumulation. They lead them to favour quantity over quality and may even be detrimental to
the institution of Bopen science^ (Petersen et al. 2012).
Higher Education

continuous scientific productivity, there are several options practiced in research universities,
which have advantages and drawbacks.
First, a strict selection of tenure track-candidates, based on transparent, meritocratic
criteria. An international call – which for non-English speaking countries would imply
that candidates are allowed to teach in English – widens the potential pool of candi-
dates.6 The selection according to quality only is difficult at this stage as early stage
researchers usually lack long publication lists. In the US, the reputation of the PhD-
programme plays an important role; in other countries, successful grant proposals,
where the proposal has been reviewed by peers for its scientific merit only, are used
as quality signals. Tenure evaluation should be equally strict.
Second, other practices relate to the way funding is allocated. The first regards grant
funding (Bex-ante^ screening). In the US, it is possible to put a professor’s salary on the
list of items which are funded by, e.g., the National Science Foundation. This is an
important condition, as otherwise an increase in external grant funding – aimed at
boosting incentives for scientific productivity - leads to full professors just writing grant
proposals and employing lots of PhD-students which then don’t have further career
options. More generally, applying for grants is less risky for tenured researchers. Young
non-tenured researchers on tenure track awaiting their evaluation could benefit more
from university internal funding, as they have both less experience in proposal writing
and no or only a short track record of research achievements which may serve as a basis
for awarding grants. However, the current practice is often different, with non-tenured
researchers more often applying for grants due to a lack of career prospects. Shifting the
focus of grant funding from non-tenured to tenured researchers and allocating more
general university funds to non-tenured researchers could help uphold incentives for
scientific productivity, as non-tenured researchers face strong incentives for scientific
productivity anyway.
Some countries perform research evaluation exercises of universities (such as the UK), the
results of which are used to allocate base funding to universities (Bex-post^ screening, Hicks
2012). There may be negative side-effects from the interaction between research organisation
and funding modes (Whitley 2003; Whitley et al. 2010). When a system of research evaluation
meets hierarchical chair structures, there is a risk that the chairs abuse their hierarchical power
over subordinates in the operating unit.
In general, funding allocation mechanisms rewarding the quality of research create
strong incentives for competition between universities. Autonomous universities which
are competing against each other have been shown to feature higher research quality
(Aghion et al. 2010). It is likely that such universities will try to ensure continuous life-
cycle productivity through university-internal allocation mechanisms such as funding
based on the scientific quality of proposals written by members of the operating units.
Judging from the results of Janger and Nowotny (2016), there is a clash of preferences
of academics who prefer funding without strings attached, whereas research funding
councils and governments attach more and more Bstrings^ to the money (Whitley
2007).
Third, other practices relate to a change in tasks by the academics following an evaluation
of research performance, e.g. a shift to increased teaching duties as a result of diminished

6
It goes without saying that the practice of exams to become eligible for professorship, such as in some
disciplines in France or in Italy, is also inimical to a wide pool of international candidates.
 Higher Education

research productivity. Universities in France and Germany can adjust the teaching load of
academics following recent reforms (Musselin 2013).
The three broad options – selection, funding and flexible teaching load - outlined all
have advantages and drawbacks as regards the attractiveness of jobs. Empirical evidence
as to which option is most compatible with the preferences of academics and with open,
curiosity-driven science is lacking. In spite of its tough system, the US seems to manage a
high inflow of talented researchers, suggesting that (highly talented?) academics are
willing to accept this in exchange for other, attractive job features. But further research
on ways to combine high shares of tenured academics with continuous lifecycle produc-
tivity is definitely necessary.

Conclusions

We complement the literature on comparative higher education with a view to shed more
light on the asymmetric mobility of talented researchers. We investigate the
Bcompetitiveness^ of the top tier of higher education systems in terms of being able to
attract talented scientists, proposing a structured hybrid quantitative-qualitative frame-
work to be able to compare countries following a clear set of criteria, derived from
previous research on the determinants of job choice. All countries are compared neutrally
against our set of criteria for job attractiveness, among them salaries, quality of life,
career perspectives, research organisation, balance between teaching and research,
funding and probability of working with high quality peers. Our results indicate that
overall at the time of data collection, the US research universities offered the most
attractive jobs for early stage researchers, consistent with the asymmetric flow of talented
researchers from all over the world towards the US. The US does not only have strengths
however, in particular as regards some aspects of funding.
Similar to rankings using survey results or bibliometric data, our attractiveness scores are
not perception-based but reflect Breal^ data and regulations; by contrast, our methodology
offers the advantage of comparing structures and factors shaping the process of research rather
than results of research. The findings are hence directly relevant for policies aiming at
improving the attractiveness of research universities. Our approach pinpoints a few main
cross-country issues impacting on the attractiveness of academic jobs in the top tier of research
universities.
Attempts at improving job attractiveness should always be undertaken first from the
perspective of the status quo in a country, i.e. building upon the strengths while addressing
weaknesses; and second reforms should not be targeted at isolated areas only. E.g.,
safeguarding the compatibility of high shares of tenured academics with incentives for research
productivity is a challenge. There is a potential clash between job preferences of individual
academics and performance preferences of higher education policy makers. There are many
practices around to resolve this, each with advantages and drawbacks; here, countries certainly
have to tread carefully and examine closely various options before embarking on changes. This
is certainly a worthwhile topic for further research. Other options to expand on this paper are
the inclusion of more countries as our effort was very limited in terms of budget. There is also
the possibility to improve on the data, and to build time series which would allow for more
empirical analysis options, including investigating more fully the impact of job attractiveness
on migration flows of researchers, or on research performance.
Higher Education

Acknowledgements We are very grateful to the country experts who have reviewed our classification of
countries, as well as to Hans Pechar and Falk Reckling for valuable comments and advice. Kathrin Hranyai
performed excellent research assistance. Any mistakes and errors are our responsibility.

Funding The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Commission’s Seventh
Framework Programme FP7/2007–2013 under grant agreement no. 290647.

Appendix

Additional robustness data

Table 4 Impact on summary index SIJA (change in rank) of using different measurements for peers

Measurement Measurement Measurement Measurement

method I method II method III method IV

University performance (aggregated Researcher Publication

by rank group) performance performance

Number of top 10% Share of top 10% HCS relative to… Top 10% publications
publications relative to… publications relative to… relative to…

HER Population HER Population HER Population HER Population

Austria . 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
France . 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Germany . 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Italy . 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Netherlands . 0 0 −1 −2 −2 −2 −1
Poland . 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Spain . 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sweden . 0 0 0 1 1 2 3
Switzerland . 1 0 1 0 0 0 −1
United Kingdom . 0 0 1 1 1 0 −1
United States . −1 −1 0 0 0 0

For formulas, see online resource to this article. HER Higher education researchers, HCS Highly Cited Scientists

Table 5 Impact of different weights of selected items on summary index SIJA (change of rank)

Funding Quality of peers Career perspectives English teaching SIJA all weights
weight 3 weight 3 weight 3 weight 2 adapted

Austria 0 −1 −1 0 −1
France 0 0 0 0 0
Germany 0 1 1 0 1
Italy 0 0 0 0 0
Netherlands −1 1 1 0 1
Poland 0 0 0 0 0
Spain 0 0 0 0 0
Sweden 0 0 1 0 0
Switzerland 0 −2 −3 −2 −2
UK 1 1 1 2 1
USA 0 0 0 0 0

Authors’ own calculations

 Higher Education

Sources and country experts for country analysis

Table 6 Main references (in addition to online desk research) used to assess countries and validating country
experts

Country literature

Academic Careers Observatory (2013) (http://www.eui. A, CH, DE, ES, FR,

eu/ProgrammesAndFellowships/AcademicCareersObservatory/Index.aspx). IT, NL, PL, SE,
UK, US
Cummings, William K. / Martin J. Finkelstein (eds.) (2012). Scholars in the Changing American US
Academy: New Contents, New Rules and New Woles. Ordrecht: Springer.
Stephan, P. (2012). How Economics Shapes Science
Kreckel, Reinhard (ed.) (2008). Zwischen Promotion und Professur. Das wissenschaftliche A, CH, DE, FR, NL,
Personal in Deutschland im Vergleich mit Frankreich, Großbritannien, USA, Schweden, den SE, UK, US
Niederlanden, Österreich und der Schweiz. Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsanstalt.
Kreckel, Reinhard (2011). Akademische Karriere zwischen Promotion und Professur im A, CH, DE, NL, SE,
internationalen Vergleich. Ein deutscher Sonderweg. Beitrag zur 19. Hochschulkonferenz der UK, US
GEW Thüringen Erfurt (January 29, 2011). Presentation (http://www.gew-thueringen.
de/Binaries/Binary8483/HSKonferenz2011_Reinhard_Kreckel.pdf).
Pechar, Hans (2008). Internationaler Vergleich, 27–107, in: Hans Pechar / David F. J. Campbell / A, DE, NL, SE, US
Angelika Brechelmacher (eds.): Vom Dr. zum Ph.D. Rollenmodelle des Doktoratsstudiums:
Österreich im internationalen Vergleich. Vienna: University of Klagenfurt (http://www.fwf.ac.
at/de/downloads/pdf/rollenmodelle-docstudium_iff2008.pdf).
Teichler, Ulrich / Ester Ava Höhle (eds.) (2013): The Work Situation of the Academic Profession A, CH, DE, IT, NL,
in Europe: Findings of a Survey in Twelve Countries. Dordrecht: Springer. PL, UK
Reinstaller A. (Coord.), Unterlass, F. (Coord.), Hranyai K., Huber P. 2013. MORE2 - Support for A, CH, DE, ES, F,
continued data collection and analysis concerning mobility patterns and career paths of IT, NL, PL, SE,
researchers, Remuneration Cross-Country Report (WP4). European Commission, DG Research UK, US
and Innovation
Country Experts
Professor Thierry Chevaillier, Institute for Research in the Sociology and Economics of Education F
(IREDU), University of Burgundy, Dijon, France (thierry.chevaillier@u-bourgogne.fr)
Professor Dr. Hans Pechar, Higher Education Researcher, Institute of Science Communication and A
Higher Education Research (WIHO), University of Klagenfurt, Vienna, Austria
(Hans.Pechar@aau.at).
Professor Dr. Frank Ziegele, Higher Education Researcher, Centre for Higher Education (CHE), DE
Gütersloh, Germany (Frank.Ziegele@CHE.de).
Professor Dr. Roberto Moscati, Sociologist of Higher Education, University of Milano-Bicocca, IT
Faculty of Education, Milano, Italy (roberto.moscati@unimib.it).
Dr. Emanuela Reale, Evaluation and Higher Education Researcher, CERIS-CNR, Rome, Italy IT
(e.reale@ceris.cnr.it).
Drs. Egbert de Weert, Higher Education Researcher, Research Associate, Center for Higher NL
Education Policy Studies (CHEPS), University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
(e.deweert@utwente.nl).
Dr. Dominik Antonowicz, Higher Education Researcher, Institute of Sociology, Nicolaus PL
Copernicus University in Tourń, Torun, Poland (dominik.antonowicz@uni.torun.pl)
Professor Dr. José-Ginés Mora, Higher Education Researcher, Centre for Higher Education ES
Studies, Institute of Education, University of London, United Kingdom
(josegines@upvnet.upv.es).
Professor Dr. Kjell Rubenson, Sociology of Education, Department of Educational Studies, SE
Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia, Canada (kjell.rubenson@ubc.ca).
Professor Dr. Gaële Goastellec, Higher Education Researcher, Science, Policy and Society CH
Observatory, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland (gaele.goastellec@unil.ch).
Professor Dr. Jeroen Huisman, Higher Education Researcher, Odysseus Project Higher Education UK
Governance, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Ghent
University, Belgium (Jeroen.Huisman@UGent.be).
Professor Dr. Rebecca Ropers-Huilman, Higher Education Researcher, Organizational Leadership, US
Policy, & Development, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United
States (ropers@umn.edu).
Higher Education

References

Aghion, P., Dewatripont, M., Hoxby, C. M., Mas-Colell, A., Sapir, A. (2008). Higher aspirations: An agenda for
reforming European universities, 5, Bruegel.
Aghion, P., Dewatripont, M., Hoxby, C., Mas-Colell, A., & Sapir, A. (2010). The governance and performance of
universities: evidence from Europe and the US. Economic Policy, 25(61), 7–59.
Ben-David, J. (1968). Fundamental research and the universities: Some comments on international differences.
Paris: OECD.
Ben-David, J., & Zloczower, A. (1962). Universities and academic systems in modern societies. Eur. J. Sociol.,
3(01), 45–84.
Clark, B. R. (1983). The Higher Education System: Academic Organization in Cross-National Perspective (p.
94720). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Dasgupta, P., & David, P. A. (1994). Toward a new economics of science. Research Policy, 23(5), 487–521.
Docquier, F., & Rapoport, H. (2009). Documenting the Brain Drain of" La crème de la Crème". Three Case-
Studies on International Migration at the Upper Tail of the Education Distribution. Jahrbucher Natl. Stat.,
229(6), 679–705.
Enders, J., & Musselin, C. (2008). Back to the future? The academic professions in the 21st century. High. Educ.
2030, Demography, 1, 125–150.
European Commission. (2011). Green Paper. From Challenges to Opportunities: Towards a Common Strategic
Framework for EU Research and Innovation funding, COM (2011) 48.
Finkelstein, M. J., Iglesias, K. W., Panova, A., & Yudkevich, M. (2015). Future Prospects for Young Faculty
Across the Academic World. A Global Comparison and Assessment. In M. Yudkevich, P. G. Altbach, & L.
E. Rumbley (Eds.), Young Fac. Twenty-First Century Int. Perspect (pp. 334–363). Albany: SUNY Press.
Foray, D., & Lissoni, F. (2010). University research and public-private interaction. In B. H. Hall & N. Rosenberg
(Eds.), Handb. Econ. Innov (pp. 275–314). Amsterdam: North-Holland/Elsevier.
Franzoni, C., Scellato, G., & Stephan, P. (2012). Foreign-born scientists: mobility patterns for 16 countries.
Nature Biotechnology, 30(12), 1250.
Geuna, A. (2015). Global Mobility of Research Scientists: The Economics of Who Goes Where and Why.
Amsterdam: Academic Press.
Grogger, J., & Hanson, G. (2013). The Scale and Selectivity of Foreign-Born PhD Recipients in the US. The
American Economic Review, 103(3), 189–192.
Hicks, D. (2012). Performance-based university research funding systems. Research Policy, 41(2), 251–261.
Höhle, E. (2015). Hierarchie in Lehrstuhl und Department. In U. Banscherus, O. Engel, A. Mindt, A. Spexard, &
A. Wolter (Eds.), Differenzierung im Hochschulsystem: Nationale und internationale Entwicklungen und
Herausforderungen (pp. 199–220). Münster: Waxmann Verlag.
Hollanders, H., & Es-Sadki, N. (2018). European innovation scoreboard 2018. Luxembourg: European Union.
Hunter, R. S., Oswald, A. J., & Charlton, B. G. (2009). The Elite Brain Drain*. The Econometrics Journal,
119(538), F231–F251.
IDEA Consult. (2013a). Mobility of Researchers 2. Brussels: Report on survey of researchers in EU HEI.
IDEA Consult. (2013b). Mobility of Researchers 2. Brussels: Report on survey of researchers outside EU.
Janger, J., & Nowotny, K. (2016). Job choice in academia. Research Policy, 45(8), 1672–1683. https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.respol.2016.05.001.
Laudel, G. (2005). Migration currents among the scientific elite. Minerva, 43(4), 377–395.
Levin, S. G., & Stephan, P. E. (1991). Research productivity over the life cycle: Evidence for academic scientists.
The American Economic Review, 81(1), 114–132.
Merton, R. K. (1968). The Matthew effect in science. Science, 159(3810), 56–63.
Mowery, D. C., & Sampat, B. N. (2005). Universities in national innovation systems. In J. Fagerberg, D. C.
Mowery, & R. R. Nelson (Eds.), Oxf. Handb. Innov (pp. 209–239). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Musselin, C. (2013). How peer review empowers the academic profession and university managers: Changes in
relationships between the state, universities and the professoriate. Research Policy, 42(5), 1165–1173.
Petersen, A. M., Jung, W.-S., Yang, J.-S., & Stanley, H. E. (2011). Quantitative and empirical demonstration of
the Matthew effect in a study of career longevity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States of America, 108(1), 18–23.
Petersen, A. M., Riccaboni, M., Stanley, H. E., & Pammolli, F. (2012). Persistence and uncertainty in the
academic career. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(14), 5213–5218.
Salter, A. J., & Martin, B. R. (2001). The economic benefits of publicly funded basic research: a critical review.
Research Policy, 30(3), 509–532.
Stephan, P. (2012). How Economics Shapes Science. Harvard University Press.
Teichler, U. (2014). Opportunities and problems of comparative higher education research: the daily life of
research. Higher Education, 67(4), 393–408.
 Higher Education

Whitley, R. (2007). Changing governance of the public sciences. In J. Gläser & R. Whitley (Eds.), Chang. Gov.
Sci. Dordrecht: Springer.
Whitley, R. (2003). Competition and pluralism in the public sciences: the impact of institutional frameworks on
the organisation of academic science. Research Policy, 32(6), 1015–1029.
Whitley, R., Gläser, J., & Engwall, L. (Eds.). (2010). Reconfiguring knowledge production: changing authority
relationships in the sciences and their consequences for intellectual innovation. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.