Academic mobility

Anyone who works in academia knows that in the earlier years of your career it is almost taboo to stay in one institute too long. The default reason I usually hear for this is that you need to work with a variety of supervisors and see different ways of working to develop a well rounded experience and become a good scientist. Whilst I can see the idea behind this, in practicality this doesn’t seem to track with how good someone is at science. Nor do you need to go to a different country to work with a different supervisor. Most universities have hubs of certain specialities, so why would it still be less encouraged to transfer within your institute to a different supervisor? In today’s world, it’s easy to collaborate and make connections virtually, so that explanation is bunk too. Ultimately I think this is a throwback that will eventually die out with the current generation of professors.

So what’s the issue with this way of thinking? Equality and diversity principally. There are several classes of people for whom moving for work can be challenging and ultimately putting value on those who have been mobile only benefits the privileged. I will go through some that spring to mind in turn.

1. Autistic people. This is my personal issue with this viewpoint so I feel comfortable in saying this IS an issue. One common defining factor in autism is a need for routine. Allistic people have a comfort zone but with autism you can turn that up to 11. The world of social interaction is challenging to negotiate, but in time you learn how the institution works, how your colleagues work, how to interact with them without coming across as totally strange and you at least don’t need your mask 100% of the time. Moving to a new institute disrupts all of that, it’s scary and exhausting. According to one set of statistics there are only 175 academics with autism in the UK even though the general population is estimated at 1 in 100. But I’d say every one of my recent colleagues is at least on the spectrum. I’ve never gone through a formal diagnosis either so I am not one of these 175, there seems to be no benefit as an adult to get a medical diagnosis but it comes with the potential for discrimination. As attitudes and awareness change, I imagine we will learn that a significant proportion of academics are autistic. After all that cliché of the awkward professor who can’t communicate with people but instead excels at making connections in tiny details of their special subject… the clues are there right! So requirement for mobility negatively affects people with disability, a protected characteristic.
2. People with partners and/or children. I think there is still a concept that early career researchers are young and care free, and so will happily just go on adventure to live in the US for a year or two. But the absolute earliest one will finish a PhD is around 25, so post-doctoral researchers are generally late 20s-late 30s. Considering having children over the age of 35 is considered a “geriatric pregnancy” it isn’t a great stretch of the imagination to realise that many post-doctoral researchers will be having or wanting to have children. Yes, people make these big moves work with children, but even moving city with school age children is a hell of a lot of work as well as disruptive to their development and social groups. Anecdotally academics are putting off having children until they are settled in their tenured position but if this is not happening until your late 30s or even early 40s this makes conceiving both more challenging and more dangerous. Even for those of us who don’t have or want children, if you have a husband or wife who has their own life and career, asking them to abandon that for you to move brings its own challenges and distress. These are issues which will impact both men and women, but more-so women who still tend to be the primary care-giver and have more of a clock on their reproductive health.
3. People who have caring responsibilities. If you care for an elderly or disabled parent, partner or child, abandoning them to move to a different institute is really not an option. I once had a student ask why I didn’t just put my (generally able-bodied but requiring occasional care from me) 61 year old mum in care home. Just no.
4. For want of a better term, those who are not well off. Moving isn’t cheap. Moving to a different country really isn’t cheap. If you’re not from a well off background you’ll have finished university with a huge amount of debt in order to pay rent beyond just student loans. A PhD stipend in the UK is barely enough to live on, although I hear that is set to improve soon. So moving for a post-doc on the background of this is hugely limiting and only rewards those who are already more privileged.

So the benefits of academic mobility: possibility of broader experiences.

The downsides: discrimination against women, carers, people with disabilities and those from already underprivileged backgrounds.

It seems a no-brainer to me, but grant and job applications still favour those who have worked in multiple locations. I myself moved after my PhD, uprooting my partner and have just moved again for a tenured position but this time with a long commute so my partner doesn’t have to move and I can still carry out my occasional caring duties. I had no choice because my old institution doesn’t like to make their existing staff permanent. This is quite a common recruitment issue among the Russell group.

Maybe I’m just bitter, but I hope this changes in the future to stop rewarding those who are already more privileged for something that ultimately doesn’t make a difference.