Defecting to the West

By Ezra Bowen

Surely they are among Britain's best and brightest:

Birgitta Whaley, 30, earned her undergraduate degree in theoretical chemistry at Oxford University. She wanted to be a college teacher, but the only homegrown opportunities were junior research fellowships that she describes as "glorified post-docs." In February she started teaching at the University of California, Berkeley.

Wilfrid Nixon, 26, a Cambridge Ph.D. in engineering, is a research assistant professor at Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering. Says Nixon: "I was looking for opportunities in England, but essentially there was nothing doing."

John Dupre, 33, an Oxford philosophy graduate teaching at Stanford, remembers one year when no British university advertised philosophy jobs. "It's a very depressive atmosphere in the British academy in general," he says.

A report commissioned by British teachers and administrators reveals that in 1985 universities lost 1,404 staffers to industry or to universities abroad. The most attractive positions seem to be in the U.S., where the end of a ten-year Ph.D. glut and the imminent retirement of many senior faculty have made the emigres welcome. America's National Science Foundation counts 1,001 British scientists and engineers who entered the U.S. last year. Says David Ingram, vice chancellor of Kent University, Canterbury: "American universities have made it clear that they expect to solve their difficulties in recruiting new staff by taking people from Britain's universities."

The lure, says Ingram, is "salaries . . . significantly greater than on this side. And the research facilities in the U.S. are also quite an attraction." The British government grant in 1986 for new research equipment ($2 billion) has about half the buying power of that for 1970. Government funding for research was cut 12% (allowing for inflation) between 1979 and 1983.

According to the report, full professors in Britain earn as little as $30,000 a year, while the U.S. average has hit $42,500, with academic stars pulling down $75,000 to $100,000 and more. Sir David Phillips, chief scientific adviser to Britain's Secretary of State for Education and Science and an Oxford professor in molecular biophysics, makes $32,340.

Another aspect, claims a newly formed professors' lobby called Save British Science, is that "technical staff have been shed, equipment and buildings cannot be maintained and morale is destroyed by absence of career prospects." Worse yet, since 1980 Germany and France have boosted funds for new research by 30% to 40%, so that British brains have begun to drain off to the east as well as the west.

John Mulvey, secretary of S.B.S., charges that the British government has "no overall policy or concept of what they should be doing in supporting science." S.B.S. claims an added $155 million is needed next year for government research expenditures just to prevent a continuing decline in research support. Meanwhile, many young scholars keep coming to the U.S., and few see any reason to return home. Says Whaley: "A lot of things would have to change professionally for me to go back."

With reporting by John Wright/London, with other bureaus