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Noooooooo!

· Education & Academia · European Union · UK affairs

Gender pay gap expert among top professors quitting Brexit Britain

Leading academics in climate policy and economics have also had enough of hostility – and funding goes with them.

(I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right.)

March 25th, 2019 |

16 comments to Noooooooo!

  • Paul Marks
    March 25, 2019 at 10:39 pm

    Some people may not yet know that the “Gender Pay Gap” is hoax – because it pretends that men and women choose to do the same jobs (and they do not). Men and women are (NOT are not) “paid the same for the same work” – but they often choose (yes choose) to do different work. There is no systematic discrimination against women – indeed the education system (and so on) are biased against men.

    So, as Natalie has pointed out in the past, to describe an academic who pushes the “gender pay gap” hoax as an “expert” and “top academic” is absurd.

    If these ignorant, or dishonest, charlatans all left – universities, and life in general, would be better in the United Kingdom.

  • Ellen
    March 26, 2019 at 12:13 am

    Even better, they might go to France.

  • Katy Hibbert
    March 26, 2019 at 12:49 am

    Let’s hope anyone with “diversity” in their “job” title decides to leave Brexit Britain.

  • Mal Reynolds
    March 26, 2019 at 6:40 am

    “Enough of hostility”. The only hostility in universities is from their own side, the lefty woke freaks. Brexit hostility is a figment of their imagination

  • Ferox
    March 26, 2019 at 7:31 am

    I don’t understand though. If you lose all the diversity specialists and hyphenstudies devotees, how will you keep track of how oppressed you are, and who is more or less oppressed than whom?

  • pete
    March 26, 2019 at 9:09 am

    If we lose our lead in the equality and diversity industries because of a loss of talent the country will have to look to other areas to create wealth.

  • Itellyounothing
    March 26, 2019 at 10:24 am

    Next it will be minority football coordinators and the who will coordinate football for the oppressed…

  • Y. Knott
    March 26, 2019 at 10:50 am

    – So what’cher saying is, it’s a “DLTDHYAOTWO” moment.

    (Takes another sip from coffee) Ahhhhhh… Could this day get any better?

  • Niall Kilmartin
    March 26, 2019 at 11:18 am

    When the EU referendum result was announced Vera Troeger, professor of quantitative political economy at Warwick University, was at an academic conference in Brussels. She spent the whole day crying. … she says. “Of course the academics who will be able to leave are mostly the successful ones. It will be a brain drain.”

    As she appears extremely representative of those who will leave, colour me sceptical that it is brains that are being drained, especially when they say

    … and funding goes with them … furious academics have discovered that while existing grants will be covered, there is no funding for new applications in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

    Those who can do arithmetic know that, since the UK paid in more than it got back from the EU, the UK will have more funding than before – it will just be the UK, not the ERC, that decides who gets it, or whether the funds now spent on gender equality research get ploughed into the NHS instead. It is true that the side of a bus did indeed claim there would be just such a diversion of money away from such vital subjects as Vera’s, but surely she did not believe it. 🙂

    Another departer

    is a leading figure in climate policy research, and the university says losing him means losing millions of euros of future EU research funding.

    Well, I guess I knew climate researchers were poor at maths – especially statistics – before this story broke. (Come to think of it, I knew that about gender equality researchers too.)

  • Brian Micklethwait
    March 26, 2019 at 11:53 am

    Natalie

    I am still trying to recover from a dose of flu or some such thing, which was at its worst over the weekend. This posting did more to boost my recovery than any other treatment.

    The events described in this article which you were clever enough to spot are good in so, so many ways.

  • Niall Kilmartin
    March 26, 2019 at 12:17 pm

    I had to wade through almost all of the amusingly awful Guardian comments (with a few exceptions – including the very occasional honest and rational remainer) to reach commenter bluefinch. After many had echoed Vera’s rage at Brexitters’ failure to respect experts, bluefinch suggested Vera sit down before learning that

    Richard Feynman’s definition of science was “the belief in the ignorance of experts”

    and later expanded on this:

    I suppose there’s a couple of ways at arriving at scepticism about experts. One, certainly, is to say

    … Ah bloody hate experts with their poncey accents and fancy suits and degrees that Ah bloody paid for, and no bloody common sense …

    but the other is to form a hypothesis, that economic experts give good political advice, and a null hypothesis, that they don’t, and gather some data, for instance that

    – experts said the UK joining the ERM would create a stable low interest rate environment
    – experts said that if the UK didn’t join the Euro it would destroy car manufacturing and financial services
    – experts said that Greece and Italy met the convergence criteria for EMU
    …”.

    I have Feynman’s CalTech 1974 speech, which makes the same point, but I did not know that quote; it made wading through this stuff worthwhile. (BTW, blufinch’s full list of ‘expert predictions’ included examples from both sides of the left-right aisle, but I doubt that will excuse his ‘expert’ heresy in the eyes of those Grauniad commenters.)

  • Andrew Duffin
    March 26, 2019 at 12:41 pm

    Don’t let the door hit your bum on the way out!

  • Gregwa
    March 26, 2019 at 12:42 pm

    Could be that the Guardian regards these academics (woke, climate, diversity) leaving as the worst part of any impending drain. However, it could be that there will be real losses (hard sciences, engineering, medicine, etc.). From what has been written here, I suspect such losses would be short term since the UK would have more funding for UK folk and more control over where it goes. But the short term (the remaining term on various researchers’ grants) could be painful. And you can’t replace a 20 year expert in one of these hard science/engr/med areas overnight. Well, you can replace one or a few, but not a lot. And when the boss of some such high level research team leaves, that probably means you lose skilled support staff, too. Some real numbers here (academics currently on EU soft money grants) would be good…any help? UK leaders (are there any in power?) would be wise to prioritize help for these potential leavers. I would love to see US corporate or government grants bail them out.

  • Rob
    March 26, 2019 at 1:03 pm

    Draining the pus from the wound, signs of recovery.

    Will the ‘B’ Ark be enough for this exodus? Should we build more?

    Staggering sums of money involved – £67bn!! Ever wondered why the country is taxed at 43% or so yet the roads are full of holes and your local hospital is shit? Wonder no longer. Productive people robbed to subsidise useless people, who show their thanks by despising the people who fund them.

  • Rudolph Hucker
    March 26, 2019 at 1:35 pm

    I’m shocked, *shocked*, to find that a rent-seeking grant-accepting “expert” actually has enough wits to follow the gravy train back across to the EU mainland.

    Good luck with that.

    Or perhaps it’s just a reactive survival instinct of a sub-species in crisis? Only a few days ago, the EU dumped the 2050 climate targets and commitments. There may very soon be a surplus of “experts”, especially in Germany.

    Out of the frying pan, into the fire?

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/25/in-a-victory-for-energy-reality-eu-dumps-2050-climate-alarmist-targets-and-commitments/

  • Niall Kilmartin
    March 26, 2019 at 1:43 pm

    Although the clash is not on the front page this time, the Grauniad again seems to be offering what would be a commendably diverse clash of viewpoints – if that were only intentional. While “Natalie’s” Grauniad article warns how irreplacable the leaving faculty will be, “Instapundit’s” Grauniad article quotes a US professor:

    Students who represent money, whether in the form of their parents’ donations or athletic prowess that attracts viewers and media coverage, are simply worth more to universities as long-term sources of revenue than the faculty themselves. However well-known our names might be, most of us can easily be replaced from among the army of un- and under-employed PhDs struggling for a place in a shrinking labor market. We, not the rich students, are expendable.

    (my emphasis). Both these ‘intersecting’ articles are in yesterday’s edition.

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