If You're British, Forget Brain Drain -- It's "Brain Circulation". (July 2, 2008)

Susan Robertson, professor of the sociology of education at the University of Bristol, has suggested to The Guardian's Harriet Swain that in Britain brain-drain fears have "receded because global mobility is viewed more positively now... and all the evidence shows that most UK academics who go abroad do return later. As a result, these days the buzz term is 'brain circulation'".

Ms Swain reports that during the 2006-07 academic year figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency show that 4,540 academic staff arrived from overseas to start work in UK universities while 1,325 staff left UK institutions to go abroad.

The data also show that nearly 20% of UK academic staff are now non-UK nationals and: "While overall more academics come into the country than leave it, the large numbers coming in are at lecturer/researchers and other grades. At senior lecturer/researcher and professorial levels, more academics are leaving."

Diana Warwick, chief executive of Universities UK says: "Obviously, we are seen as an attractive place to come to work. We have a lot of institutional autonomy and academic freedom... Also, we are good at research. If you are a successful researcher, this is a good place to come."

And the UK "benefits from strong links to the rest of Europe, the US and the Commonwealth, so that overseas academics coming here to work are more likely to feel at home. As the number of international students studying in the UK has increased, particularly the number on doctoral programmes, so has the number choosing to stay on in the country and pursue an academic career."

Nevertheless, as Britain's university sector is well aware: "[T]here are a growing number of players in the higher education market. Large developing economies such as China and India are investing significant amounts in their higher education systems, but so are smaller economies, such as Singapore and Malaysia. As a result, all these countries are likely to retain more academic staff than they used to, and to attract back any that spend time overseas, [and] development of the European Higher Education Area by 2010 is also likely to increase demand for academic manpower."

And Universities UK has warned in a recent report of an over-reliance on non-UK staff especially in the areas of science, engineering and mathematics, because "they could easily choose to return home or go elsewhere".

The matters raised by Harriet Swain ought to be of concern to Australia, because the factors impinging on sustaining and improving our "knowledge economy" are at least as daunting as they are for the UK.