Austria Hails 'brain Gain' in Luring 25 Academics Away From Us After Cuts
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Austria has attracted 25 academics from the US, hailing it as a 'brain gain', while commenters discuss the implications of this move and the factors driving it, including US immigration policies and academic job market conditions.
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Trump gives plenty of reasons to be bashed, but this news article seems like a stretch.
"Austria has lured what it calls 25 "top researchers" away from U.S. institutions including Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton with grants set up in response to the Trump administration's funding cuts targeting universities."
25 people can not be an indication of anything. Academics especially are moving around often and take up work in different countries.
25 people leaving is a sea change.
25 Academics leaving is not "sea change".
>If you had tenure there (a big if, since the article is unclear), or even were tenure track, that was viewed as one of the most prestigious and desirable jobs in the world.
Some very major ifs there.
>It's a fact that the USA used to attract this talent, not export it.
And where is the evidence that it does not? People leaving is normal. Post-docs leave institution's all the time.
One additional thought. If you think this is about a right wing political shift in the US, why would these researcher go to one of the strongholds of the far right in Europe?
There are at least a half dozen other EU countries with right wing governments. Austria’s current chancellor is centre-right, and thank god most “far right” parties in Europe are still kilometers away from their US counterparts, and would not dare interfere in academia in any way similar to Trump’s doings.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00938-y
Because its a sign significant numbers of people, institutions, disciplines, and demographics are thinking that way. In stock market terminology it would be a signal to investors.
Thread on Reddit 1mo ago about biotechnologist Wali Malik leaving his lab in Boston developing mass testing of active ingredients for pharmaceuticals got a decent amount of visibility. Also mentions the APART-USA grants. https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1mzlk04/us_rese...
How is something incredibly common a signal for anything? Academics move to other countries all the time.
bats eyelashes, casually implements b-tree
https://stipendien.oeaw.ac.at/en/fellowships/apart-usa
The feeling of ambient immigration hostility in the US (even beyond any one specific policy) is palpable.
0: https://aloe.inc/blog/the-best-talent-in-the-world
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/hate-toward-south-asia...
Two regions that have been capitalising from skilled programmers and that hardly anyone talks about are the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
I haven't heard of anybody getting these funds. I suspect the recipients were pre-selected before the announcement and the criteria was tailored to match them. And I also suspect, in some roundabout way, part of the money will end up in political campaigns or something.
I don’t see any reason to be skeptical of the requirement to find a female co-founder, I mean it is clearly a program to promote equality, but that is an uncontroversial goal in some places.
Maybe they can't force them but the EU has mechanisms to punish illiberal behavior like the fines they are charging Hungary.
They should start fining countries that do make only drafts, at least to start a conversation about it.
that may be so, but did you check if the funding is limited to teams with at least two or more people? some funds do not allow single founders at all for whatever reason.
Because China is so much more immigration and foreigner friendly?
https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-entry-exit-k-visa...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC8f1qs3TGs
Give it 5-10 years and the situation could look very different. If they decide to pour tons of money into it, they could dominate like with trains or solar.
Personally I prefer looking at the average case: http://data.worldhappiness.report/chart
China still has lots of ground to make up, but they’re headed in the right direction. Needless to say, the US isn’t.
It’s hard for a country to take very good care of its citizens (healthcare, free education, social security, economic opportunity, work-life balance, access to nature) at the Finland level then turn around and persecute immigrants. It just doesn’t happen. It takes a lot of goodwill and trust (in citizens, politics, institutions) to get all that to work. Then clearly they’re also trying to attract immigrants, they can’t turn around and start locking them up.
Look at the history of Europe (colonialism), what usually happens is they practice and fine-tune atrocities outside then import them. Bush and Iraq as a prelude to Trump.
And as much as I dislike saying this - Chinese government doesn’t want you talking about politics. Otherwise you should be mostly fine.
While US government is going beyond politics. Pushing stuff like that autism and Tylenol connection on correlation study. That is going beyond politics and impacting academic and scientific analysis.
Did I say anything that made you think otherwise, right?
> And as much as I dislike saying this - Chinese government doesn’t want you talking about politics. Otherwise you should be mostly fine.
Ahhh too bad then, because one of the things that I really like about the societies that I'd bet my life/money/health/other resources on is that I want to be able to talk about politics. Otherwise, what's the point, all you are doing is lining some dictator's pocket.
> While US government is going beyond politics. Pushing stuff like that autism and Tylenol connection on correlation study. That is going beyond politics and impacting academic and scientific analysis.
Yes, the US is also on a bad path. But so is China. And they too push plenty of bullshit. How is that Tianmen Square investigation coming along?
Yes this line made you seem ignorant.
>> Because China is so much more immigration and foreigner friendly?
The brain drain to China will not be based on immigrants or foreigners rather Chinese going back. Capisce?
And you seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing.
> Yes, the US is also on a bad path. But so is China. And they too push plenty of bullshit. How is that Tianmen Square investigation coming along?
Tiananmen Square happened in 1989. China has been on the "bad path" for years. No one is denying that. But that is not the same parallel as US government pushing hack medicines and correlation studies like autism and Tylenol. Find me an example of China doing that instead of going for the lowest denominator of "Tiananmen Square, see gotcha".
For example Terence Tao speaks Cantonese.
¹ https://www.amazon.com/Journey-Edge-Reason-Life-G%C3%B6del/d...
Amazingly he still passed.
Do we know if they have programs like this for high skill tech workers or is it just PhDs at this point?
For the moment, the main argument for keeping some conferences within the US is the number of researchers (typically PhDs and postdocs) who couldn't attend then re-enter the US.
We'll see how that goes.
After wrongly thinking for my entire life that Aussies were basically American cowboys plus crocodiles, I now see news like this as just part of a feedback loop of accelerating loss of global influence - or more accurate, transfer of influence. Coca Cola —> Lychee.
Surprisingly, no: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-Bahn_Busway
What is meaningful, I suspect, is that this reverses the usual direction of brain drain. If this is not a fluke and that reversal gets consolidated, yeah, that's really bad for the US. Alongside the $100.000 H1B, there is a chance that this could durably shift Silicon Valley-style creativity outside of the US.
Has some names. Only had patience to check the first one. Visiting Assistant Professor of Global Premodern Art History at the Ohio State University. Happy for him, wish Austria the best of luck...
OAW Call for Nominations: https://stipendien.oeaw.ac.at/en/fellowships/apart-usa
OAW APART-USA Info: https://stipendien.oeaw.ac.at/en/fellowships/apart-usa/apart...
OAW = Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften = Austrian Academy of Sciences17 more comments available on Hacker News