The Geography of Talent: A Study on the Spatial Mobility Patterns of Graduates from “Double First-Class” Universities

This paper develops a panel data fixed effect model to analyze the impact of the employment mobility of “Double First-class” college graduates on the rationalization of the industrial structure, advanced industrial structure, high-tech industrial structure upgrading, and industrial structure upgrading of the producer service industry. The results show that the mobility of graduates from “Double First-class” colleges and universities has a positive effect on upgrading the industrial structure of various provinces. The difference is that the mobility of “Double First-class” college graduates has a greater impact on the upgrading of the industrial structure of high-end producer services, but has a weaker impact on the structural upgrading of high-tech industries. There is a mismatch between the employment needs of “Double First-class” college graduates and the jobs provided by high-tech industries. The mobility of graduates from “Double First-class” colleges and universities has obvious differences in the promotion of industrial structure upgrading in different regions. Therefore, this paper proposes to increase investment in high-level human capital to promote the free flow of labor and other production factors across industries, sectors, and regions.

The economic development of various regions is influenced by high-quality population mobility. The research object of this article is the employment mobility data of “Double First-Class” university graduates from 2014 to 2019; the subsequent analysis is based on these data. First, this paper summarizes the current state of university graduates’ employment mobility. Second, this paper employs the fixed-effect model and PCA method to conclude that economic factors are the primary factors influencing university graduates’ employment mobility. Finally, based on the nonlinear, small sample, and high-dimensional characteristics of university graduates’ employment mobility data, this paper employs the random forest and BP neural network methods to build a prediction model for university graduates’ employment retention rate. The results show that the BP neural network model outperforms the random forest model in terms of prediction accuracy. The BP neural network model can accurately predict the employment retention rate of “Double First-Class” university graduates, which can guide the reasonable mobility of university graduates and provide a reference for government universities and individuals to make decisions.

College graduates play a crucial role as valuable human resources in China’s talent market. Currently, the employment situation of college graduates is a widely discussed topic that concerns the entire society. Utilizing data from the Employment Quality Report of College Graduates, this study delves into the employment mobility patterns of graduates and employs a GeoDetector model to investigate the factors influencing their employment location choices. Additionally, the study predicts the evolutionary trend of the network using the TERGM model. The research findings reveal the following key points: (1) The spatial distribution of employment for graduates from “Double First-Class” universities in central China exhibits a hierarchical pattern that decreases with distance, influenced by path dependence and meritocratic connections. (2) Central China experiences a competitive dynamic in the employment market with a tug-of-war scenario between the central and eastern regions. (3) The factor detector found strong effects of regional innovation capacity and regional economic level on graduate mobility.

This article uses Principal Component Analysis (PCA) – Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) – Malmquist Total Factor Productivity (Malmquist) method to analyze the talent training efficiency of 9 “double first-class” universities in Western China. By constructing the evaluation index system and reducing the main factor analysis, the principal-component data is analyzed by DEA-Malmquist model again. The results show that: (1) since the implementation of the national “double first-class” plan, the talent training efficiency of the “double first-class” universities in Western China has been increasing year by year, with an average annual growth rate of 9.01%. (2) Scale reward analysis, the scale benefit of 3 universities is in the optimal state; the scale benefit of 3 universities is in the increasing state; and the other universities are decreasing after 2020. (3) The input redundancy of universities is mainly concentrated in the input of human resources, and mainly in 5 universities, indicating that 5 universities have not reached the ideal output, but the input redundancy rate is decreasing year by year. (4) Insufficient output is mainly concentrated in the output of high-quality and high-level talents and disciplines. Except for 3 universities, all 6 universities have different degrees of insufficient output; among them, one university has insufficient output of high-quality basic talents for 6 consecutive years, and one university has the same situation in 2022.

A Comprehensive Study of Entrance Examination Trends in Western China's 'Double First-Class' Uni-versities Across the Last Three Years

With the continuous development of China's social economy, it has correspondingly promoted the development of the railway engineering experimental career, and has made tremendous progress in the cultivation of railway engineering experimental talents. At the same time, there are still many problems in the development of rail transit in the construction of "double first-class". Only by solving the existing problems can we further promote the smooth development of the training of railway engineering experimental talents. Therefore, the article mainly analyzes the problems and countermeasures of railway engineering experimental training, combined with the status and role of laboratories in the training of talents under the background of "double first-class", according to the society's demand for first-class engineering talents, we reformed and explored laboratory resource integration and optimization.

This paper discusses the influence of local governments over the realization of «Double First-Class» project in China. Based on the qualitative analysis of 36 universities’ mid-term reports, the spillover effect on local economic and social development was found to be enhancing the core competitiveness of local governments. Text analysis of eight local governments’ «Double First-Class» implementation reports showed that the way of their promoting the «Double First-Class» construction were investment and talent introduction. The local participation in the «Double First-Class» competition under the constraint of national financial resources leads to the Matthew effect of university development. Universities selected for «Double First-Class» will get more resources and develop better, while other universities will be left behind. Therefore, the central government needs to intervene the competition of local governments.

Higher education is crucial to sustainable development. The construction of a “double first-class” university (the 42 top universities in China) is an important initiative to improve the quality of higher education and promote its sustainable development. The aim of the study discussed here was to explore how graduate training promotes the sustainable development of higher education and the main characteristics of graduate training in China’s “double first-class” universities. The research in this paper involved 42 “double first-class” universities’ graduate training programs (including training objectives, training process, and training methods) for which coding analysis using NVivo12 plus was carried out. It was found that the main characteristics of China’s “double first-class” university graduate training are as follows: (1) clear decomposition of quality and ability structure; (2) taking quality as the core of the connotative development of higher education; and (3) innovation in talent training methods. This study focused on talent training itself, which is of significant importance in the competition for talent around the world. China’s double first-class universities can not only provide experience for the graduate education of domestic universities, but also for those in other countries.

Research on the Construction Path of "Double First-class" in China's Western Universities Based on Excellent Performance

The mobility of university graduates is influenced by economic factors and individual attitudes. The paper at hand focuses on the motives and studies the location preferences that university graduates have while they search for jobs (instead of a survey after graduation) and the reasons for these location preferences. To this end, prospective graduates from three universities in Hesse, Germany, have been surveyed in 2012. From this detailed data, we find that a majority has preferred locations during job search, but graduates with a strong focus on job opportunities are more often spatially open. Graduates focusing on social ties search dominantly at familiar places. Big cities attract especially graduates valuing job opportunities or amenities. As found previously in other studies, prior migration increase the propensity to move again after graduation. Overall, there is a large potential to retain graduates in the university region: most students include the university region into the spatial scope of their job search.

This paper explores the links between spatial mobility and job-related well-being for young Italian graduates. Theoretically it posits that mobility and job satisfaction can be related indirectly, as migration may provide access to new or better job opportunities, and directly, as mobility generates expectations on the outcome of the move. Methodologically it applies sample-selection ordered logit to a survey of graduates conducted by the Italian National Statistical Institute (ISTAT). The paper investigates how personal characteristics and employment features, together with migration behaviour, impact on several domains of job satisfaction, comparing the graduates from Southern regions—ie, the backward Mezzogiorno—to those of the Centre-North of Italy. Our most novel results indicate that, whilst indirect effects are qualitatively similar for both Southern and Centre–Northern graduates, direct effects are not. This highlights that geography affects satisfaction by shaping individual expectations, adding another dimension to the long-standing debate on Italian spatial inequality.

In recent years, China has actively promoted the construction of first-class universities and disciplines of the world (‘Double First-Class’), and built a new model of university development to solve Chinese problems and support high-quality economic and social development. In the context of China’s efforts to promote the construction of new engineering, new medicine, new agriculture, and new liberal arts (referred to as the ‘four new’ disciplines), these disciplines are developing rapidly. As a specialty dealing with major life issues, medical education has become increasingly prominent. To enhance the comprehensive strength of universities, corresponding to the ‘four new’ disciplines strategy, engineering universities are building and developing medical specialties one after another. At present, the greatest problem in the medical specialty of engineering universities is the tendency to blindly follow trends and integrate new concepts with traditional methods. However, to date, the integration of medical and nonmedical specialties has been superficial and thus has not been successful. To address this problem, this paper, guided by the policies aimed at developing the ‘four new’ disciplines, analyses the current situation of traditional medicine education and professional development in engineering universities and proposes measures to enhance the competitiveness of new medicine in engineering universities, thereby promoting the development of universities. KEY MESSAGES The implementation of the ‘four new’ disciplines is a strategic choice for higher education. Engineering technology is an efficient path and hands-on approach to solving medical problems. Interdisciplinary and comprehensive educational approaches play an important role in the development of medical science.

This study analyzes the gender-specific impact of spatial mobility on earnings after graduation from higher education, extending previous research on graduates' mobility benefits, which has largely ignored gender-specific mechanisms. Based on household economic and gender role considerations, this study argues that partnerships are associated with solidifying gender differences in mobility-related earnings benefits. The study uses data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), Starting Cohort First-Year Students (SC5), and applies entropy balancing weights to account for the self-selection of mobile graduates. General linear models show a weak correlation between overal graduate mobility and higher earnings and that gender differences are rather small and depend on the type of mobility. However, looking at the role of partnerships, female graduates benefit significantly less from short-distance mobility when cohabiting with a partner than their non-cohabiting counterparts, while cohabiting male graduates benefit significantly more from long-distance mobility. The findings contribute to the literature by highlighting the crucial role of partnerships in the gendered mobility benefits of graduates.

University graduate migration in Finland

The article examines patterns of subjective social mobility of Russian universities’ graduates based on the longitudinal database ”Trajectories in education and career“. Using a scale of a ten-step ”social ladder“ the following results were obtained. First, university graduates are more likely to experience a downward status transition and are unlikely exposed to a pronounced upward mobility or reproduction of high status; so they are more often characterized by immobility in average status positions. Higher education does not consolidate status privileges in the youth cohort and does not always play the social elevator role. Second, the analysis of mobility patterns in the context of trajectories on the way to university showed that university graduates previously graduated from high school are characterized by reproduction of high status. Last, trajectories with master’s degree turned out to be more ”risky“ than with only baccalaureate: master’s degree graduates are more likely to move either up or down the social ladder, while undergraduate trajectories are more characterized by status reproduction. The results of the study offer new empirical ground to consider higher education as a ”non-homogeneous“ level of education and its ambiguous role in social mobility.