| Academic ability is an important dimension for cultivating outstanding and innovative talents in research-oriented universities, but the non-academic labor market remains the main choice for graduates' employment. Therefore, an urgent issue to be studied is whether the human capital enhancement brought about by graduates' scientific research experiences in university can further translate into labor market returns. Using large-scale public resume data of recent graduates, this paper constructs a fixed-effects multivariate linear regression model to investigate the impact of graduates' on-campus scientific research participation on their starting salary. The study finds that scientific research experience can improve graduates' cognitive abilities, critical thinking skills, collaborative skills, innovative skills, and other employability skills, but has no significant impact on obtaining higher retention salaries. Only high-quality scientific research experience with core paper outputs can significantly increase graduates' retention salaries, which is mainly due to higher collaborative skills and innovative potential. The heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive impact of scientific research experience on retention salaries is more prominent in job seekers without internship experience, in the financial industry, in the technology industry, and in other service industries. To improve the quality of outstanding and innovative talent cultivation and promote high-quality employment of graduates, policy support, university support for research opportunities and academic environment, and high-quality research participation by students are needed. |
