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[lampard]

Is this really, really, the wrong time to consider a move to the UK? (So, spurred on by Scotia's recent post on internet news sites, I read Guardian, Telegraph, and BBC news for my UK feeds), but jeez it's negative in the last 2 days.
Remind me why any well-employed American would move to the UK right now? "Worse than the '70s/'80s" etc. and "10 years of recession," etc. Hmmm... Not sure that this is going to end well for yours truly.

On the bright side, I'll bet property won't skyrocket anytime soon in my non-London prospective locale.

[wegie]

Remind me why any well-employed American would move to the UK right now?

Um, awful though the economy is, it's still better than the US?

Somebody like Herman Cain would never be taken seriously as a candidate for high office?

David Cameron, for all his faults (and they are many) is politically to the left of Obama.

Healthcare still free at the point of service.

Decent beer (OK, you can now get that in the US).

You will actually be offered vegetables with your meal.

Even if where you are isn't great, it's only a couple of hours to Paris/Munich/Prague/wherever.

And if you don't at least try it, you'll always kick yourself ;-)

[lampard]

I think you're mostly wrong ('cuz the US is pretty diverse, and not all right-wing, obese, etc.), except for:

Even if where you are isn't great, it's only a couple of hours to Paris/Munich/Prague/wherever.

And if you don't at least try it, you'll always kick yourself ;-)

Yeah, worth considering.

[totoro]

We're interviewing a lot of people from the UK and Europe recently down here in Oz... Long way to Paris though or even to Singapore or Bangkok or wherever and house prices are really high....

[expatinuk]

Remind me why any well-employed American would move to the UK right now?

You will actually be offered vegetables with your meal.

And if you don't at least try it, you'll always kick yourself ;-)

Veggies with your meal??? hmmm... they will be carrots, peas and french fries... none of which are actually low in sugar!

But I totally agree that if you don't try you'll always kick yourself!

[drspouse]

We're interviewing a lot of people from the UK and Europe recently down here in Oz... Long way to Paris though or even to Singapore or Bangkok or wherever and house prices are really high....

OTOH, we interviewed 4 US candidates recently...

[jasondavid]

We're interviewing a lot of people from the UK and Europe recently down here in Oz... Long way to Paris though or even to Singapore or Bangkok or wherever and house prices are really high....

OTOH, we interviewed 4 US candidates recently...

lol, how many did you hire?

[drspouse]

I am assuming we are only hiring one. But as I posted in another thread, of the 7 or so on the shortlist and reserves, all but one had either a US PhD or a US postdoc.

[jasondavid]

I think the US market is still not good. I know a lot of guys in very applied field being postdocs for years, which is not the case a couple of years ago.

So where did all UK phds go? Oz?

[drspouse]

We discussed this in my department and worked out it was a sub-discipline thing - this particular sub-discipline is something we specialise in, but isn't common in the UK.

[jasondavid]

May I ask which discipline you're in roughly? In my field, it is the contrary. In US, it is more difficult to find a position, while a lot of UK universities are still hiring in this field. In general, US seems to be more trendy in terms of subjects (more driven by research money I would say), while UK tends to be more traditional, which I liked. I might be biased due to my own experience though.

[drspouse]

You can ask, but the answer won't help you even if I give you it - as it's a particular specialism that is less well represented over here, while my discipline as a whole is fairly prominent in the UK.

[totoro]

The guy we interviewed on Thursday (I just went to the jobtalk) had a Canadian PhD and is at a top UK uni. Yes we also have North American candidates. And even Australian ones. Like me the latter often have US PhDs. The US totally dominates my discipline in terms of top journals and PhD programs.

[qrypt]

Thinking only of junior hires, only one of the last four people we have hired recently is British -- and he has been a disaster. 

Whenever we have a post, I make sure it gets advertised well beyond the usual UK venues.  I have no objection to good UK candidates -- in principle they ought to find it easier to get up to speed given that they're familiar with the system here.  But I wouldn't want the candidate pool to be limited to people in the UK. 

All of this is consistent with the quality of our own PhD students, whom I wouldn't wish on anyone once they become job candidates. 

[the_walrus]

By my count 2 of our last 9 permanent hires have UK PhDs (interestingly, though, neither is a brit, making for 0 brits in our last 9 hires). Both of these two british-trained people are excellent colleagues, one of them also a super-star researcher.

I actually don't really think that this says much about the state of British PhDs, though.  What I think it shows is that the academic job market is global (more so than it was probably even 10 years ago).  Considering that it is global, and the size of Britain, there shouldn't be much more expectation for someone getting one of our jobs to have a PhD from California than from Britain.  Considered that way, 2 out of 9 seems about normal, and possibly better than expected.