The Brain Drain

In two months in London, David Zogbaum has managed to become perhaps the least understood and most vociferously criticized American in Britain. London's popular press has excoriated him as a "brain snatcher" and a "head-hunter." British businessmen would feel as comfortable around him as Abdel Nasser might feel around Ben-Gurion. Zogbaum is the British representative of a company called Careers Inc., and a recruiter of talent for some 67 U.S. corporations. His hostile reception by the British is a measure of their concern over the loss of scientific and technical talent to the U.S., summed up fortnight ago by Minister of Science Viscount Hailsham, who charged the U.S. with living "parasitically on other people's brains."

Eager to Go. Hailsham has a right to worry about the brain drain. Skilled people anywhere feel the pull of the U.S., but most noticeably in England. Every year 60 science Ph.D.s--about 7% of England's total crop--leave for the U.S. Of ten research students in theoretical physics finishing up doctorates at Cambridge this spring, seven are going to the U.S. Birmingham Chemical Engineer John T. Davies reports that six of his ten researchers left for the U.S. last year. One Glasgow University laboratory team emigrated en masse, and so did five senior aeronautical engineers from Hawker Siddeley's advanced-projects group. Says one Oxford don: "Usually people are so anxious to get to America that recruiters don't have to work very hard."

The desire for higher salaries (up to-three times more) is the primary, but not the only, impulse for emigration. British scientists and technicians are impressed by the U.S.'s more sophisticated research facilities, by its stimulating scientific atmosphere, and by the prospect of eventually reaching higher management positions than in Britain. Scientists who are tempted away, says London University Physicist G. O. Jones, are "always the most adventurous, energetic and gifted. The loss to Britain is thus far more serious than mere numbers suggest."

Pastoral Scenes. British businessmen generally disapproved of Hailsham's waspish outburst, with its anti-American overtones. Hailsham thought that scientists should "still owe some responsibility" to the country where they were born and educated, rather than "make up for the deficiencies of the American high schools--to which, incidentally, they condemn their own offspring if they stay away too long." Businessmen are beginning to realize that U.S. recruiting is only part of the problem, and that there is a need for British business to do more about facilities, opportunities and pay. So far, however, the most spectacular program has involved placing advertisements in U.S. publications showing quiet English country scenes, in the hope of recalling the pastoral past to lure back men intent upon the future.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.