-5

If your main goal is to become a professor in a fairly ranked university anywhere in the developed world. Will completing a postdoc in any country except the USA (namely: Australia, China, Japan, France) be even recognized when applying for professor positions also around the world?

I read in the web that in the USA and in general, most developed countries, doctorates from anywhere else aren’t recognised, but only from their own country or from the USA.

Wrzlprmft
  • 61,194
  • 18
  • 189
  • 288
sujeto1
  • 171
  • 1
  • 6
  • 9
    This question seems ill posed. A postdoc anywhere is an opportunity to extend your research. If you do that effectively you can move on. A US postdoc isn't some automatic ticket to success. People are evaluated on their record, not on the place they did their postdoc(s). – Buffy Jul 22 '22 at 00:00
  • 13
    I must admit the suggestion that doing a postdoc anywhere else except US would not be “recognized” is preposterous and easily debunked, unless one dismisses the (very high quality) work of the very many professors who did postdocs in Cambridge, Oxford, Max Planck, Pasteur, Paris, Rome, Vienna, and the (very long) list goes on. – ZeroTheHero Jul 22 '22 at 02:32
  • 6
    The last paragraph is certainly false in Europe and all “developed” countries I know of. – ZeroTheHero Jul 22 '22 at 02:33
  • See e.g., https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/75618/19607 and links therein – Kimball Jul 22 '22 at 03:45
  • 4
    Not everything you read on the web is correct. Pick a "ranked university" of your choice, go to their website and look for staff bios, and you will very likely find plenty of professors who did their postdocs elsewhere. Some universities are more prestigious than others, but there are plenty of well-respected universities outside the USA (and some within the USA that are not well respected...) – GB supports the mod strike Jul 22 '22 at 06:05
  • https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/107964/is-obtaining-a-phd-from-an-asian-country-really-a-career-suicide You might be interested – Allure Jul 22 '22 at 07:23

2 Answers2

6

Will completing a postdoc in any country except the USA (namely: Australia, China, Japan, France) be even recognized when applying for professor positions also around the world?

If you are achieving good research results inside or outside the US, your postdoc will be valuable for your academic career.

If you are not achieving good research results inside or outside the US, your postdoc may not be valuable for your academic career.

Even if you do your PhD or postdoc in a place nobody has heard of in a country where academia is not as well-developed as elsewhere — if you have good publications in highly ranked journals, you are in a good situation. It might be harder to achieve this when you're not in a well-established research group, and personally, I would be actually more impressed if someone achieved this while based in Bangui than while based in Toronto.

I read in the web that in the USA and in general, most developed countries, doctorates from anywhere else aren’t recognised, but only from their own country or from the USA.

This is false. Most doctorates from serious universities are recognised. There may be some exceptions; for example, I knew a PhD student from Russia who said her PhD was not recognised in Russia unless she translated her PhD thesis into Russian. Since she had no intention to find academic employment in Russia, this didn't matter to her.

gerrit
  • 42,782
  • 14
  • 131
  • 215
3

User gerrit has already given a general answer.

In addition, here is one more specific and more concrete data point: in German academia it is (at least in STEM fields; I don't know about other fields) typically considered to be an advantage careerwise (rather than a disadvantage) if you have gained some experience abroad (be it by a postdoc position or by a PhD).

And no, "abroad" does not mean "in the US" here; it just means, well, "abroad". (Although I should probably add that one might meet a non-negligible amount of prejudice here regarding positions in developping countries.)

Jochen Glueck
  • 7,857
  • 4
  • 28
  • 38