Ren Zhengfei, the head of Huawei, said in an interview with reporters: "In fact, we sometimes tell foreigners that you sell this high-tech to us, when this thing is bought, open this egg, and find that this egg is a 'Chinese egg', it is a 'Chinese chicken' who ran to the United States to lay an egg and sold it to us, we also paid tariffs, and bought it back at a high price, why can't we let our chickens lay eggs on their own land?" ”
The question asked by Ren Zhengfei must be what many people want to ask.
According to private statistics, since 2010, about 10% of Tsinghua University graduates have chosen to study in the United States, and only about 15% of these students in the United States have returned to China after completing their studies, that is, more than 80% of doctoral and masters in the United States choose to stay in the United States after obtaining a degree.
Because it is unofficial data, the above statistics may not be accurate, but it is still more reliable than the statistical bureau, and it is not much different from the real situation.
From these data, at least two problems can be seen, one is that many top people want to go out, and the other is that many people do not want to come back after going out.
Why do many top graduates want to study abroad?
I think there are three reasons:
First, it is difficult to find domestic jobs, and it is not easy to do when you find them.
Don't look at you as a top student at Tsinghua, it's not easy to find an ideal job after graduating from undergraduate. Those who can become top people are excellent academics, and their future expectations are certainly not to find a job that can support their families, at least to be professional and well-paid. Whether the profession is right or not, it is difficult to get a good salary. Good seats are reserved for doctoral and masters, and it is difficult for you to grab an undergraduate.
Even if you grab it, it's hard to do it well. Good work corresponds to large enterprises and large units. Anyone with a little experience knows that it is difficult for slightly larger companies in China to mix. Ten years ago, I told people that many domestic companies are very dynamic in the start-up stage, but once they develop to a certain scale, such as more than 100 employees and more than ten departments, they begin to fall into the trap of the system, and all kinds of bureaucracy gradually emerge. In such large companies, including foreign-funded enterprises, it is difficult to mix without personnel activities. You're a young man who has just graduated, and it's hard to get ahead in that environment. This is also talking about corporate employees, not civil servants.
Since undergraduate jobs are difficult to find, continue your studies.
However, it is also very difficult to further study in China. Domestic universities have a characteristic that they are becoming more and more institutionalized, and the more top universities are, the more so they are, undergraduate students may not feel it, but graduate students will feel it deeply. Graduate school should follow the right supervisor, and if you follow the right supervisor, you will have a good research project, and it is possible to achieve good results. However, there are only a few high-quality and big-name mentors, and there are only a few graduate students that a supervisor can bring, and resources are also scarce. We will not discuss the various unspoken rules here, but under normal circumstances, if you want to finally obtain a degree, you have to spend some thought in addition to the research results.
In contrast, foreign higher education environment is purer and resources are better, especially in the field of science and engineering. Natural science originally originated in the West (don't talk to me about the "four great inventions", which are completely different from modern natural science), and Western countries have accumulated a solid foundation for one or two hundred years. Even Tsinghua University, the strongest in China, has a very large gap with famous universities in Europe and the United States, especially in the research of cutting-edge disciplines. Realistically speaking, whether in basic scientific research or in the field of cutting-edge science and technology, Western countries represented by the United States are far ahead of us. This point can be known by consulting the papers published in top scientific journals such as "Nature", "Science" and "The Lancet" over the years, and if you can't find it, you can also refer to the situation of Nobel Prize winners over the years.
Therefore, top students are more willing to choose to study abroad, especially to the United States and Europe. When the two problems mentioned above can be solved, I estimate that there will be many fewer people who want to go out.
Let's talk about why I don't want to come back when I go out.
Some people say that the main reason for not wanting to come back is because of the high income abroad, and I agree with this view. Take university professors, whether in the United States or developed countries in Europe, a university professor's income is enough to meet his family's high-quality living requirements (this is why professors rarely falsify or issue false certificates abroad, one is too risky, and the other is completely unnecessary).
Alongside high income is life stress. In the United States, for example, an ordinary house (the kind with a lawn and garage in the movie), although it varies from place to place, the median value is an average selling price of $200,000-300,000. The annual income of an engineer in the United States is basically more than $100,000, the lowest civil engineer is about $98,000, and the highest is a computer hardware engineer, about $130,000 or more. In other words, an engineer can buy a house with four or five years of income. What about China? I don't need to say it.
This is still a middle-income group, it is said that last year there was an international student, originally completed the master's degree and planned to study for a doctorate, but did not expect that a Silicon Valley company sent him an offer with an annual salary of $200,000.
However, those who can obtain a doctoral degree abroad will definitely see not only money, but also the living environment and development environment.
There is no harm without comparison, and it is natural for these people who have lived abroad for several years to make comparisons, both in the natural and social environments. Don't shout at these people, these people have read Chinese books and foreign books, have stayed at home and abroad, their horizons are much broader than ours, and they are all top intelligent people, who will comprehensively consider all aspects of factors and come to the best conclusions.
Many people now realize that the key to attracting talent is the environment. But a good environment is not enough for a house, an office, or a laboratory, and it should also include institutions and institutions. But some things can't be changed in a short period of time.
So, to let an international student return to work within the system in China, to be honest, I am not optimistic about his future, for reasons that have already been said, and I will not repeat them.
Of course, some people will say that they can come back to scientific research. But the reality is that the domestic attention to scientific researchers is far from enough, compared with foreign talents often hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses, which is more exciting? Many people will say, how can these people be so spineless, but do you know that the famous medical scientist Tu Youyou could not even be rated as an academician in his own country before winning the Nobel Prize; Papers published by young researchers must be signed by the head of the unit. Do you find this research environment attractive?
Of course, I also hope that these overseas "chickens" can return to their nests to lay eggs, but this nest must be good enough, and they must be able to lay eggs after returning.
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