Return Migration to India: Decision‐Making among Academic Engineers and Scientists

The decision‐making process among migrants, whether to leave their country of birth for a foreign country or deciding to return to their native country is complex and laden with challenges. This article seeks to understand the decision‐making process by which immigrant engineers and scientists select to return to India after study and work in the United States. It is based on in‐depth interviews conducted with 54 returned engineers and scientists. Results indicate that the decision to return is anything but a linear process as highlighted in rational choice theory. Prospect and planned behaviour theories are better positioned to explain the decision‐making process among returned migrant engineers and scientists.     

Peak Points in a Symmetrically Correlated Random Walk

This note reports explicit formulae for the probability distribution and mean and variance of the number of peak points in a symmetrically correlated random walk.     

Faculty job satisfaction across gender and discipline

It is projected that by 2014 colleges, universities, and professional schools will witness an employment growth of 34.3% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2005). Thus, issues of faculty satisfaction, retention, and persistence will become increasingly important for university administrators and education policy makers. The need to study faculty satisfaction at universities also stems from the fact that the intellectual and social structures of higher education are changing over time. Increasingly, women and minorities are more likely to occupy higher ranks of the professoriate. The purpose of this research is to explore and compare the job satisfaction rates of faculty members employed in research institutions with special attention paid to differences across gender and disciplines. The study employs data from the 2003 Survey of Doctorate Recipients, which is a biennially collected survey of doctoral awardees and is funded by the National Science Foundation.