The Impact of Academic Mobility on the Quality of Graduate Programs

The large amount of publicly available scholarly data today has allowed exploration of new aspects of research collaboration, such as the evolution of scientific communities, the impact of research groups and the social engagement of researchers. In this paper, we discuss the importance of characterizing the trajectories of faculty members in their academic education and their impact on the quality of the graduate programs they are associated with. In that respect, we analyze the mobility of faculty members from top Brazilian Computer Science graduate programs as they progress through their academic education (undergraduate, master's, PhD and post-doctorate). Our findings indicate that the number of faculty members who are educated abroad are an important indicator of the quality of these graduate programs because they tend to publish more often, and in higher quality venues.