This year’s Nobel Prize announcements catalysed a knee jerk reaction from commentators, a lament that Brits were enjoying their success from other international venues rather than in the UK – yet another example of the classic “brain drain”. We would counter that such news should be viewed much more positively.
In a Daily Telegraph article (13 October 2015), Allister Heath reports that Angus Deaton, a Scottish-born economist at Princeton University in the US, won the Economics prize. Heath also mentions that a winner of this year’s chemistry prize, the Swedish-born cancer specialist Tomas Lindahl, has been based in the UK since 1981. Thinking back to past Nobel laureates, the UK has attracted a fair share of talent to our shores from other countries, including the Russian scientists who developed graphene in Manchester.
While Heath points out that Deaton’s prize serves as a reminder of the UK’s enormous scientific and intellectual achievements, he also asserts that we need to up our game to be competitive, a point with which I wholeheartedly agree. However, it is Heath’s closing remarks that rankle.
“Britain’s best academics increasingly work in the US; the same is true of the UK’s best PhDs. Britain is continuing to suffer from a scientific brain drain which shows no signs of reversing. Even our best universities are continuing to fall behind: when it comes to research, institutions like Stanford in California, MIT or Harvard have become astonishingly successful. The nexus between Stanford and Silicon Valley is a perfect case study in how business and academia should cooperate. If we want to stay ahead, we urgently need to learn from the way things are done in the US.”
Yes and no… We should always look to learn from best practice around the globe, but we must also avoid the bad habit of allowing our opinions to become entrenched in dogma. Take for instance the universal British gripe that our weather is awful. Tell that to someone in Boston who shovelled over 100 inches of snow last winter and then had to endure the merciless humidity and mosquitoes of summer. Twenty-five years of living away in the US certainly altered my perspective on the UK weather and gave me an appreciation for it upon my return. It is SO much better than we tell ourselves!
The same could be said about our constant refrain about the brain drain. The optimist in me sees the bright side of migration as our scientists have moved around the globe fertilising our reputation as a life science leader. Thousands of our expats have risen to powerful positions in the life science sector globally. With our heritage of scientific achievement and a plethora of initiatives underway here, the UK is well positioned to lead global thinking in the health and life sciences, and is therefore poised to continue attracting interest from some of the world’s most creative minds as we move forward. While I can’t argue factually against Heath’s claim that our best academics and PhDs are “increasingly” working in the US, anecdotally we do see the UK attracting its share of such talent to our universities and industry.
In today’s global economy, migration is a fact of life, and we must use it to our best advantage. The experiences and social contacts of expats who have migrated to other countries for work or study can be hugely valuable resources for the country of origin. China and India have used this phenomenon to great effect. Perhaps it is high time the UK did so too, by viewing our migrated talent in a different light, not as lost assets but rather as continuing sources of potential enrichment for the UK.
The vast majority of our highly skilled life scientists who have migrated are in the US. Meanwhile, the US is the prime foreign trade target for our life science sector. Their good will should be seen to be an asset of the UK, with substantial value, and therefore worth nourishing. British Expats in Life Sciences (BELS) is a network that has this premise in mind, pursuing a vision wherein we know our most talented life scientist expats and overseas alumni, and they know us. They feel well connected to the UK health and life science sector, and they want to stay engaged throughout their careers.
To this end, Will Harvey, an Exeter University migration expert who sits on the BELS Advisory Council, suggests, “The first step is to properly engage with our own talent abroad, recognising that this will help to attract them to keep abreast of activities here and mobilise them to consider using their global expertise and networks to benefit the UK. Second, continue taking steps to attract and retain the very best students and talent. And third, understand that our success and failure around exporting and importing talent in the global labour market are intricately entwined.”
Of course such engagement will only work if we offer a win-win, for both the UK and for the expats and other overseas alumni. While they are predisposed to take notice of what’s happening here, they cannot make decisions that favour the UK without solid business reasons. However, with better engagement, they can be equipped to serve as ambassadors, poised to spread the word and appropriately collaborate and conduct business with the UK to benefit themselves, their organisations and UK plc. In this way, we can demonstrably turn the perceived brain drain into a brain gain for the UK.