Where do the top talent in Taiwan come from and where do they work? A preliminary study of the Yushan Fellow Program

While the policy rationale of the YFP is to increase Taiwan’s research/scientific impact globally, our preliminary findings suggest goal misalignment between government, hiring institutions, and individual fellows. Institutions may have different motives when recruiting YFs (gaining national/international reputation and expanding international collaboration networks) and YYFs (replacing retiring faculty). At the same time, individuals who decide to come or return to Taiwan have even more diverse motivations.

As to the program itself, the YFP should be considered more a policy leverage than an instrument. The nature of YFP is an award program, which provides considerable monetary subsidies to awardees to make up for the low salaries Taiwan’s college faculty earn on average. In other words, it is an ad hoc mechanism and is not going to solve the fundamental issue of low wages in Taiwan. Nonetheless, it has become a good campaign for both universities and government ministries by showing their concern and effort in addressing the problem of talent shortage.  Although the direct effect on increasing the international impact of Taiwan’s research capacity is unclear, YFP does create a positive image among overseas Taiwanese elites and create strong enough incentives for them to return to Taiwan.

Given its nature as a funding program, we would also like to argue that the YFP needs alternative measures to assess its effectiveness. After all, there are only 120 fellows to date, whereas the number of researchers in Taiwan exceeds 40,000. Therefore, it is unlikely that the YFP will achieve its intended goal in the short run. Instead of citation impact or global university ranking, a potential alternative may be looking at the dynamic change of collaboration networks at the individual, institution, and country level.

Finally, talent development and recruitment need cross-sector collaboration and joint effort from all stakeholders. There is no single funding program that can solve the problem of “brain drain.” The fundamental solution relies on the collaboration and negotiation between ministries to provide competitive salaries, ensure stable supply of research resources, and create better research culture. One possible next step is to examine and analyze how similar funding programs and policies interact with and influence one another.

Although the sample is limited in size with an exclusive focus on Taiwan, the data gathered at both individual and institutional levels should shed some light on institutional and policy-related determinants as well as individual motivations for mobility choice. More importantly, by pointing out the potential goal misalignments between the macro- (government), meso- (institutional), and micro- (individual) level in terms of talent recruitment and mobility decision, we would like to call for more responsible and comprehensive measures to evaluate policy interventions concerning brain-gain/brain-drain.