America is in danger of experiencing an academic brain drain
America is in danger of experiencing an academic brain drain
www.economist.com
America is in danger of experiencing an academic brain drain
98 comments
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Come on, who in their right mind would leave the American academic environment? You can say whatever you want, but universities in America are the best in the world.
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thats not true anymore, several universities already have been sanctioned by trump either through cutting funding, or anyone that expressed pro-palestinian views. as others have said you cant really be a scientist in a oppressive enviroment, when even your motives a scientist could be questioned as enemy of the state.
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This is the THIRD time the Republicans have cancelled funding to my research projects over the course of 15 years. This country isn't conducive to stable research work.
The projects cancelled were on senior care tech with smart homes, augmented reality to help prevent falls, and air quality feedback to help people during wildfire seasons. No exactly hotbeds of controversial topics, but having my career and livelihood jerked around against and again by these assholes is enough for me to go. The lastest bend to fascism was just the nail in the coffin.
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Tell that to the hundreds of researchers who have their entire research programs and funding prospects thrown into the air, and/or outright cancelled.
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Used to be the best in the world.
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i believe this is because american universities have access to the most resources with which to perform expensive, difficult, but rewarding research. Those resources are now being stripped away. If another country is willing to supply the necessary resources for expensive research then researchers will go there. Source - am scientist.
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Who, for example? Poor Europe? Russia? China? Don't make me laugh.
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Europe and China have already succeeded in poaching scientists that way, so not sure why it'd make you laugh.
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why would you laugh at that??
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"Efforts launched in regions including Europe, Canada, Australia and China range from enhanced funding opportunities to new programmes dedicated to wooing scientists, many backed by tens of millions of dollars. The trend has sparked a debate about whether luring US scientists abroad is the best way to support a global research community whose leading entity is under strain — and whether other nations can compete with historically high US levels of research funding." - Nature Article. Source: The Article
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Nope. Or at least not necessarily.
The ranking that generally gets cited to that end judges universities by research output, which is generally not what you're looking for when you're looking for a good education -- you want a university that's good at teaching, not good at producing papers and citations. You want a professor that's not busy producing papers, because they were hired to produce papers, you want one that actually teaches.
It's also slanted heavily in favour of Anglo countries when it comes to looking at the "producing papers" metric alone: Pretty much all other countries produce the bulk of their papers at research institutes, which don't show up in the list because they're not universities. If they were included IIRC Max Planck would top the list. Granted, that's also to a large degree because they're absolutely massive, a large number of institutes under a common roof.
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The citations metric is also slanted, because pretty much all countries will cite english papers regardless of the language of the paper being written, but all non anglo countries also produce a significant part of papers in the local language, which are much less likely to get cited.
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98 comments