One answer is that it would inevitably take money away from the top scientists who are already here who are already dealing with catastrophic cuts to the research budget.
Replies
There’s a strong case for making us an alternative for younger US researchers but that means improving the research environment in general. Else they will go elsewhere.
apr 24, 2025, 11:24 am • 17 0 • view
But there must be tens (hundreds?) of thousands of US researchers and other knowledge workers out of work, all of a sudden. Presumably you wouldn’t even need to offer the previous market salary…
apr 24, 2025, 11:34 am • 2 0 • view
Who will fund their labs? Their access to postdocs and students?
apr 24, 2025, 12:06 pm • 5 0 • view
Yes, I get this. I’m just imagining that if I was a newly unemployed researcher in the US right now, I’d be considering a job as a lab tech, if it meant I could get out of there. It’s a horrendous situation, and it’s only going to get worse.
apr 24, 2025, 3:32 pm • 0 0 • view
I work (for the moment) at a university which is currently making substantial job cuts. It's a well established Russell group institution too. It's painful enough to give existing researchers their marching orders. It's insulting to then welcome émigrés with open arms.
apr 24, 2025, 6:28 pm • 2 0 • view
This is also a valid point. I suppose we all are playing fantasy football (fantasy academia?) where the UK HE sector isn’t a binfire and everything is as we’d wish.
apr 24, 2025, 7:45 pm • 2 0 • view
You'll have to increase the UK science budget 10 fold to compete. Everybody who says oh just recruit Americans doesn't realise it's not about the brains, it's about funding for infrastructure, for labs, for reagents, not brains. We have plenty of them already. What we don't have is the money.
apr 24, 2025, 8:03 pm • 4 0 • view
And half of that 10 fold increase would have to go on salaries to stop losing people to the private sector and abroad. Academic research has seen over a decade of real term pay cuts, and often in places where the cost of living has been rising faster than inflation.
apr 24, 2025, 8:05 pm • 4 0 • view
You cannot buy a house in Cambridge on an academic salary these days.
apr 24, 2025, 8:06 pm • 6 0 • view
There are research institutes in Cambridge, world class, that froze pay for all staff this year. Not a below inflation pay rise, no pay rise. While cutting subsidies to staff restaurants so lunch now costs close to £10. And people think you can attract foreign researchers by fiddling with visa fees?
apr 24, 2025, 8:09 pm • 8 0 • view
Norway is the last country in Europe with any money...
apr 24, 2025, 1:20 pm • 0 0 • view
Considering the costs, I don't think a smaller salary would be a good idea!
apr 24, 2025, 12:38 pm • 1 0 • view
This is completely true. Also the visa difficulties of bringing a spouse with you.
apr 24, 2025, 3:34 pm • 1 0 • view
What about the younger researchers here? Where do they go? Given the state of academia in this country, with so many on precarious contracts and so few substantive posts, flooding the market with US researchers (usually paid so much more) makes little sense.
apr 24, 2025, 12:15 pm • 4 0 • view