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> Almost my entire R&D team who received PhDs from British universities had them funded by the European Union Well, there you go.

by aigo 5y ago

agent008t 5y ago
Was the UK not a net contributor to the EU budget? And therefore, why cannot the UK fund PhDs more effectively than the EU? I would've thought being less removed from the universities and research groups would make funding more effective.
- user568439 5y ago
  That's the Brexiters logic, but it turns out UK was not only contributing to the EU but also trading. Now it doesn't need to contribute anymore but it also lost exports, access to talent and so on.
  - agent008t 5y ago
    Fine, but my point is there is no reason for Brexit to be a net negative when it comes to the funding of PhDs - if anything, it offers an opportunity to be more effective at funding. Same when it comes to the specific issue of access to talent - nothing in principle stopping the UK from making it extremely easy for talent to come to the UK.
    - roomey 5y ago
      The point is that there was both scales of economy due to the Erasmus program and a lot of pan European research grants.. Being able to pull from a Europe wide talant pool was a huge benefit to the UK and her universities. So there was massive, irreplaceable benefits just for universities lost due to the Brexit project. Along with that Brexit has cost the UK a ton of money.. this net contributer stuff was literal propaganda. The UK is worse off now, with less funding to go around.
      - heurisko 5y ago
        > Along with that Brexit has cost the UK a ton of money.. this net contributer stuff was literal propaganda. The fact that the UK was a net contributor to the EU is uncontroversial [1]. Please cite sources if you're making a drastic claim otherwise. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48256318 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48256318
        rndgermandude 5y ago
        I didn't read what roomey said as claiming the UK wasn't technically a net contributor. Just that it this fact is just a sliver of the entire picture, but was used heavily in pro-Brexit propaganda. Indeed, the UK can now spend what they net contributed to the EU before. But I think it's doubtful that this makes up for everything else the UK lost in the process that isn't just some monetary number (in some government budget). Things like the already mentioned access to the European research and university space - which hugely profited the UK because they used to be really good at "brain draining" the rest of the EU. Access to the European markets is now harder as well, translating directly to (at least in the short term) lost revenue and profit for UK companies, and lost tax revenue for the government, as well as some additional supply chain problems on top of the supply chain problems everybody else faces already. The UK says their net contribution was "an average net contribution of £7.7 billion between 2014 and 2018". Of course this is only partially true. They got a lot more money back indirectly because they directly profited from some of the work various EU agencies did (and now they have to pay people to do the same work a lot of times). Some of these agencies were based in the UK, paid from the EU budget with individual employees paying taxes to the UK government. A lot of the university stuff (funding PhDs, Erasmus) is also not covered by their estimates (tho general research grants were). They lost access to EU funded research programs (like CERN or ITER), too, and now have to foot the bill to participate in those themselves, if they want and are allowed to still participate (e.g. ITER is not EU, and the UK will still participate, but where the EU previously paid a lot of the UK scientists and engineers out of their funds, now the UK government will have to pay them directly). So I think their actual net contribution was more like 4-6 billion, and that doesn't still factor in lost opportunity costs due to now limited access to the European economic and labor markets, and the collective bargaining powers of the EU in things like trade deals, etc. Given all that, I'd argue that there is ample reason to theorize Brexit was monetarily a net negative for the UK. It's hard to say yet, because the long and slow Brexit process took ages, everybody is still adopting, and it's therefore too early to have any reliable mid to long term numbers. And of course, the impact of COVID-19 makes it even harder to analyze just the Brexit outcomes. So, back to topic, I would agree that at least the Brexit supporters who focused mainly on the net contributor thing (not all Brexit supporters operated that way) used it as propaganda - like the infamous red NHS bus - and not in a sound argument for their cause. They willfully ignored all the other things that would or could happen as a result of a Brexit.
    - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
      Anything remotely related to the EU is toxic as far as the current government is concerned. This includes immigration which they successfully tied to the EU in voters minds.
    - kergonath 5y ago
      > Fine, but my point is there is no reason for Brexit to be a net negative when it comes to the funding of PhDs - if anything, it offers an opportunity to be more effective at funding. This works only if you assume that the amount of money stayed the same. For now, there has been a flux of capital and business moving over to the continent. Trade decreased as well. This can change in the long run, depending on the policy of the Bank of England, but for now Brexit is a net loss in British government funding. Besides the fact that the money that was supposed to be saved was also supposed to be spent simultaneously on the NHS, infrastructure, and developing the “northern powerhouse” (of cards, unfortunately, as the North of England gets shafted again).
    - hnaccount_rng 5y ago
      You are missing two parts: 1) _during_ the whole “transition” period nobody knew anything how this would pan out. That means nobody* would write grant proposals for ERC funding for the future. Which is the drop in received funding that the UK institutions start seeing now 2) highly trained people do have a choice in moving. And the UK very openly communicating: we don’t want those stupid foreigners made a number of people thinking twice of going there. They are still some of the most famous universities which reduces this effect, but still it was the default choice for anyone and isn’t anymore. So you get an atrophied bureaucracy for distributing research money and combine it with a reduction in applicants and you get fewer graduate students about 2-5 years after you switch. *significantly fewer people
- mvc 5y ago
  > And therefore, why cannot the UK fund PhDs more effectively than the EU? I always assumed the whole raison d'etre of Brexit was that Conservatives wanted to avoid the obligation of paying into funds like this. Sounds lovely in theory but leaves less government money available to companies with social/professional connections to the cabinet. Funny to see the red wallers finally realizing that too now.
  - agent008t 5y ago
    I still think the whole divide over Brexit was less about the principle of it, but more about whether you are more aligned with the current EU political leanings or with those of the current UK ones (reflected in its Tory leadership). If you are more aligned with the EU political leanings, you would want them to be able to force the UK government to do what you believe is the right thing. If you are more aligned with the tories, you want them to be free to do their thing without being told what to do by the EU. And that seems to correlate highly with whether you think Brexit was a good or a bad idea. An interesting thought experiment I like to ask people to do is whether they would change their views on Brexit if the political leanings of the EU and the UK were flipped. I.e. the EU views were more like ones they disagree with (e.g. more right-wing perhaps), and the political leanings of the UK were more like what they agree with. For example, if the UK wanted to have more funding for science, but the EU frowned upon that regarding it as unfair competition, or something along those lines.
    - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
      I'm doubtful about that. For one thing large amounts of left wing areas voted for Brexit including Wales as a whole. Also the Tory leadership at the time was pro-remain whereas the Labour leadership was lukewarm at best.
      - gpderetta 5y ago
        Yes, dividing the brexit issue as a left/right issue is very reductive. Both Labour and Tories were very much divided in half with pretty obvious internal conflicts.
- maccard 5y ago
  That was the suggestion that was made to many industries and regions, yes. In reality it seems that those funding sources are not being met, e.g. Cornwall [0] and the red wall [1] [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-55279468 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-55279468 [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-levelling-up-cuts-north-b1958641.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-levell...
  - aigo 5y ago
    The top-rated comment on this FT article [0] spells it out really quite clearly. English regions used to receive funds of £1 billion a year from the EU regeneration fund for poor regions with the final year om 2018 the final figure being £1.12bn of the £8.4 billion total over the seven year period. For 2018, this worked out to be Midlands (£190m), Yorkshire (£143m), Cornwall (£95m), the north west (£88m) and the north east (£80m). Now this figure of £1.12bn (£8.4 billion over the seven year budget) has been cut to £220m for 2021-22 and £3.6bn in total for the same period. [0] https://www.ft.com/content/eb56347b-42bb-4c56-906a-2ea24bd54632 https://www.ft.com/content/eb56347b-42bb-4c56-906a-2ea24bd54... p.s the comments section on the FT is probably the best on the internet, apart from maybe here
    - discreteevent 5y ago
      Some of the comments are excellent but the ft is definitely not better than here. There's very little moderation of trolls and it's clear that many of them on the ft are paid - judging by how incessant and on message they are. It can be tiresome filtering through them.
      - aigo 5y ago
        Yes, you're right, here is far better than the FT. Badly phrased on my part I think. If you have a subscription and aren't using github/iamadamdev/bypasspaywalls then you can block or mute individual users.
    - kergonath 5y ago
- kergonath 5y ago
  Short answer: the UK and the EU have different priorities and the Tories are not interested in giving money to get more fancy “intellectuals” (who tend to be foreign and liberal). Also, for now Brexit is costing more than the money that was supposed to be saved.
  - Brakenshire 5y ago
    The UK has actually remained a member of the EU's science funding programme after Brexit as part of the exit deal, although that membership has not been formally ratified yet.
    - kergonath 5y ago
      Yes, that is part of the trade and cooperation agreement (who knows how long this thing will last, though?) It includes mechanisms for the UK to pay if British scientists get too much of EU money. Who can bet anything on the British government keeping their word when they need to pay? The government with no qualms about breaking international laws “in specific and limited ways” when it suits them, and that is reneging on its promises about the Irish protocol? Besides, this does not cover any use of other EU funds beyond Horizon Europe, like the ERDF.
SassyThrowaway 5y ago
I did not understand that point at all. The author writes: "The loss of this funding and scientific exchange is a major loss for British and European academia — and innovative companies who need to hire the best scientific and technical talent." But what is it exactly that the UK lost [funding-wise, science-wise] due to Brexit?
- aigo 5y ago
  The quote in my post about funding can no longer happen. The EU only funds research at EU universities, and UK universities aren't that any more.
  - Brakenshire 5y ago
    This isn't true, you don't have to be a member of the EU to be part of the Horizon programme, which is the EU's science funding mechanism. Membership of Horizon was part of the Brexit deal for the UK, although it seems to be uncertain now as part of the wider disputes.
  - SassyThrowaway 5y ago
    Historically, Israeli computer scientists have been able to apply and win ERC grants. That said, I have not checked if anything has changed for the UK in this regard, hence why I am curious.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - kergonath 5y ago
      AFAIK, unless this changed British scientists can apply to Horizon Europe funding, which includes ERC grants. However, there is some uncertainty as this is related to the trade and cooperation agreement, which looks a bit shaky right now. One of the problem was that the British government does not keep its word, so people are wary of putting British colleagues only for their funding to get pulled at the last minute because lord Frost wants to annoy the EU.

> Almost my entire R&D team who received PhDs from British universities had them funded by the European Union Well, there you go.

by aigo 5y ago

> Almost my entire R&D team who received PhDs from British universities had them funded by the European Union Well, there you go.

agent008t 5y ago

Was the UK not a net contributor to the EU budget? And therefore, why cannot the UK fund PhDs more effectively than the EU? I would've thought being less removed from the universities and research groups would make funding more effective.

user568439 5y ago
That's the Brexiters logic, but it turns out UK was not only contributing to the EU but also trading. Now it doesn't need to contribute anymore but it also lost exports, access to talent and so on.
- agent008t 5y ago
  Fine, but my point is there is no reason for Brexit to be a net negative when it comes to the funding of PhDs - if anything, it offers an opportunity to be more effective at funding. Same when it comes to the specific issue of access to talent - nothing in principle stopping the UK from making it extremely easy for talent to come to the UK.
  - roomey 5y ago
    The point is that there was both scales of economy due to the Erasmus program and a lot of pan European research grants.. Being able to pull from a Europe wide talant pool was a huge benefit to the UK and her universities. So there was massive, irreplaceable benefits just for universities lost due to the Brexit project. Along with that Brexit has cost the UK a ton of money.. this net contributer stuff was literal propaganda. The UK is worse off now, with less funding to go around.
    - heurisko 5y ago
      > Along with that Brexit has cost the UK a ton of money.. this net contributer stuff was literal propaganda. The fact that the UK was a net contributor to the EU is uncontroversial [1]. Please cite sources if you're making a drastic claim otherwise. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48256318 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48256318
      - rndgermandude 5y ago
        I didn't read what roomey said as claiming the UK wasn't technically a net contributor. Just that it this fact is just a sliver of the entire picture, but was used heavily in pro-Brexit propaganda. Indeed, the UK can now spend what they net contributed to the EU before. But I think it's doubtful that this makes up for everything else the UK lost in the process that isn't just some monetary number (in some government budget). Things like the already mentioned access to the European research and university space - which hugely profited the UK because they used to be really good at "brain draining" the rest of the EU. Access to the European markets is now harder as well, translating directly to (at least in the short term) lost revenue and profit for UK companies, and lost tax revenue for the government, as well as some additional supply chain problems on top of the supply chain problems everybody else faces already. The UK says their net contribution was "an average net contribution of £7.7 billion between 2014 and 2018". Of course this is only partially true. They got a lot more money back indirectly because they directly profited from some of the work various EU agencies did (and now they have to pay people to do the same work a lot of times). Some of these agencies were based in the UK, paid from the EU budget with individual employees paying taxes to the UK government. A lot of the university stuff (funding PhDs, Erasmus) is also not covered by their estimates (tho general research grants were). They lost access to EU funded research programs (like CERN or ITER), too, and now have to foot the bill to participate in those themselves, if they want and are allowed to still participate (e.g. ITER is not EU, and the UK will still participate, but where the EU previously paid a lot of the UK scientists and engineers out of their funds, now the UK government will have to pay them directly). So I think their actual net contribution was more like 4-6 billion, and that doesn't still factor in lost opportunity costs due to now limited access to the European economic and labor markets, and the collective bargaining powers of the EU in things like trade deals, etc. Given all that, I'd argue that there is ample reason to theorize Brexit was monetarily a net negative for the UK. It's hard to say yet, because the long and slow Brexit process took ages, everybody is still adopting, and it's therefore too early to have any reliable mid to long term numbers. And of course, the impact of COVID-19 makes it even harder to analyze just the Brexit outcomes. So, back to topic, I would agree that at least the Brexit supporters who focused mainly on the net contributor thing (not all Brexit supporters operated that way) used it as propaganda - like the infamous red NHS bus - and not in a sound argument for their cause. They willfully ignored all the other things that would or could happen as a result of a Brexit.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    Anything remotely related to the EU is toxic as far as the current government is concerned. This includes immigration which they successfully tied to the EU in voters minds.
  - kergonath 5y ago
    > Fine, but my point is there is no reason for Brexit to be a net negative when it comes to the funding of PhDs - if anything, it offers an opportunity to be more effective at funding. This works only if you assume that the amount of money stayed the same. For now, there has been a flux of capital and business moving over to the continent. Trade decreased as well. This can change in the long run, depending on the policy of the Bank of England, but for now Brexit is a net loss in British government funding. Besides the fact that the money that was supposed to be saved was also supposed to be spent simultaneously on the NHS, infrastructure, and developing the “northern powerhouse” (of cards, unfortunately, as the North of England gets shafted again).
  - hnaccount_rng 5y ago
    You are missing two parts: 1) _during_ the whole “transition” period nobody knew anything how this would pan out. That means nobody* would write grant proposals for ERC funding for the future. Which is the drop in received funding that the UK institutions start seeing now 2) highly trained people do have a choice in moving. And the UK very openly communicating: we don’t want those stupid foreigners made a number of people thinking twice of going there. They are still some of the most famous universities which reduces this effect, but still it was the default choice for anyone and isn’t anymore. So you get an atrophied bureaucracy for distributing research money and combine it with a reduction in applicants and you get fewer graduate students about 2-5 years after you switch. *significantly fewer people
mvc 5y ago
> And therefore, why cannot the UK fund PhDs more effectively than the EU? I always assumed the whole raison d'etre of Brexit was that Conservatives wanted to avoid the obligation of paying into funds like this. Sounds lovely in theory but leaves less government money available to companies with social/professional connections to the cabinet. Funny to see the red wallers finally realizing that too now.
- agent008t 5y ago
  I still think the whole divide over Brexit was less about the principle of it, but more about whether you are more aligned with the current EU political leanings or with those of the current UK ones (reflected in its Tory leadership). If you are more aligned with the EU political leanings, you would want them to be able to force the UK government to do what you believe is the right thing. If you are more aligned with the tories, you want them to be free to do their thing without being told what to do by the EU. And that seems to correlate highly with whether you think Brexit was a good or a bad idea. An interesting thought experiment I like to ask people to do is whether they would change their views on Brexit if the political leanings of the EU and the UK were flipped. I.e. the EU views were more like ones they disagree with (e.g. more right-wing perhaps), and the political leanings of the UK were more like what they agree with. For example, if the UK wanted to have more funding for science, but the EU frowned upon that regarding it as unfair competition, or something along those lines.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    I'm doubtful about that. For one thing large amounts of left wing areas voted for Brexit including Wales as a whole. Also the Tory leadership at the time was pro-remain whereas the Labour leadership was lukewarm at best.
    - gpderetta 5y ago
      Yes, dividing the brexit issue as a left/right issue is very reductive. Both Labour and Tories were very much divided in half with pretty obvious internal conflicts.
maccard 5y ago
That was the suggestion that was made to many industries and regions, yes. In reality it seems that those funding sources are not being met, e.g. Cornwall [0] and the red wall [1] [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-55279468 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-55279468 [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-levelling-up-cuts-north-b1958641.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-levell...
- aigo 5y ago
  The top-rated comment on this FT article [0] spells it out really quite clearly. English regions used to receive funds of £1 billion a year from the EU regeneration fund for poor regions with the final year om 2018 the final figure being £1.12bn of the £8.4 billion total over the seven year period. For 2018, this worked out to be Midlands (£190m), Yorkshire (£143m), Cornwall (£95m), the north west (£88m) and the north east (£80m). Now this figure of £1.12bn (£8.4 billion over the seven year budget) has been cut to £220m for 2021-22 and £3.6bn in total for the same period. [0] https://www.ft.com/content/eb56347b-42bb-4c56-906a-2ea24bd54632 https://www.ft.com/content/eb56347b-42bb-4c56-906a-2ea24bd54... p.s the comments section on the FT is probably the best on the internet, apart from maybe here
  - discreteevent 5y ago
    Some of the comments are excellent but the ft is definitely not better than here. There's very little moderation of trolls and it's clear that many of them on the ft are paid - judging by how incessant and on message they are. It can be tiresome filtering through them.
    - aigo 5y ago
      Yes, you're right, here is far better than the FT. Badly phrased on my part I think. If you have a subscription and aren't using github/iamadamdev/bypasspaywalls then you can block or mute individual users.
  - kergonath 5y ago
kergonath 5y ago
Short answer: the UK and the EU have different priorities and the Tories are not interested in giving money to get more fancy “intellectuals” (who tend to be foreign and liberal). Also, for now Brexit is costing more than the money that was supposed to be saved.
- Brakenshire 5y ago
  The UK has actually remained a member of the EU's science funding programme after Brexit as part of the exit deal, although that membership has not been formally ratified yet.
  - kergonath 5y ago
    Yes, that is part of the trade and cooperation agreement (who knows how long this thing will last, though?) It includes mechanisms for the UK to pay if British scientists get too much of EU money. Who can bet anything on the British government keeping their word when they need to pay? The government with no qualms about breaking international laws “in specific and limited ways” when it suits them, and that is reneging on its promises about the Irish protocol? Besides, this does not cover any use of other EU funds beyond Horizon Europe, like the ERDF.

SassyThrowaway 5y ago

I did not understand that point at all. The author writes: "The loss of this funding and scientific exchange is a major loss for British and European academia — and innovative companies who need to hire the best scientific and technical talent." But what is it exactly that the UK lost [funding-wise, science-wise] due to Brexit?

aigo 5y ago
The quote in my post about funding can no longer happen. The EU only funds research at EU universities, and UK universities aren't that any more.
- Brakenshire 5y ago
  This isn't true, you don't have to be a member of the EU to be part of the Horizon programme, which is the EU's science funding mechanism. Membership of Horizon was part of the Brexit deal for the UK, although it seems to be uncertain now as part of the wider disputes.
- SassyThrowaway 5y ago
  Historically, Israeli computer scientists have been able to apply and win ERC grants. That said, I have not checked if anything has changed for the UK in this regard, hence why I am curious.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - kergonath 5y ago
    AFAIK, unless this changed British scientists can apply to Horizon Europe funding, which includes ERC grants. However, there is some uncertainty as this is related to the trade and cooperation agreement, which looks a bit shaky right now. One of the problem was that the British government does not keep its word, so people are wary of putting British colleagues only for their funding to get pulled at the last minute because lord Frost wants to annoy the EU.