In light of the UK’s aim to be a ‘science superpower’ and ongoing discussions around the UK visa regime, ISER’s Dr Angus Holford, Professor Peter Jelfs at Brunel University London and former MiSoC Policy Fellow with the Department for Business and Trade, together with ISER’s Tommaso Sartori examined the labour market contributions of UK and foreign-born PhD holders in a blog for the UK in a Changing Europe. They suggest that the UK could do more to explicitly attract STEMM PhD holders.
Every country wants to be the location of the next successful high-tech start-up. As it seeks to maintain its status as a ‘science superpower’, the UK is no different. However, there is a global war for talent, aiming to find and attract the founders of such companies. And sooner or later the reality is that these individuals, unless ‘home-grown’, will have to navigate the UK’s visa regime.The visa regime is complex and subject to constant change, as seen in the recent adjustments to rules on minimum salaries for Skilled Worker visas, the ability to bring dependants, and the recent review of the graduate visa.These changes have been touted as one reason for the 44% drop in overseas postgraduate student enrolments at UK universities between January 2023 and 2024.
The US in particular actively targets foreign-born scientists to come for study and work. Other countries have attempted to compete using their tax systems to offer incentives. The UK, by contrast, offers a few minor benefits through its visa system to PhD holders, but is much less overt in its attempts to attract such individuals. And there is limited evidence as to what highly qualified scientists end up doing in the UK after arrival.
Our new research aimed to document the outcomes for the UK labour market of this system. We used 11 years of data from the UK Labour Force Survey, taking PhD-holders as a proxy for highly qualified individuals. We investigated their retention in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine) sectors, their earnings, and propensity to set up a business. We made comparisons between foreign-born and UK-born PhDs, as well as between PhD holders and lower levels of qualification.There were three key findings from our analysis.Firstly, PhD holders earn more than those with lower levels of qualification. However, PhD holders born in North America (who make up just 9% of foreign-born PhD-holders resident here) and the EU (31%) earn around 12% less than PhD holders born in the UK
Read the full blog here
Read our MiSoC Explainer with the key findings here