Among the more than 200 teachers in place at the Oriental Research Institute, not many of them are actually hired from overseas, only about 20 people, accounting for about one-tenth of the total number of teachers.

There are many reasons for this, such as the huge disparity in the treatment of university teachers in Chinese mainland and their foreign counterparts. At present, there are very few professors in Chinese universities who can earn more than 3,000 yuan a year. In the United States, professors' annual salaries are generally more than $30,000 or 40,000, a difference of at least 30 times.

The monthly salary offered by SUSTech to teachers ranges from 1,000 yuan to 2,000 yuan according to each person's comprehensive ability. This has put Principal Zhao Weiming under great pressure from the State Education Commission. Because the salary level of SUSTech far exceeds the level of other universities in China, it is likely to have a great impact on the entire university faculty system in China.

However, there is still a big gap between SUSTech's salary and that of several universities in Hong Kong, let alone compared with European and American universities. Poor treatment can sometimes be compensated for by fame, but SUSTech does not have this condition. It is a newly established grass platform team, not a world-famous school that countless people flock to.

Therefore, it is not easy for SUSTech to really recruit top talents from abroad. In fact, most of the 20 or so people recruited from overseas by SUSTech this time have some common characteristics. First of all, these people are all Chinese, and most of them went to Europe and the United States from Hong Kong or Taiwan to study more than ten years ago. Only Chinese of the same species and origin are more willing to return to the Chinese cultural circle to teach.

Secondly, almost all of these people are associate professors in their thirties and less than forty. It is not so much that they were moved by SUSTech, but that they were moved by the Institute of Oriental Studies. In the academic circles of Europe and the United States, the competition for every step up is extremely fierce.

For example, in the United States. Even teaching at a community college requires a master's degree. Teaching at a four-year university requires at least a Ph.D. before you are eligible to pursue an assistant professor position at a university.

Assistant professors in the U.S. are the equivalent of lecturers in China, and are probationary positions given to teachers by universities for roughly 3 to 7 years. At the end of the probationary period, the "assistant professors" either apply for "associate professors" or find another job. This is what we usually call "go up or go".

However, it is definitely not easy to be promoted from assistant professor to associate professor, especially associate professor at a well-known university. In addition to the successful completion of their teaching tasks, teachers should not only complete their teaching tasks satisfactorily. It is also necessary to have more than one academic monograph, have published a large number of academic articles, or have received a large amount of external research project funding.

As for the higher full professor titles, they are usually tenured at American universities. Once a university has been awarded, it cannot be revoked, i.e. if you do not resign. You can usually work at this university until you retire.

Therefore, all U.S. universities require applicants. In academics, teaching and service, they should make better achievements than associate professors, and also occupy an important place in the academic community.

According to the statistics of the United States, the median age for obtaining a professor title is about 55 years old, and few people can become professors before the age of 40.

The main reason why these young and energetic associate professors were able to come to SUSTech, a new university that had just been established and had no background at all, was that the Institute of Oriental Studies was willing to provide them with huge scientific research funds.

As the saying goes, money is not everything, but no money is everything! This sentence is also a very correct golden rule in academic circles. Almost every major scientific research achievement is piled up with large sums of dollars.

"Yu Sheng came to complain to me before, and he picked a few good seedlings in the 'Dongfanghong' plan. It's all cut off by you in advance!" Li Xuan said to Zhao Weiming with a smile.

At the beginning of last year, Zhao Weiming resigned as vice president of the Institute of Oriental Studies and became the president of SUSTech to take charge of the preparations for the new university. After Zhao Weiming's resignation, Yu Youcheng, the original assistant to the dean, with the support of Li Xuan, immediately took over the vacant position of vice president.

Although Li Xuan is named the president of the Oriental Research Institute, it is actually several vice presidents who are in charge of the overall work. Yu Youcheng, the chief technology officer of Intel Corporation in another time and space, quickly managed the entire R&D system of the Oriental Research Institute in an orderly manner after taking up the post of vice president in charge of R&D business.

"The Oriental Research Institute has a big family business, and we at SUSTech, a poor bastard, have no choice but to be cheeky to rub some oil and water! When I return to Hong Kong, I will definitely invite Yu Sheng to dinner and sincerely apologize to him!" Zhao Weiming also said humorously.

"You, the principal's fart, sit quite upright, and you really have a face that you forget your mother when you marry your husband, and you focus on your own mother's family!" Li Xuan smiled.

He was reluctant to meddle in the administrative management of SUSTech, but he spared no effort in academic support. Because there is no need to avoid too much in this regard, the country hopes that the Eastern Bloc will take out all its talents and stuff them into SUSTech.

In fact, companies such as IBM and other companies have accumulated more talents related to their own business than Stanford, Harvard and other famous universities. The Oriental Research Institute has been established for a short time, although Li Xuan has always been willing to spend money in introducing talents, but there are still some gaps compared with those century-old stores. But even so, it is more than enough to let the Eastern Group help a group of SUSTech.

In fact, whether it is SUSTech's overseas recruitment or domestic recruitment, it is inextricably linked with the Oriental Group. Neither SUSTech nor the State Education Commission can figure out which foreign academic talents are suitable for China and are willing to come to China.

However, Oriental Commercial Company, a subsidiary of the Oriental Group, has invested heavily in building a detailed global talent pool system a few years ago. The more than 20 associate professors recruited from overseas by SUSTech this time were all visited and lobbied by Zhao Weiming one by one based on the information provided by Oriental Commerce.

In the absence of a large-scale introduction of high-quality teachers from abroad, Zhao Weiming can only set his sights on returning to China. However, in terms of China's scientific research and academic level in the 80s, there was indeed a big gap between it and the world's advanced level.

Many universities do not even have the funds to subscribe to foreign language journals. The teachers worked hard to write a paper that they thought was good, and as a result, it was submitted to a foreign journal. It is likely that the other party will reject the manuscript and say that your research has been published more than ten years ago.

So for a long time, we could only close the door and hi ourselves, so there is a saying called filling the gap in the country. The so-called filling the domestic gap is to copy and restore the technology that has already been made abroad. Most scholars in China are still in this stage of learning and imitation. What about competition and innovation!

For basic courses such as advanced mathematics and college physics, the gap between domestic and foreign countries is not large. But in professional disciplines such as microelectronics, Zhao Weiming really looks down on domestic buns. For example, as early as a year or two ago. CAD (computer-aided design) has been used in the chip research and development of the Oriental Research Institute.

For example, the relevant undergraduate majors of the Chinese University of Hong Kong have also joined the new course "Integrated Circuit CAD". However, most of the teachers engaged in semiconductor majors in China have not been exposed to CAD software at all, so how can they teach their own students.

But the Oriental Institute cooperates with the State Education Commission. The "Dongfanghong" academic exchange program has been carried out for more than four years. But Zhao Weiming found a source of qualified teachers. With the abundant financial support of the Oriental Research Institute, the number of colleges and universities and scientific research institutes in China that have joined the "Dongfanghong" program has reached 20.

Every year, they send more than 100 exchange scholars to the Oriental Institute's R&D centers in Hong Kong, Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and Silicon Valley in the United States. Most of the young and middle-aged scholars who were sent to the Institute of Oriental Studies are academic backbones trained by various universities and research institutes.

There is absolutely no problem with their abilities, and the biggest gap with their foreign counterparts is that they have not seen the world and cannot keep up with the forefront of academic development. In the past few years of visiting the Oriental Research Institute, it just gave them the opportunity to catch up. For example, Li Jian, a teacher from Tsinghua University, was before. After only two years in the Hong Kong R&D center, he has independently developed an IC calling card. It greatly expands the application range of memory chips.

In fact, in addition to the "Dongfanghong" academic exchange program sponsored by the Institute of Oriental Studies, China has been sending a large number of students and visiting scholars abroad throughout the 80s. It is hoped that after they return to China, they will be able to change the status quo of backward domestic technology. It's a pity that the proportion of these people who choose to return to China in the end is a little disappointing.

The biggest reason for this is that the difference in treatment between foreign and domestic countries is too wide. Staying in the U.S. and working for one day is worth a month's worth returning home, so many people feel lost. And if you only use the word betrayal to bluntly deny these people who stay abroad to develop, it is actually not appropriate.

Absolutely not, every time a Chinese leader visits the United States, these Chinese from the mainland are the most enthusiastic to greet them on both sides of the road! It's just that when their enthusiasm cools down, their yearning for a better life makes them finally choose to stay abroad.

And when SUSTech was willing to provide them with a decent life at least in China, these people almost chose to come back without hesitation. It can be said that most of the teachers in the School of Engineering of SUSTech have a background of visiting abroad.

"Li Sheng, now we have two more issues with the Education Commission. It's a question of the promotion of several department heads, and the question of whether adjunct professors are qualified to lead graduate students!" Zhao Weiming said with a wry smile.

For example, in the United States, the titles of associate professor and professor are conferred by the university. If a university grants a professorship to a teacher, it simply means that the school promises to give the other person an iron job that can work until retirement. The reason why universities strictly control the number of professors is more important because of the consideration of controlling fiscal expenditure.

In China, the right to assess professional titles is not in the hands of schools, but in the hands of relevant departments. This time, almost all of the deans of the departments of the School of Engineering of SUSTech proposed by Zhao Weiming are associate professors hired from overseas. Among the teachers recruited from other universities in China, many have obtained the title of full professor, which is higher than these department heads.

Therefore, Zhao Weiming hopes to promote the titles of these department heads from associate professor to professor. However, some responsible persons of the relevant departments are obviously not in a good mood, why do these people who cannot be rated as full professors abroad come to China to give them the title of full professors!

In fact, these associate professors recruited by Zhao Weiming from overseas are a cut above most full professors in China in terms of academic ability. Otherwise, why would Zhao Weiming spend many times his salary to invite them to teach at SUSTech.

The few people who were selected by Zhao Weiming as the head of the department are the best among them. According to the evaluation given by the Oriental Business Talent Database, these people are fully qualified to obtain the title of professor in a prestigious university in the United States.

And the reason why they chose to come to SUSTech was also out of the consideration that they would rather be the head of the chicken than the tail of the phoenix. In the United States, they may be just ordinary professors, and it is not easy to compete for research funding from those academic leaders. But after arriving at SUSTech, they became the head of the department, and they could also get a large amount of scientific research funding from the Eastern Group.

"On this issue, I asked Yu Sheng to communicate with the relevant leaders of the Education Commission, whether it is an adjunct professor or a joint appointment, these people are all members of our Eastern Group, and we need to fight for their interests!" Li Xuan nodded and said.

The salary of teaching at a university may not be as high as that of doing research in a company, but it is a recognition for those who are engaged in academia, which means that you are already qualified to teach and solve doubts. For the Eastern Bloc, the demand for graduate students is far more urgent than that of undergraduates.

Most of the undergraduate professors are only basic courses, and they may be qualified to work as technicians in ordinary factories, but they are far from enough for R&D. After the first year or two of talent bottleneck, the Oriental Research Institute has long since recruited only highly educated talents with master's degree or above.

It is in the interests of the Eastern Bloc to let SUSTech have more professors and more graduate supervisors, so that it can recruit graduate students on a large scale as soon as possible.

Just when Li Xuan and Zhao Weiming were talking, Zheng Shipeng, who was far away in Shanghai, also successfully completed the work of persuasion. His supervisor, Professor Lu, under pressure from his wife, finally reluctantly agreed to teach at SUSTech.

After all, a person cannot live only for himself, he also has to think about his family. The treatment offered by SUSTech for teachers is enough to kill all universities in China in an instant. As long as the attack point is identified, SUSTech's poaching operation in China is almost accurate!

In the next three to five years, as the total number of SUSTech students continues to increase, the demand for teachers will also increase, so this poaching will continue.

Fortunately, SUSTech did not specifically target certain universities, but was very restrained in only poaching one or two people in each university. In this way, although everyone is dissatisfied with SUSTech's actions, they will not attack it en masse. (To be continued......)