University brain drain

The staff brain drain from British universities has reached unprecedented levels, according to new research.

As many as 2,000 teaching and research staff are now leaving UK universities each year for better paid jobs abroad - twice as many as three years ago.

Others are giving up academic jobs because they can earn more as gas fitters and plumbers.

The new figures come from the Association Of University Teachers, which next week begins a week of industrial action in protest over low academic pay. Strikes will peak on Wednesday, when universities across the country are expected to close.

But despite the disruption the strikes will cause to their institutions, vice-chancellors did not dispute the figures, which they believe show the scale of the crisis in academic recruitment and retention.

The AUT is protesting against pay levels which mean senior lecturers can earn as little as £38,000 after 15 years in post. Pay scales in the United States offer at least a third more for comparable jobs.

The starting salary for lecturers, just under £23,000, is 42 per cent behind the rate for the job in the US.

Vice-chancellors accept they do not pay staff enough to prevent their best being tempted overseas.

One of the protesters is Dr Karl Gensberg, a post- doctoral researcher in molecular biology at Birmingham University.

The 41-year-old is leaving the university, which pays him £23,000 a year, to train to be a gas fitter: "I earn £100 a day doing my academic job, which involves research into arthritis. But I can earn that in two hours servicing someone's central heating."

A spokesman for Universities UK, which represents vicechancellors, said: "The attractiveness of university employment is in decline.

"It continues to be difficult to attract and retain academic staff in the face of increasingly aggressive competition from universities overseas."

Higher tuition fees, set to be introduced in 2006 under Governmentproposals, are not likely to stem the tide. Universities UK insists higher education needs £8.8 billion more from the Government over the next three years - including £600 million to fund higher staff pay.

In its submission to the Government's spending review, it cited research which shows a steady increase over five years up to 2001/2 in the "number and proportion" of UK academic staff leaving for jobs abroad, principally in the US and the EU.

An AUT spokesman said: "Last month, the Prime Minister quoted figures which showed that 1,000 UK academics left jobs in this country two years ago - a quarter of them to the US. Our research suggests that figure has now doubled and could rise even higher."