The roles, employment status and time allocation of foreign-born faculty in American postsecondary education

Abstract

As the demographics of faculty in American higher are fast changing and more foreign-born faculty entering the system, more information about this new group of entrants needs to be scrutinized. This research is aiming to answer some issues related the foreign-born professors overlooked by the mainstream studies about faculty in American postsecondary education. In the first half of this dissertation, related issues such as highly skilled immigrants and their importance to the economy, national strategy and smart power have been discussed. In the second half of this paper, some empirical research and statistical results revealed significant differences between the foreign-born and native-born faculty in terms of salary, working hours, time allocations and variances of above factors in different fields. This research suggested that foreign-born faculty is treated fairly in American academia and they enjoyed neither salary advantage nor disadvantage in comparison to their native counterparts. However, this author found empirical evidence that foreign-born did emphasize more on research by allocating more share of their work time on research and publications. This study shed some light on the researches about faculty salary, time allocation and some other aspects of employment for the foreign-born faculty. The author hopes to raise the academic interests of this topic and would like to see more detailed studies and researches in this direction.