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Europe launches program to lure scientists away from the US

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Re: Europe launches program to lure scientists away from the US

#41

Post by manoweb »

kelnos wrote: post #6
shivajikobardan wrote: post #2

[flagged]

I think that's perhaps -- perhaps! -- true of US citizens who live in the US and have seen their research funding evaporate. I'm not a scientist, but if my job prospects in the US started getting really grim, I would still have a hard time leaving my home to work elsewhere. But I'd probably at least consider it. But non-citizens, especially those who are being pushed to self-deport (or worse)...? I feel like somethin…

Hello, the self deport is for illegal aliens. There is no concern for who is in the USA with a valid visa to do science. In fact, the longest scientists and highly qualified people from Europe had to wait for a green card was under the Obama administration.

Re: Europe launches program to lure scientists away from the US

#42

Post by continuational »

fooker wrote: post #22

Europe does every thing except the only needed thing, paying up. Not just for this, same for finding startups, helping Ukraine or Palestine.

The EU spends as much as the US on Ukraine, and about twice as much if you count refugee aid.

Re: Europe launches program to lure scientists away from the US

#44

Post by aleph_minus_one »

rednafi wrote: post #7

Europe really needs to fix the funding issue and language fragmentation. Otherwise there's no "luring people in." Every time someone brings this up, a bunch of people are like, "Have you ever worked in the EU? They all speak English at work." Yes, I have, and also on three other continents. Europe hasn’t adopted English at work that much, and no one I know is excited about dealing with racism, picking up the local la…

> Europe really needs to fix the funding issue and language fragmentation.

Indeed: German is the most common first language of the EU, and French is the second-most common first language of the EU. [1] Let's from now on decide that all EU citizens have to speak one of these two languages. Language fragmentation problem solved. :-)

Or are you one of the nerds who lobbies for the idea that everybody should speak Esperanto.

Concerning the idea that "everybody in the EU should speak English": since UK left the EU, there exists no EU country anymore in which English is the only official language: only in Ireland and Malta, English is one of the official languages.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Unio...

Re: Europe launches program to lure scientists away from the US

#45

Post by atemerev »

ascorbic wrote: post #40
atemerev wrote: post #29

Oh well. When Russian scientists were escaping the horrible realities of Putin's regime, had someone in Europe attempted to "lure" them? No, they were fired by hundreds [1] and students were not allowed anymore [2]. Not counting the immense indirect pressure like closing their bank accounts and not prolonging their existing residence documents even when they had jobs. When Ukrainian scientists tried to escape the hor…

It's quite misleading to refer to them as "escaping the horrible realities of Putin's regime" like they were some kind of defectors, when according to your source they were all working as representatives of Russian labs, and most weren't based at CERN itself. It was the cooperation with the affiliated labs that was terminated. Russian citizens affiliated to non-Russian labs were allowed to stay.

Russia was not a member of CERN, so most Russian physicists worked there on (fake-ish, for documents only) exchange programs with JINR Russia. Most of them were living in France or Switzerland for many years. Given the opportunity, every single one of them would have changed the affiliation, but CERN only agreed to employ them this way (unless they find an actual academic position in an actual European university on a short notice, which is next to impossible). Okay, maybe there were a few actual JINR employees, but that what screening is for.

I am a Russian scientist too (not CERN affiliated). I live in a European country since 2005. I donated many thousands dollars to Ukrainian causes, and brought hundreds of thousands of value with donations I organized. Now, my bank account is blocked just for the reason of my nationality, and my residence permit is not being renewed. Meanwhile, Russian oligarchs continue managing shadow fleets from European countries, and exchange millions of dollars freely (e.g. with Raiffeisen bank), and everybody knows that (I am not allowed, of course, to open any bank account, neither in Raiffeisen, not anywhere else in Europe). And many EU countries still pay hundreds of millions for Russian natural gas, and this money directly finance Russian military power.

I personally know Ukrainian scientists who lost their temporary protection permits too. Some of them moved back to war-thorn Ukraine, others went to other countries to try their luck there.

You can say "well, tough luck". But tough luck will be for many other people. Some Americans are now wondering why they are being turned away, asking "but we never voted for him!" And they weren't indeed. Judging people by their nationality is not good for everyone involved.

Re: Europe launches program to lure scientists away from the US

#46

Post by Epa095 »

mpweiher wrote: post #35
perihelions wrote: post #21

You people are too good at critical thinking to read "an investment of 500 million euros between 2025 and 2027" and not instantly write this off as empty grandstanding. How much does—or did, recently—the United States federal government invest in scientists in the USA? Is it ~$70 billion a year? [0] Europe can achieve America's (past) results when Europe starts talking with money. Science migration has historically g…

This is not EU R&D budget. This is a small delta, extra funding specifically for attracting US scientists who are looking to move. Comparing this to the total expenditure by the US federal government seems...odd. I asked ChatGPT: "Combining both EU-level and national R&D expenditures, the total R&D spending across the EU in 2023 was approximately €505 billion." But that appears to be total, both government and indust…

I salute you for being open about the chatgpt use! Do you really trust what it says? That quoted chatgpt-number has zero value to me.

The other numbers are valuable, since they come from actual sources.

Re: Europe launches program to lure scientists away from the US

#47

Post by jillesvangurp »

The article seems to be in Spanish?

Anyway, I think this is smart. I live in Berlin and I noticed a bit of an uptick in the amount of US people coming this way lately. The politics in the US might have something to do with that. There's definitely an interest for people to leave there.

Also, the US has been leaning a lot on foreigners to keep its research departments going for decades now. Indians, Chinese, and indeed Europeans. If you look at Silicon Valley, there are a lot of immigrants running companies there. With all the madness around immigration in the US, it has become a bit less attractive as a country to move to. I think this is as much about making the EU a more attractive place to that group of people than it is about luring actual US citizens this way.

The EU has its own issues on immigration. But it's there and there are a lot of opportunities here. I noticed a sharp uptick in Indian job applications recently. There's a lot of talk about money. But most academics aren't on the huge fees you would need to sustain yourself in places with extremely high cost of living on the East and West coast.

Academics don't earn a lot in Europe. I used to be one. But you can live well on what you earn nevertheless.

Re: Europe launches program to lure scientists away from the US

#48

Post by perihelions »

mpweiher wrote: post #35
perihelions wrote: post #21

You people are too good at critical thinking to read "an investment of 500 million euros between 2025 and 2027" and not instantly write this off as empty grandstanding. How much does—or did, recently—the United States federal government invest in scientists in the USA? Is it ~$70 billion a year? [0] Europe can achieve America's (past) results when Europe starts talking with money. Science migration has historically g…

This is not EU R&D budget. This is a small delta, extra funding specifically for attracting US scientists who are looking to move. Comparing this to the total expenditure by the US federal government seems...odd. I asked ChatGPT: "Combining both EU-level and national R&D expenditures, the total R&D spending across the EU in 2023 was approximately €505 billion." But that appears to be total, both government and indust…

I think that the US strongly outperforms the EU by that metric too,

https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20246/cross-national-compariso... ("Cross-National Comparisons of R&D Performance" (2024))

In the NSF's specific definition, the US greatly outspends the EU even normalizing by GDP—3.46% of GDP in the USA, against 2.16% in the EU-27.

(Notably, China also recently surpassed the EU, at 2.43%).

Re: Europe launches program to lure scientists away from the US

#49

Post by pqtyw »

Epa095 wrote: post #46
mpweiher wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not EU R&D budget. This is a small delta, extra funding specifically for attracting US scientists who are looking to move. Comparing this to the total expenditure by the US federal government seems...odd. I asked ChatGPT: "Combining both EU-level and national R&D expenditures, the total R&D spending across the EU in 2023 was approximately €505 billion." But that appears to be total, both government and indust…

I salute you for being open about the chatgpt use! Do you really trust what it says? That quoted chatgpt-number has zero value to me. The other numbers are valuable, since they come from actual sources.

What if the links came from the ChatGPT answer as well?

Re: Europe launches program to lure scientists away from the US

#50

Post by NotOscarWilde »

aden1ne wrote: post #25
rednafi wrote: post #7

Europe really needs to fix the funding issue and language fragmentation. Otherwise there's no "luring people in." Every time someone brings this up, a bunch of people are like, "Have you ever worked in the EU? They all speak English at work." Yes, I have, and also on three other continents. Europe hasn’t adopted English at work that much, and no one I know is excited about dealing with racism, picking up the local la…

> Europe really needs to fix the funding issue and language fragmentation. The language fragmentation certainly is an issue in the general workplace. But academia does use English as its lingua franca throughout most of the EU, though it might depend on the country. Certainly in places I've worked in academia - and yes, that has been in multiple countries in the EU - I've never had to utter a single word in something…

> I've worked in academia - and yes, that has been in multiple countries in the EU - I've never had to utter a single word in something other than English in the workplace.

I have the same trajectory as you -- multiple countries in the EU, working in academia -- but different experiences for sure. Or at least a mixed bag.

Let me list them in order of how much English sufficed:

1. The Netherlands -- common knowledge is that their English is top notch and anecdotally it was the case as well, I also got by purely with English.

2. Germany -- their English is also good but I needed German in edge cases. One edge case was finding an apartment (not speaking German simply pushed you down the list of candidates, even with a full time job in academia). Another one were university rules and announcements; not every email was in English, but arguably easy to get by with modern translation tools.

3. Czechia & Poland -- English is good among the professors but the percentage of locals at the university level is so high that most internal meetings, announcements, local seminars take place in the local language. In my experience, non-faculty university staff (department secretaries, payroll, entrance security) usually strongly dislike speaking English or outright do not speak it at all.

---

I've omitted some more cases where local languages are required. If you live in a country, you will eventually interact with the healthcare sector, where the language experience will likely mimic the experience at the workplace (for the countries above, it would be in the same order for the healthcare sector).

Another case is government bureaucracy. For most of the EU countries I've been to, the official language of the country is their local language and only their local language. This means that government employees are not required to speak any other language other than the official one to you, plus you might be required to fill in forms and communicate in the official language if you want to talk to them.

In my experience, the helpful/good ones may try to communicate with you in English but if you need something from them or if the bureaucrat had a bad day, you better start talking in the official language.

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