University of Toronto Snags Yale Professors as Canada Raids American Brain Trust

i think the salary would kill the idea for most americans who would want to move. according to this chart:

https://oira.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/297/2024/05/Fa...

the average assistant professor makes around 100k usd a year.

the salary range in Norway which typically has some of the highest salaries in Europe for university of Oslo assistant professor would be around rank 73-75 (you are not typically eligible to be hired above 78 and in practice above 75) on this chart which is around 69-70k usd:

https://www.uio.no/english/for-employees/employment/payments...

Norway has some of the highest salaries in europe outside of switzerland (although its debatable since cost of living in switzerland is so high). how many people would be willing to take a 25-30% salary reduction to move across the world? and that is the minimum salary decrease as the percentage only increases when you go to other countries where salaries are lower.

Not to mention they will need to learn a new language to be a professor since they need to teach. And also the academic system is different in that most places have more hierarchy than USA whether it is implicit or explicit. So they have to learn to navigate that too.

I think people will find Canada a much more attractive target destination than elsewhere for these reasons. But I also think most won’t actually move they will just discuss it. Happy to be wrong though.

You're right about the salaries but a bigger issue is that academics is financially in trouble everywhere, not just in the US. In some places I know of the political factors behind this trend kind of echo in a weak way some of the problems in the US, like decreased immigration, in some cases brought on by legislative decisions and whatnot. There just isn't a huge pool of money for academics anywhere. Maybe the EU, Canada, or Australia or NZ can step up to the plate, but pretty much everyone I've talked to in those areas have been in financial crises of their own.

I just don't see a huge upswing in funding so far with these things.

Some of the hiring initiatives that have been touted in the media, for example, in Europe, have been laser focused on areas that have been targeted by Trump, such as climate, vaccines, and sexual and gender minority researchers, and even there the funds are pretty limited.

Similarly, this piece points out these Yale professors were being recruited for two years before making this decision. They cite Trump in their decision to move, which I don't doubt played a role, but I also can't help but wonder how much after the fact rationalization is going on or in similar cases whether it's more the feather that broke the camel's back. It just looks like something that had a good chance of happening anyway.

I guess what I'm saying is so far what I've seen looks a lot like academic recruitment always looks, with a couple of very minor exceptions. I'm not hearing about a lot about efforts to do something that might not have otherwise happened, or to leverage "moneyball" tactics in hiring Americans.

I question the intellectual capacity of anyone who actually buys into this mythology.

Especially given the number of countries - presumably without freedom of speech or a right to bear arms - which have been far more successful at dealing with tyrannical governments than the US.