Biggest brain drain from UK in 50 years

[The Grim Squeaker]

Biggest brain drain from UK in 50 years

By Robert Winnett, Deputy Political Editor

Skilled professionals, including doctors, are leaving the UK in record numbers
Over a quarter of qualified professionals who have moved abroad had health or education qualifications

Britain is experiencing the worst "brain drain" of any country as highly qualified professionals settle abroad, an authoritative international study showed yesterday.

Record numbers of Britons are leaving - many of them doctors, teachers and engineers - in the biggest exodus for almost 50 years.

There are now 3.247 million British-born people living abroad, of whom more than 1.1 million are highly-skilled university graduates, say the researchers.

More than three quarters of these professionals have settled abroad for more than 10 years, according to the study by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

No other nation is losing so many qualified people, it points out. Britain has now lost more than one in 10 of its most skilled citizens, while overall only Mexico has had more people emigrate.

The figures, based on official records from more than 220 countries, will alarm Gordon Brown as tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money is spent on educating graduates. The cost of training a junior doctor, for example, is £250,000.

The most popular destinations are English-speaking countries such as Australia, America, Canada and New Zealand and holiday areas including France and Spain.

Almost 60 per cent of those leaving take jobs, although hundreds of thousands of retired people live abroad.

The report is a statistical analysis which does not study the motivation for leaving Britain. However, high house prices and taxes and poor climate are frequently cited.

A spokesman for the Paris-based OECD said last night: "British people have lots of opportunities to move and work abroad so very highly-skilled people are travelling around. It is seen by many British people as part of their personal development to have some experience abroad."

Britain's exodus is far higher than any of the OECD's other 29 members. Germany has lost only 860,000 highly-skilled workers, America 410,000 and France 370,000.

The OECD found that 27.3 per cent of those emigrating had health or education qualifications, 37.7 per cent had humanities or social science degrees and 28.5 per cent were scientists or engineers.

Britain has a shortage of graduates in many of these fields and universities have long warned that some of the brightest hopes are being lost to higher salaries abroad.

The report cited research suggesting that 62 per cent of the world's "star scientists" live in the US, primarily because of the efforts made by American research universities to attract them.

Danny Sriskandarajah, a migration expert at the IPPR think-tank, said: "There is a long-term trend of British people lured abroad by a slightly better lifestyle. They are actively targeted by countries such as Australia and New Zealand."

The emigration was leading to a rapid change in British society as large numbers of highly-skilled immigrants moved to this country to replace those leaving, he said.

"Britain has been lucky - although it has lost substantial numbers of people, it has attracted more than a million skilled immigrants to replace them. If they stop coming then that would be a problem."

Figures from the Office for National Statistics last year, suggested that 207,000 Britons - one every three minutes - left in 2006. The emigration rate is at its highest since just after the Second World War.

The term brain drain was coined in the 1950s following the mass emigration of scientists and other experts to America. Tens of thousands of people also left the country to escape the industrial unrest and high taxes of the 1970s.

Damian Green, the shadow immigration minister, said: "Ten years of Labour has re-created the brain drain. High taxes and Government interference are driving people away."

The study found that foreign-born people make up 8.3 per cent of Britain's population. A House of Lords report into the economic impact of migration is due next month.

Prof David Coleman, of St John's, Oxford, said the brain drain was "to do with quality of life, laws and bureaucracy, tax and all the rest of it".

Prof Christian Dustmann, of University College London, said: "The costs of leaving a country are substantial. The rewards must be very high."

But super high taxes will make people WANT to stay!?!
Seriously though, I get what the articles talking about, though I'm someone whose strongly considering moving back to England (i'm an emigrant myself) one day.

[PeZook]

Heh, it's funny how some people complain about Britain's bureaucracy to the point of leaving, while Polish immigrants to the UK are raving how awesomely organized things are over there

[Dartzap]

Heh, it's funny how some people complain about Britain's bureaucracy to the point of leaving, while Polish immigrants to the UK are raving how awesomely organized things are over there

Quite so - for everything you need there is a form, and we'll get back to you as soon as possible....

I'm honestly not that worried about the brain drain. Many people I know have left the country for five years or more just so that they can gain experiances they would otherwise not have got - when I toured the Nursing faculty where I want to go soon, some of the students in their 2nd year were saying they were already being approached by firms in Oz and NZ to get them over there.

Its been happening for years, it just happens that this year its a more noticable due to the recession.

[Darth Tanner]

Heh, it's funny how some people complain about Britain's bureaucracy to the point of leaving

I'd imagine thats just the Tories trying to put their spin on the report.

while Polish immigrants to the UK are raving how awesomely organized things are over there

I guess the grass is always greener on the other side but I don't really notice any awesome level of organisation over here going by the level of waste and incompetence regularly occurring, most likely because we simple don't hear about waste and incompetence in other countries as its domestic news.

The cost of training a junior doctor, for example, is £250,000

One of the big reasons we lose so many of our doctors is that the government introduced a big central IT database to manage the assigning of new doctors in the NHS, subsequently thousands couldn’t get jobs when the system crashed and were poached by generous package offers from every other country eager to get a medical graduate on the cheap. As the article says countries like Australia and New Zealand are all too aware that they can pick up a £250,000 medical graduate for a few thousand in an up front lump sum and a free airline ticket.

One of the biggest problem with this trend, especially retirees moving to Spain is that they come back when their health starts to fail and they have used up their savings on dodgy villas in the sun leaving the UK with their medical and housing bills while they take money out of the economy for a couple of decades or so having their pensions sent to Spain.

[mr friendly guy]

Heh heh heh. I have noticed a lot of UK doctors coming here. Apparently our conditions are better, ie when we pay over-time we actually give higher rates vs base rates. One doctor I recently met was surprised about over time and penalty rates, something I just take for granted. Interestingly she does plan to go back to the UK, so its not that big a loss (for the UK) since she like other UK doctors are here to enjoy another country, get experience etc until they can get into the training programme of their choice.

However, most of them who I have had chats to and know reasonably well DO NOT plan to go back to the UK for various reasons -
1) shitty hours (and I thought I worked long hours),

2) over supply (hey man, the government can tell you where to go since if you won't do the job, they will just find some other poor smoe to do it)

3) One was pissed off when one of her patients boasted about how much welfare he got which he subsequently spent on alcohol while she was slaving away. The way I heard your welfare system described, you are more generous than we are, and I thought Australia was becoming a welfare state.

4) I also hear that in Australia we can claim educational expenses as a tax deduction while in the UK you can't. No seriously, looking at my excel spreadsheet on my taxes, I spent more than $9000 AUD on educational (including exams and hotel fees whilst interstate) / college fees / equipment. At least I got some of that back.

5) Ultra competitive - its not enough that you have done such and such jobs and have gotten good recommendations, they ask you how many papers have you published. I am sure its nice to have papers published, but not every one is actually interested in that type of thing.

Oh, and if anyone in Britain is thinking of poaching some of our doctors, I recommend getting them when they do an elective year (some specialties training expect their trainees to do an elective, so people use that opportunity to go overseas and get experience). However don't expect them to stay, considering what my UK colleges tell me about the system.


Edit - does any one know if the UK medical graduates has to pay back the money it cost them to pass med school, or do they have to fork it out front since it seems like a ridiculous amount needed to train a doctor. To contrast with Australia's example, it cost less than $40,000 AUD to train me and I paid that back within a few years through taxes and voluntary repayments. IIRC recent medical graduates might cost close to $60,000 AUD, but I will ask my intern next time I see him. In contrast 250 K pound sterling seems really expensive.

[Psychic_Sandwich]

Edit - does any one know if the UK medical graduates has to pay back the money it cost them to pass med school, or do they have to fork it out front since it seems like a ridiculous amount needed to train a doctor. To contrast with Australia's example, it cost less than $40,000 AUD to train me and I paid that back within a few years through taxes and voluntary repayments. IIRC recent medical graduates might cost close to $60,000 AUD, but I will ask my intern next time I see him. In contrast 250 K pound sterling seems really expensive.

AFAIK, we don't do 'med school' as a separate thing in this country. Medicine is a six year undergraduate degree, which I guess is the equivalent of med school. Students can get a loan for that, which they then have to pay back, yes.

[Lusankya]

AFAIK, we don't do 'med school' as a separate thing in this country. Medicine is a six year undergraduate degree, which I guess is the equivalent of med school. Students can get a loan for that, which they then have to pay back, yes.

Same in Australia. We just call it "med school" if someone's studying medicine.

[mr friendly guy]

Lusankya is right. We have both undergraduate and post graduate medicine courses, although in Western Australia we are moving towards more post graduate courses. Calling it "med school" is just a colloquoilism ?sp.

I am still interested in why it costs so much to train a UK doctor. Granted UWA was / still is a cheapo university (ie its rich, but still uses old equipment and harasses begs its alumni to donate), and it saved money by giving us the all so glorious Problem Based Learning (hint only the name sounds good, its a shitty way to learn, but I hear most medical courses are doing that any way), but still, the cost difference between the UK and over here is immense.