Brains on the Move
The always brilliant Virginia Postrel pointed this out on Google+, from The Scientist:
Scientific talent has a long history of migrating from one country to another in search of like-minded collaborators, better financial and institutional support, and public acceptance for their work.
While a rising Asia—namely India, South Korea, and especially China—is gaining traction as an emerging research power, the United States still leads the world in measures of scientific impact by a substantial margin. This is partly due to America also remaining by far the leading destination for research scientists emigrating from other countries. This tilt is especially evident in Asia. More than 50 percent of all foreign PhD graduates in the U.S. come from three countries—China, India, and South Korea—and more than 80 percent of the STEM professors at the prestigious Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) obtained their PhDs in the U.S. This deep symbiotic relationship between scholarly talent on both sides of the Pacific has existed for more than 20 years, and serves to connect the U.S. to the world’s most dynamic R&D and economic region.
It's weasel-worded, of course, but the point is clear: free markets and free countries inspire and support scientific research, which is why they remain so attractive:
Countries that lay out the welcome mat for foreign research talent and allow their own researchers to go abroad freely do better than closed research economies in every sense. Science is a global enterprise and free brain migration should be encouraged by all nations.
Right. And when brains are allowed to migrate, they migrate here.
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Comments:
May '10
Re: Brains on the Move
And if we actually let them keep some of their money, they will KEEP coming here...
Unless you believe, that, at a certain point, you've made enough money.
Mar '11
Re: Brains on the Move
Rob Long:
Right. And when brains are allowed to migrate, they migrate here.
Because our government provides more money to scientists than any other government in the world.
May '10
Re: Brains on the Move
I am all for being the research capital of the world but I don't support many of the kinds of research the Gov gives money too such as the sleeping habits of rats
However your overall premise is spot on, or as Paul Ryan would say "Spotted Cow" on.
Mar '11
Re: Brains on the Move
Actually, most scientists could never make anywhere near as much money in their home countries as they do here. First, because many of them come from European countries with even higher tax rates, and second because the pay structures for professors in most other countries cap their salaries, while those in America can (theoretically) earn many multiples doing the same work.
May '12
Re: Brains on the Move
Good article, but I think it barely scratches the surface explaining why talented individuals, not just in the sciences come to the US. The US has a lot of other advantages that other nations don't. Strong intellectual property laws, living space, quality of life, despite the best efforts of Obama to make it worthless-the US dollar still goes quite far in comparison to the Euro, and a society that is far less divided along lines of race, class, religion, and ethnicity than other nations. For example Singapore (& Hong Kong to a lesser extent) rates highly if one only judges them by tax regimes and IP laws, but living space and quality of life quite can't compare to that of the US. Try buying a car in Singapore; if you actually can get a permit to own one, you'll pay through the nose for the car, registration, insurance, gas, and parking with few places to really drive to. Not nearly as much of an issue in the US.
Edited on August 18, 2012 at 12:48amOct '10
Re: Brains on the Move
When it comes to cutting-edge research, technological innovation, and entrepreneurship based upon them, here's an interesting experiment to try. Draw circles with a radius of 100 kilometres around MIT and the midpoint of a vector between UC Berkeley and Stanford. Evaluate the percentage of these activities within those circles and outside. The presence of a world-class research university, along with an economic environment which promotes spin-offs, is a huge contributor to the kind of ferment which drives prosperity.
This is not to say that it doesn't happen elsewhere, but when you look at the numbers, even though Massachusetts and California are toxic to business creation, the presence of the universities confers upon them a great advantage.
When people have spoken to me over the last two decades of creating a “new Silicon Valley”, I've always responded, “Where's the research university?” They don't want to hear that—it can take decades to stand up. But that was then: with the Internet transcending the brick and mortar model of higher education, perhaps these centres of innovation will disperse into the cloud.