Why is a degree a passport out of here for so many people?

Lee Jakeman

Bright graduates are leaving Britain - because the stupid graduates run the place.

Brian

That said, there can be few better places than the city for bright graduates to make money can there?

Aluinn

wrong question. why would they want to stay?

HJ

Poor housing and terrible quality of life in the place where most bright graduates would otherwise aim to establish their careers - London

pabw

"Figures from the OECD ( show more graduates, 1.3million, have fled Britain than any other developed country..." Are those British graduates or just graduates generally?

cp

Speaking as a fresh graduate from Oxford - and one eager to depart the country, if not immediately then at least within a decade - I think I could hazard a few guesses. Serious money-making isn't the issue: you're right that the city is still a popular choice for that. The issue is quality and variety of life. With a move to Canada, Australia or the States, one has access all of a sudden to a landscape, affordable housing, and attractive living (Sydney... cold yoghurt and a morning walk on the beach before work), way in advance of what Britain can offer us at our age and wealth. Not as much serious money, perhaps, but cleaner streets, cheaper and better food, much more space, far more activities...

It's just far more fun being a yuppy anywhere else than there.

Chris

I left as a graduate in the mid eighties and am now back after 20 years abroad, making my fortune. In the UK, I was underpaid, under appreciated and over taxed. Once I had left the country, I was very well paid, highly appreciated and lightly taxed. I don't suppose any of these things have changed for the better in the last twenty years. As someone who went through a technical career rather than a management career, the difference in treatment was particularly stark. In the UK I was treated as cheap labour. In the US I was paid more than my second line manager.

Alex R

Put the question the other way: Why on earth would graduates want to stay in Britain? The cost of living is out of control, taxes are too high, healthcare and education are criminally bad, violent crime is rising and housing is cramped and over priced. And they’re just the push factors. The pull factors often included higher salaries, with generous cost of living announces, good education which you don’t have to re-mortgage your parents’ house to pay for and better weather. But perhaps the strongest reason to leave is a sense, not really felt since the end of the 1970s/early 19080s, that this country is in a spiral of decline and that the political parties are merely trying to manage it.

Gordon

Easy. Britain is a country that feels unsafe and out of control. Mass immigration in the last ten years has turned parts of London into New York circa 1975 - a dirty, dangerous, overcrowded melting pot where the traditional British sense of civic order and obligation has been fractured by constant upheaval. Until we stop mass immigration, crack down on all forms of anti-social behaviour and assert the primacy of what used to be called 'the British way of life' over incivility and relativism we're screwed.

Fraser Nelson

pabw, they are Brits. The OECD compiled census data from all member countries (ie, 2000/01 so you can't entirely blame Labour) and looked at country of birth (discounting whether or not they got citizenship in the host country). What struck me is that most emigrants head for the New World - in as much numbers now as in the 19th century wave of emigration. Australia is no1 destination. And when you a Spitalfields one-bed flat costs more than a 3-bed beachside penthouse in thriving Melborne you have to ask: what would you rather?

John Hayward, The Difference

What you fail to note is that we also have one of the highest percentages of highly qualified immigrants and, indeed, have a net inflow of 108,507 highly qualified migrants! I have copied the relevant OECD chart at The Difference magazine blog.

pabw

Thanks for the clarification Fraser. I think this is a product of two principle factors: 1. Put simply, globalisation. You can now work wherever you want. 2. Brits love to travel the world. Hardly a new phenomenon. I don't think its got much to do with crime, tax etc here in the UK. I work in Paris. Arguably a better quality of life but I now think its just part of the lexicon of growing up. Where once it was gap years (and Brits top all the charts in terms of numbers doing that), now it is living abroad for a few years, maybe longer... John Hayward highlights the important point. There is a net inflow of 108,507 highly qualified migrants. I don't think there's much to be worried about here.

Craig Strachan

Well, I left Britain for the U.S. in 1990. (After Maggie went, I figured the dear old place was irretrievably screwed.)

John

My brother left the UK to teach statistics in a leading University in the US, where his wife teaches in the same dept. They have considered returning to the UK (it is home, after all) and so when his wife was headhunted for a UK Univeristy position they asked to know more. They were told that the UK Uni that had appraoched them (a) pays much less than their current US one [and there is no room for negotiation either] (b) would not be prepared to find a job for both of them [in the US, Unis go out of their way to help with this sort of thing](c) wanted a very long application form completed and sent in within a couple of days. In addition, they were told that the Universities would only be hiring statisticians this year because that was they needed to attract people with lots of papers to booth their appraisal ratings, so if they didn't say yes now then there would be no chance for another while. Suffice to say they stayed in the US.

Jon

I agree that this has more to do with globalisation than anything else. For example, there are record numbers of French graduates coming over here to work in the City and Canary Wharf.

Tiberius

I simply cannot believe you've asked your final question apparently without irony, Fraser.

Fraser Nelson

Tiberius, I have to work on that part of blogging. It did mean it with irony, but it kinda didnt work. I can list you 100 ways why folk who cant afford to live in one a A-list havens would want to leave this over-taxed, crime-ridden country with its appalling state schools and a health service that kills more people than its army. But I accept the irony didn't quite come across. I'll have to find an "irony" sign next time I do that, like :-00 or something.

Phillip

I am a native of the US and I recall one of my professors at university who was from the UK saying that he simply had better options here than he did there. He was very liberal in his outlook (I recall a discussion about how he loved his pension he would recieve from all the years he taught in the UK, and how he liked it more than the private retirement account in the states). He looked at leaving the UK as like getting out of jail (his words) and he moved to the most conservative state in the US! My impression was that the university in Britain was not flexible, and unaccomadating to his needs. He voted for the socialist type institutions of Britain (he hated the dicatorship of Maggie), but he personally enjoyed the flexibility and accomadating style of the States.

Miriam Seshadri

I'm from Australia and we have a lot of British expats here. At the same time, a lot of Australians go to England as well. Sometimes it is because of greater economic opportunity but more often than not, it's because of a feeling of being 'stuck' in your own country. Like England, Australia does have a class structure which leaves bright graduates from unorthodox backgrounds feeling stifled or left out. When you leave the country, it doesn't seem to matter anymore. I think that is why the establishment in all Anglo countries are freaking out about their insane immigration policies because their native working class has effectively given up. Hence, a war on terror to reverse those policies...

Tiberius

Fraser; an irony smiley shouldn't be necessary when you pose a question on this topic. Perhaps I should re-tune my irony detector! (which may have been degraded recently by my reading some of the complacent views of other commentators on the immigration issue).

Laban Tall

It's not a completely new phenomenon. In 1995 my wife organised a 20th anniversary bash for the Barts nursing students of her year group and we spent quite a while tracking them all down. A quarter of them were living abroad. But it does seem to have accelerated in step with increasing immigration. I tell my children to get good qualifications so that (among other things) they can get out if it all goes pearshaped here.

Fraser Nelson

Laban, not new but the scale has been transformed. In 1995, 135,000 Brits emigrated. Last year it was a record 207,000. Even the immigrants are leaving: in 1995 total emigration (including non-Brits) was 236,000 and last year 400,000.

Rex Hatherley

Whilst "globalisation" may be cited as a factor, old style "expatriates" are fast becoming a thing of the past as global companies now seek to hire cheaper migrant middle management from "semi-" devloped countries.I believe firmly that a decline in quality of life across all categories in Britain has lead to the current increase in movement abroad. On a personal note, I contemplate a rose-tinted semi-retirement in Britain, somewhere rural but not whilst I can still move, change and grow wherever the whim takes me.

Richard

Of all the comments I read here, the one that rang most true to me was that "the strongest reason to leave is a sense, not really felt since the end of the 1970s/early 1980s, that this country is in a spiral of decline and that the political parties are merely trying to manage it." I am lucky in that I live a very good life in a gorgeous part of the country, because I'm old enough and have the income to afford it. But I wouldn't want to be 20 again. As for a beach-side apartment in Melbourne: you can keep it. I lived in Melboune for a while - nice, but definitely no paradise. And anywhere nice to live in Sydney will not come cheap, to put it mildly.

Ted Tedford

pabw, I cannot help but feel you are missing the bigger point; and that Richard, Alex R and Gordon have nailed it. This is not just an economic issue, and people aren't just economic units. It is truly depressing that the upbringing of these 'brain drainers' has failed to implant the attachments to, and, dare one say it, pride in, our country that would persuade them stay in Britain. If the bright British graduates are leaving, their contribution to Britain's civil society will go with them. So we are left to build our professional classes - the people that make Britain work - from the residue, and from people with no strong sense of loyalty to Britain, except as a source of income. Of course many hundreds of thousands of clever graduates who have chosen to stay; and you might be correct that we attract hundreds of thousands of equaly brilliant graduate immigrants. But their attachment to Britain will almost certainly be weaker than to their own countries of birth, and their contribution, except in taxes, is not as permanent as that of 'native' Britons.