As a startup that chose to locate in Canada, we’ve already had a dozen amazing candidates currently in the US reach out and apply for roles since we shared our thinking earlier this week [0].
The feeling of ambient immigration hostility in the US (even beyond any one specific policy) is palpable.
I think you can safely hold off on the eyelash batting for a few months. There were only 25 fellowships available, applications opened on July 4th and all have been awarded. This page on the program will tell you more:
Kurt Godel rather famously claimed to have spotted logical contradictions in the US constitution, which of course is not too controversial on its own (and was probably right given who he is), but presenting this argument in response to questions about the constitution that were given as part of his citizenship test was an insane thing to try no matter how good his logic.
The article doesn't go into details whether these academics are full professors or e.g. postdocs. Twenty-five tenured professors would be a big deal because they tend to either bring their workgroups along or rebuild them at the new university. That's where the true impact of such news lies if these are indeed teachers: these groups produce a steady stream of future experts in the form of graduates and PhDs in their respective domains. Given the timelines for careers of students and young academics, the full impact of these moves should start to show in about 5 to 10 years.
Another factor is if they're all from the same (sub)discipline. It doesn't take a lot of established researchers moving to shift a field's center of gravity somewhere else. When you start seeing research conferences that used to be in the US be held elsewhere instead, you'll know that the change has happened.
I'm on a researcher mailing-list discussing exactly this at the moment.
For the moment, the main argument for keeping some conferences within the US is the number of researchers (typically PhDs and postdocs) who couldn't attend then re-enter the US.
When talking to foreigners and someone mentions USA, it's about 50/50 I get a trump joke or a fat joke. I don't think HN is the place for it, but stereotyping countries is pretty common.
tbf Trump is at least somewhat relevant to whether the US is a good place to live right now. It's more like inserting a Charles Manson joke when someone says why they like California...
The article mentions paying them $587,000 each over 2 years. It also mentions at least some of the recruits were post-docs who average pay in the US is like $60k. If this is what brain drain is, where can I sign up?
> "The APART-USA fellowship is granted for a period of 48 months and must be commenced within six months of notification of the grant."
> "The APART-USA fellowship amounts to a total of EUR 500,000. 25% of this funding (in total: EUR 125,000) comes from the nominating host research institution. 75% (EUR 375,000) comes from the Fonds Zukunft Österreich (FZÖ) of the National Foundation for Research, Technology and Development (NFTE)."
> "funding can be extended by up to three months at no extra cost."
> "The fellowship covers personnel costs as well as costs for relocation, travel, materials and other costs (such as mentoring, training, etc.)."
OAW = Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften = Austrian Academy of Sciences
I don’t know if this includes starting research budget but if it does, it’s a very modest offer for top researchers. Starting research budget offered by R1 universities in the US can be millions of dollars for top researchers (in CS but that’s all I know about), before they need to get funding on their own. I guess it would be good for researchers who lost all of their funding.
I was hoping the EU can capitalize on this, but remain skeptical as the EU politicians have noticed what kind of rhetoric is successful and are starting to bang the same drum louder and louder. Being anti immigration one of the main ideas. We'll see. My bet is China will be the big winner.
Recently the EU allocated billions to fund tech startups. But if you read the bare minimum demands, you'll see how suspicious it is. Like, you have to have a female co-founder, when everybody in the trade knows it's very hard to find a trustworthy co-founder of any kind.
I haven't heard of anybody getting these funds. I suspect the recipients were pre-selected before the announcement and the criteria was tailored to match them. And I also suspect, in some roundabout way, part of the money will end up in political campaigns or something.
How would you hear of somebody getting these funds? I don’t personally know anybody who’s gotten massive VC funding in the US either, but I think it does happen.
I don’t see any reason to be skeptical of the requirement to find a female co-founder, I mean it is clearly a program to promote equality, but that is an uncontroversial goal in some places.
Suspicious that the EU claims to "promote gender equality" while turning a blind eye to the male only conscription perpetrated by EU members Austria, Finland, etc
It is a lot easier to come up with new rules for a project that requires proactively making investments (where it is assumed they will be selective anyway), than it is to convince a country to change their military policy.
it's very hard to find a trustworthy co-founder of any kind
that may be so, but did you check if the funding is limited to teams with at least two or more people? some funds do not allow single founders at all for whatever reason.
Give it 5-10 years and the situation could look very different. If they decide to pour tons of money into it, they could dominate like with trains or solar.
I would never invest time, money or my life into a country without a functioning legal system. In a country where the likes of Jack Ma are not safe nobody is safe.
Looking at the average case is a massive logical fallacy. It isn't the average case that will likely determine the outcome of your case, because as an immigrant you are not average.
It’s hard for a country to take very good care of its citizens (healthcare, free education, social security, economic opportunity, work-life balance, access to nature) at the Finland level then turn around and persecute immigrants. It just doesn’t happen. It takes a lot of goodwill and trust (in citizens, politics, institutions) to get all that to work. Then clearly they’re also trying to attract immigrants, they can’t turn around and start locking them up.
Look at the history of Europe (colonialism), what usually happens is they practice and fine-tune atrocities outside then import them. Bush and Iraq as a prelude to Trump.
How about the opposite: the "great again" USA is very unwelcoming, that Chinese citizens who were attracted to the freedoms it once offered (a different flavour of freedom compared to the one Trump is currently offering) might now think "Sheesh, maybe let's not try to migrate to the USA and start a life there!".
You do realise Chinese form a large immigrant population in the US, right?
And as much as I dislike saying this - Chinese government doesn’t want you talking about politics. Otherwise you should be mostly fine.
While US government is going beyond politics. Pushing stuff like that autism and Tylenol connection on correlation study. That is going beyond politics and impacting academic and scientific analysis.
> You do realise Chinese form a large immigrant population in the US, right?
Did I say anything that made you think otherwise, right?
> And as much as I dislike saying this - Chinese government doesn’t want you talking about politics. Otherwise you should be mostly fine.
Ahhh too bad then, because one of the things that I really like about the societies that I'd bet my life/money/health/other resources on is that I want to be able to talk about politics. Otherwise, what's the point, all you are doing is lining some dictator's pocket.
> While US government is going beyond politics. Pushing stuff like that autism and Tylenol connection on correlation study. That is going beyond politics and impacting academic and scientific analysis.
Yes, the US is also on a bad path. But so is China. And they too push plenty of bullshit. How is that Tianmen Square investigation coming along?
> Did I say anything that made you think otherwise, right?
Yes this line made you seem ignorant.
>> Because China is so much more immigration and foreigner friendly?
The brain drain to China will not be based on immigrants or foreigners rather Chinese going back. Capisce?
And you seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing.
> Yes, the US is also on a bad path. But so is China. And they too push plenty of bullshit. How is that Tianmen Square investigation coming along?
Tiananmen Square happened in 1989. China has been on the "bad path" for years. No one is denying that. But that is not the same parallel as US government pushing hack medicines and correlation studies like autism and Tylenol. Find me an example of China doing that instead of going for the lowest denominator of "Tiananmen Square, see gotcha".
Because PRC is returning sea turtle / talented diasphora friendly and there's a fuckload of talented PRC born diasphora abroad who frankly has to self censor under mccarthy free speech anyways.
I don't know, personally never went there. But it doesn't seem to be throwing out babies with the bath water, as currently the case in the US. What their immigration policies are in general I don't know, but they are a knowledge hungry worldpower, and we are talking about scientists here. And as for the EU, my concern remains, there are way too many Trump copycats, and it's difficult to trust it will not go down the same road. The problems and root causes are similar. If I didn't have kids I would've left Germany for sure by now.
China can benefit in the short-term if talent moves there, but it's very difficult to gain citizenship in China if you're not ethnically Chinese. That probably won't matter for people just moving for work, but those looking for a better life for their children or a home would likely consider it a blocker.
There are millions of overseas Chinese descendants who already speak Chinese and are wholly or partly ethnically Chinese. That would be an easy pool to draw from first.
They are in an excellent position to capitalize on the situation: deep pockets and a shady reputation that has kept competition low, so they should have plenty of open position.
I wish it said more about what these researchers did, other than they were the result of cuts to things like trans policies and opposition to Palestine protests. It would be interesting to see if these are semiconductor researchers or gender studies.
That's a very reductionist way to describe it. According to the article, these are key researchers from some of America's most prestigious universities.
Because it gets a lot of response, there's a lot of traction, many with positive sentiment, support, and "take me with you" equivalents.
Because its a sign significant numbers of people, institutions, disciplines, and demographics are thinking that way. In stock market terminology it would be a signal to investors.
Thread on Reddit 1mo ago about biotechnologist Wali Malik leaving his lab in Boston developing mass testing of active ingredients for pharmaceuticals got a decent amount of visibility. Also mentions the APART-USA grants. https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1mzlk04/us_rese...
>Because its a sign significant numbers of people, institutions, disciplines, and demographics are thinking that way. In stock market terminology it would be a signal to investors.
How is something incredibly common a signal for anything? Academics move to other countries all the time.
Why do they not make an actual story out of this, do some research and publish whether there was some unusually high outflow of academics over the last two years?
25 people can not be an indication of anything. Academics especially are moving around often and take up work in different countries.
These are researchers from Harvard, Princeton, and MIT. Sometimes there are only a handful of people worldwide in a particular field doing top level research.
This Reuters article is based on a press release that was issued earlier today. The type of research you’re proposing would take weeks to be done, written and edited.
Not an academic so there could be some context I don’t know but upon reading it it’s even worse, grants for 2 years, looks more like a secondment than a coup.
Not many people walk away from Harvard, MIT, Princeton, etc. If you had tenure there (a big if, since the article is unclear), or even were tenure track, that was viewed as one of the most prestigious and desirable jobs in the world.
>If you had tenure there (a big if, since the article is unclear), or even were tenure track, that was viewed as one of the most prestigious and desirable jobs in the world.
For numbers, it's nearly 1% of all post-docs (~3400) in those three universities, leaving at once, to a single destination. You can do the math. It's a fact that the USA used to attract this talent, not export it.
Academics have always been leaving the US, just like Academics have always been coming to the US. A turnover in staff is normal, it has happened everywhere, always.
>It's a fact that the USA used to attract this talent, not export it.
And where is the evidence that it does not? People leaving is normal. Post-docs leave institution's all the time.
One additional thought. If you think this is about a right wing political shift in the US, why would these researcher go to one of the strongholds of the far right in Europe?
A nation doing a 180 from its longstanding strategy of gaining talent to pushing away talent is newsworthy. But it's easy to overlook without reporting on tangible examples.
Academics move around countries all the time for many reasons. It is ridiculous to assume that 25 people moving to different work places is any indication of a "shift in strategy".
"Austria has lured what it calls 25 "top researchers" away from U.S. institutions including Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton with grants set up in response to the Trump administration's funding cuts targeting universities."
> Recipients of the grants of 500,000 euros ($587,000) each over two years range from post-doctoral researchers to professors and work in fields such as physics, chemistry and life sciences, the Austrian Academy of Sciences said in a statement on Thursday.
Has some names. Only had patience to check the first one. Visiting Assistant Professor of Global Premodern Art History at the Ohio State University. Happy for him, wish Austria the best of luck...
Regardless of institution, there is a fierce debate of whether this is the right strategy after all - there are many excellent postdocs and scientists already in Europe waiting for faculty openings. Why not open these new positions to all candidates?
Even if they were full professors, 25 seems like a literal drop in the bucket. There are 187 R1 universities in the US. Competition for professorships is so intense that a lot of people look at grad school as a sucker's bet. I'm happy for these people and for Austria, but I don't see a real news story here.
The thing is that professors and research groups aren't fungible. Each one that moves represents a nontrivial loss in expertise for the US in some field. There are only so many groups doing basic research into materials science for microelectronics, for example---certainly not at all 187 R1 universities. But something like that is a strategic asset for the US, to the point that there's a DARPA office specifically to fund that work (https://www.darpa.mil/about/offices/mto).
Austria has 9 million people. Scaled up in proportion to US population, that's the equivalent of ~940 academics. Still not huge, but a somewhat bigger drop.
What is meaningful, I suspect, is that this reverses the usual direction of brain drain. If this is not a fluke and that reversal gets consolidated, yeah, that's really bad for the US. Alongside the $100.000 H1B, there is a chance that this could durably shift Silicon Valley-style creativity outside of the US.
I follow a few Australian folks on social media, and it was really surprising to see how much of an Asian/Chinese influence there is. Asian flavors, signage, brands, even slang. It’s a departure from American cultural hegemony that I (as an American) just did not expect.
After wrongly thinking for my entire life that Aussies were basically American cowboys plus crocodiles, I now see news like this as just part of a feedback loop of accelerating loss of global influence - or more accurate, transfer of influence. Coca Cola —> Lychee.
don't worry, austrians get that all the time. i always have to point out that i am talking about the one in europe, next to germany, before it clicks with people
As a startup that chose to locate in Canada, we’ve already had a dozen amazing candidates currently in the US reach out and apply for roles since we shared our thinking earlier this week [0].
The feeling of ambient immigration hostility in the US (even beyond any one specific policy) is palpable.
0: https://aloe.inc/blog/the-best-talent-in-the-world
Canada seems to be entering its own anti immigrant phase though, especially against South Asian immigrants
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/hate-toward-south-asia...
They could make it an even 26 by the end of the night if they play their cards right.
bats eyelashes, casually implements b-tree
I think you can safely hold off on the eyelash batting for a few months. There were only 25 fellowships available, applications opened on July 4th and all have been awarded. This page on the program will tell you more:
https://stipendien.oeaw.ac.at/en/fellowships/apart-usa
I’m currently reading a biography of Kurt Gödel¹ and the first 60 pages are about Austria’s authoritarian-driven brain drain almost 100 years ago.
¹ https://www.amazon.com/Journey-Edge-Reason-Life-G%C3%B6del/d...
Kurt Godel rather famously claimed to have spotted logical contradictions in the US constitution, which of course is not too controversial on its own (and was probably right given who he is), but presenting this argument in response to questions about the constitution that were given as part of his citizenship test was an insane thing to try no matter how good his logic.
Amazingly he still passed.
Einstein talked him out of presenting it. Recent HN conversation on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44812159
The article doesn't go into details whether these academics are full professors or e.g. postdocs. Twenty-five tenured professors would be a big deal because they tend to either bring their workgroups along or rebuild them at the new university. That's where the true impact of such news lies if these are indeed teachers: these groups produce a steady stream of future experts in the form of graduates and PhDs in their respective domains. Given the timelines for careers of students and young academics, the full impact of these moves should start to show in about 5 to 10 years.
Another factor is if they're all from the same (sub)discipline. It doesn't take a lot of established researchers moving to shift a field's center of gravity somewhere else. When you start seeing research conferences that used to be in the US be held elsewhere instead, you'll know that the change has happened.
I'm on a researcher mailing-list discussing exactly this at the moment.
For the moment, the main argument for keeping some conferences within the US is the number of researchers (typically PhDs and postdocs) who couldn't attend then re-enter the US.
We'll see how that goes.
Austria is a really wonderful place to live as well. Food, bakery traditions, beer traditions, world class skiing.
[flagged]
This time they gonna have online Art schools where anyone who can pay fees can secure admission. No more jilted art students causing world wars.
Imagine if people made a Trump joke whenever New York City came up in conversation.
When talking to foreigners and someone mentions USA, it's about 50/50 I get a trump joke or a fat joke. I don't think HN is the place for it, but stereotyping countries is pretty common.
It should be trivial to combine them into one for a 100% score.
I'm in Brazil and that happens often
So uh... wonderful women, good social skills, awesome parties... those are just true :)
Yes, just imagine if trump was brought up often no matter the subject.... I can't imagine what point you think you're making.
The throwaway's comment has been flagged. Who was he joking about? Mozart? Freud? Arnie?
You can enable [Show Dead] in your profile preferences and see for yourself.
It was the usual no effort reference to a failed Austrian artist who later led Germany.
Wow. Didn't know he was a failed artist.
To confirm, and also to check if big G's AI could infer it, I searched for:
a failed Austrian artist who later led Germany
Worked.
Yeah, I could tell. I was playing dumb while pointing out some good Austrians.
Didn't know about [Show Dead] though, thanks for the tip!
Take the opportunity and interest to read up on the history of WW2. It is a riveting read.
Pardon my missing the playing dumb :/ Glad the tip was appreciated.
Still, hashtag NotAllAustrians: Russell Crowe, John Clarke, Jacinda Ardern, Keith Urban, Jane Campion, the Finn brothers et al. all raised the bar.
Meh. Your joke here, like a kangaroo, has too many leaps. None of these were even born on the West Island.
tbf Trump is at least somewhat relevant to whether the US is a good place to live right now. It's more like inserting a Charles Manson joke when someone says why they like California...
The article mentions paying them $587,000 each over 2 years. It also mentions at least some of the recruits were post-docs who average pay in the US is like $60k. If this is what brain drain is, where can I sign up?
I think a grant includes money for all expenses - experiments, equipment, salary for all staff not just the post-doc etc.
OAW Article on the Subject: https://www.oeaw.ac.at/en/news/harvard-princeton-mit-25-top-...
OAW Call for Nominations: https://stipendien.oeaw.ac.at/en/fellowships/apart-usa
OAW APART-USA Info: https://stipendien.oeaw.ac.at/en/fellowships/apart-usa/apart...
OAW = Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften = Austrian Academy of SciencesI don’t know if this includes starting research budget but if it does, it’s a very modest offer for top researchers. Starting research budget offered by R1 universities in the US can be millions of dollars for top researchers (in CS but that’s all I know about), before they need to get funding on their own. I guess it would be good for researchers who lost all of their funding.
https://archive.is/rGDNX
I was hoping the EU can capitalize on this, but remain skeptical as the EU politicians have noticed what kind of rhetoric is successful and are starting to bang the same drum louder and louder. Being anti immigration one of the main ideas. We'll see. My bet is China will be the big winner.
Recently the EU allocated billions to fund tech startups. But if you read the bare minimum demands, you'll see how suspicious it is. Like, you have to have a female co-founder, when everybody in the trade knows it's very hard to find a trustworthy co-founder of any kind.
I haven't heard of anybody getting these funds. I suspect the recipients were pre-selected before the announcement and the criteria was tailored to match them. And I also suspect, in some roundabout way, part of the money will end up in political campaigns or something.
How would you hear of somebody getting these funds? I don’t personally know anybody who’s gotten massive VC funding in the US either, but I think it does happen.
I don’t see any reason to be skeptical of the requirement to find a female co-founder, I mean it is clearly a program to promote equality, but that is an uncontroversial goal in some places.
Suspicious that the EU claims to "promote gender equality" while turning a blind eye to the male only conscription perpetrated by EU members Austria, Finland, etc
It is a lot easier to come up with new rules for a project that requires proactively making investments (where it is assumed they will be selective anyway), than it is to convince a country to change their military policy.
> convince a country to change their military policy
Maybe they can't force them but the EU has mechanisms to punish illiberal behavior like the fines they are charging Hungary.
They should start fining countries that do make only drafts, at least to start a conversation about it.
Should the EU have the right to reject national election results if the results show no gender equality?
it's very hard to find a trustworthy co-founder of any kind
that may be so, but did you check if the funding is limited to teams with at least two or more people? some funds do not allow single founders at all for whatever reason.
> My bet is China will be the big winner.
Because China is so much more immigration and foreigner friendly?
China can turn on a dime. And they smell blood.
https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-entry-exit-k-visa...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC8f1qs3TGs
Give it 5-10 years and the situation could look very different. If they decide to pour tons of money into it, they could dominate like with trains or solar.
I would never invest time, money or my life into a country without a functioning legal system. In a country where the likes of Jack Ma are not safe nobody is safe.
71% of H1Bs are Indian. They might feel differently, especially after looking at ICE.
Personally I prefer looking at the average case: http://data.worldhappiness.report/chart
China still has lots of ground to make up, but they’re headed in the right direction. Needless to say, the US isn’t.
Looking at the average case is a massive logical fallacy. It isn't the average case that will likely determine the outcome of your case, because as an immigrant you are not average.
They’re quite correlated….
It’s hard for a country to take very good care of its citizens (healthcare, free education, social security, economic opportunity, work-life balance, access to nature) at the Finland level then turn around and persecute immigrants. It just doesn’t happen. It takes a lot of goodwill and trust (in citizens, politics, institutions) to get all that to work. Then clearly they’re also trying to attract immigrants, they can’t turn around and start locking them up.
Look at the history of Europe (colonialism), what usually happens is they practice and fine-tune atrocities outside then import them. Bush and Iraq as a prelude to Trump.
China is headed in the wrong direction. Xi has screwed the pooch.
How about the opposite: the "great again" USA is very unwelcoming, that Chinese citizens who were attracted to the freedoms it once offered (a different flavour of freedom compared to the one Trump is currently offering) might now think "Sheesh, maybe let's not try to migrate to the USA and start a life there!".
You do realise Chinese form a large immigrant population in the US, right?
And as much as I dislike saying this - Chinese government doesn’t want you talking about politics. Otherwise you should be mostly fine.
While US government is going beyond politics. Pushing stuff like that autism and Tylenol connection on correlation study. That is going beyond politics and impacting academic and scientific analysis.
> You do realise Chinese form a large immigrant population in the US, right?
Did I say anything that made you think otherwise, right?
> And as much as I dislike saying this - Chinese government doesn’t want you talking about politics. Otherwise you should be mostly fine.
Ahhh too bad then, because one of the things that I really like about the societies that I'd bet my life/money/health/other resources on is that I want to be able to talk about politics. Otherwise, what's the point, all you are doing is lining some dictator's pocket.
> While US government is going beyond politics. Pushing stuff like that autism and Tylenol connection on correlation study. That is going beyond politics and impacting academic and scientific analysis.
Yes, the US is also on a bad path. But so is China. And they too push plenty of bullshit. How is that Tianmen Square investigation coming along?
> Did I say anything that made you think otherwise, right?
Yes this line made you seem ignorant.
>> Because China is so much more immigration and foreigner friendly?
The brain drain to China will not be based on immigrants or foreigners rather Chinese going back. Capisce?
And you seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing.
> Yes, the US is also on a bad path. But so is China. And they too push plenty of bullshit. How is that Tianmen Square investigation coming along?
Tiananmen Square happened in 1989. China has been on the "bad path" for years. No one is denying that. But that is not the same parallel as US government pushing hack medicines and correlation studies like autism and Tylenol. Find me an example of China doing that instead of going for the lowest denominator of "Tiananmen Square, see gotcha".
CNN was reporting on the dangers of Tylenol during pregnancy less than 10 years ago.
Because PRC is returning sea turtle / talented diasphora friendly and there's a fuckload of talented PRC born diasphora abroad who frankly has to self censor under mccarthy free speech anyways.
I don't know, personally never went there. But it doesn't seem to be throwing out babies with the bath water, as currently the case in the US. What their immigration policies are in general I don't know, but they are a knowledge hungry worldpower, and we are talking about scientists here. And as for the EU, my concern remains, there are way too many Trump copycats, and it's difficult to trust it will not go down the same road. The problems and root causes are similar. If I didn't have kids I would've left Germany for sure by now.
> And as for the EU, my concern remains, there are way too many Trump copycats
Fully agreed on that one.
China can benefit in the short-term if talent moves there, but it's very difficult to gain citizenship in China if you're not ethnically Chinese. That probably won't matter for people just moving for work, but those looking for a better life for their children or a home would likely consider it a blocker.
There are millions of overseas Chinese descendants who already speak Chinese and are wholly or partly ethnically Chinese. That would be an easy pool to draw from first.
For example Terence Tao speaks Cantonese.
This has been my observation living in the EU.
Two regions that have been capitalising from skilled programmers and that hardly anyone talks about are the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
They are in an excellent position to capitalize on the situation: deep pockets and a shady reputation that has kept competition low, so they should have plenty of open position.
lol, China is the most anti immigrant which is why their immigration levels are so low.
Austria, and Vienna in particular has always held a special place in my heart
Do we know if they have programs like this for high skill tech workers or is it just PhDs at this point?
Salary range there is like 30 to 70k euros
I wish it said more about what these researchers did, other than they were the result of cuts to things like trans policies and opposition to Palestine protests. It would be interesting to see if these are semiconductor researchers or gender studies.
I hope Austria Colleges who made out sends Trump a nice Thank Your Card and maybe a gift certificate to McDonalds :)
How is 25 American takings jobs in Austria newsworthy?
That's a very reductionist way to describe it. According to the article, these are key researchers from some of America's most prestigious universities.
Because it gets a lot of response, there's a lot of traction, many with positive sentiment, support, and "take me with you" equivalents.
Because its a sign significant numbers of people, institutions, disciplines, and demographics are thinking that way. In stock market terminology it would be a signal to investors.
Thread on Reddit 1mo ago about biotechnologist Wali Malik leaving his lab in Boston developing mass testing of active ingredients for pharmaceuticals got a decent amount of visibility. Also mentions the APART-USA grants. https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1mzlk04/us_rese...
>Because its a sign significant numbers of people, institutions, disciplines, and demographics are thinking that way. In stock market terminology it would be a signal to investors.
How is something incredibly common a signal for anything? Academics move to other countries all the time.
On its own it isn't, but I suspect if all of these were reported you might think it quite significant.
Why do they not make an actual story out of this, do some research and publish whether there was some unusually high outflow of academics over the last two years?
25 people can not be an indication of anything. Academics especially are moving around often and take up work in different countries.
These are researchers from Harvard, Princeton, and MIT. Sometimes there are only a handful of people worldwide in a particular field doing top level research.
And sometimes there are tens of thousands or these fields are tiny for a reason.
This Reuters article is based on a press release that was issued earlier today. The type of research you’re proposing would take weeks to be done, written and edited.
Either it's too hard or it would show a nothing-burger. Anecdotes are better for spreading misinformation when you're constrained by being factual.
Can you point out the misinformation?
Need to start somewhere. In 2024 how many researchers did the same?
Not an academic so there could be some context I don’t know but upon reading it it’s even worse, grants for 2 years, looks more like a secondment than a coup.
According to primary sources, the program is actually for four years. The press release stated 48 months but that got printed in Reuters as two years.
That’ll definitely make it harder to go back which does make it more meaningful.
Not many people walk away from Harvard, MIT, Princeton, etc. If you had tenure there (a big if, since the article is unclear), or even were tenure track, that was viewed as one of the most prestigious and desirable jobs in the world.
25 people leaving is a sea change.
>25 people leaving is a sea change.
25 Academics leaving is not "sea change".
>If you had tenure there (a big if, since the article is unclear), or even were tenure track, that was viewed as one of the most prestigious and desirable jobs in the world.
Some very major ifs there.
For numbers, it's nearly 1% of all post-docs (~3400) in those three universities, leaving at once, to a single destination. You can do the math. It's a fact that the USA used to attract this talent, not export it.
Academics have always been leaving the US, just like Academics have always been coming to the US. A turnover in staff is normal, it has happened everywhere, always.
>It's a fact that the USA used to attract this talent, not export it.
And where is the evidence that it does not? People leaving is normal. Post-docs leave institution's all the time.
One additional thought. If you think this is about a right wing political shift in the US, why would these researcher go to one of the strongholds of the far right in Europe?
A nation doing a 180 from its longstanding strategy of gaining talent to pushing away talent is newsworthy. But it's easy to overlook without reporting on tangible examples.
Academics move around countries all the time for many reasons. It is ridiculous to assume that 25 people moving to different work places is any indication of a "shift in strategy".
It's an example of the result of the shift in strategy. The shift in strategy has been widely reported elsewhere, and we are already well aware of it.
It’s narrative building by the media owners. We get to see how they fight rhetorically through headlines.
But when it's one guy being hired by Meta, it's a landmark in private enterprise and irresistible reporting. Hmm...
Because it's a reason to bash Trump.
Trump gives plenty of reasons to be bashed, but this news article seems like a stretch.
Taking a less cynical view, it's just successful Austrian PR.
It's right in the first paragraph:
"Austria has lured what it calls 25 "top researchers" away from U.S. institutions including Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton with grants set up in response to the Trump administration's funding cuts targeting universities."
This article is missing key info. Which research areas are we talking about?
> Recipients of the grants of 500,000 euros ($587,000) each over two years range from post-doctoral researchers to professors and work in fields such as physics, chemistry and life sciences, the Austrian Academy of Sciences said in a statement on Thursday.
https://www.univie.ac.at/aktuelles/detail/sechs-us-forscheri...
Has some names. Only had patience to check the first one. Visiting Assistant Professor of Global Premodern Art History at the Ohio State University. Happy for him, wish Austria the best of luck...
Regardless of institution, there is a fierce debate of whether this is the right strategy after all - there are many excellent postdocs and scientists already in Europe waiting for faculty openings. Why not open these new positions to all candidates?
Even if they were full professors, 25 seems like a literal drop in the bucket. There are 187 R1 universities in the US. Competition for professorships is so intense that a lot of people look at grad school as a sucker's bet. I'm happy for these people and for Austria, but I don't see a real news story here.
The thing is that professors and research groups aren't fungible. Each one that moves represents a nontrivial loss in expertise for the US in some field. There are only so many groups doing basic research into materials science for microelectronics, for example---certainly not at all 187 R1 universities. But something like that is a strategic asset for the US, to the point that there's a DARPA office specifically to fund that work (https://www.darpa.mil/about/offices/mto).
Sure. It can be a meaningful story, I just often find myself wanting to see threads grounded in what the denominator is for the headline number.
Austria has 9 million people. Scaled up in proportion to US population, that's the equivalent of ~940 academics. Still not huge, but a somewhat bigger drop.
drop by drop, thats how a bucket fills.
OK, but I want to read news stories about the state of the bucket, not about 25 of the drops.
True.
What is meaningful, I suspect, is that this reverses the usual direction of brain drain. If this is not a fluke and that reversal gets consolidated, yeah, that's really bad for the US. Alongside the $100.000 H1B, there is a chance that this could durably shift Silicon Valley-style creativity outside of the US.
I follow a few Australian folks on social media, and it was really surprising to see how much of an Asian/Chinese influence there is. Asian flavors, signage, brands, even slang. It’s a departure from American cultural hegemony that I (as an American) just did not expect.
After wrongly thinking for my entire life that Aussies were basically American cowboys plus crocodiles, I now see news like this as just part of a feedback loop of accelerating loss of global influence - or more accurate, transfer of influence. Coca Cola —> Lychee.
This is a story about Austria.
Not gonna lie I also read it as Australia....
don't worry, austrians get that all the time. i always have to point out that i am talking about the one in europe, next to germany, before it clicks with people
Fun fact: there is a thing called an O-Bahn in Australia. Surely I mean Austria?
Surprisingly, no: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-Bahn_Busway
huh, why is that? people don't believe that australia has trains? wait, this isn't even a train but a bus. does o-bahn sound too german?
I think it is the "Austria hails..." The extra ia/ai in there is throwing off our brains. I had to read it a few times before it stuck.
Mozart not Kangaroos
Waltzing Johann Strauss, not Matilda
I was just waiting for someone to confuse Austria with Australia :)