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| ▲ | doctorwho42 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Any how much available funding is there in the EU? One of the reasons that so many researchers come to the US, even with our decline in research funding over the last 30 years, is because the US makes available so much God damn funding in comparison to any western world. The reason China is starting to outstrip the US? Because they are starting to surpass the US in funding. The only downside I have heard from Chinese scientists is that you tend to get pigeon holed for the rest of your career into things the state wants/needs | | |
| ▲ | jltsiren 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Because there is less competition for jobs and grants. Europe spends more on academic research (as a fraction of GDP) than the US, but there are more people competing for the funding. | | |
| ▲ | doctorwho42 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Are you sure about that? Most people miss the fact that a sizeable % of our military budget is slated for research grants/funding. I'm a physicist in academia, and the amount of money we have gotten from DoD branches for things that have no immediate military applications is like 40-60% of our budget YoY. Like for straight fundamental physics research. Most scientists I know who have gone to Europe have had to go into the private sector. And the famous ones I work with have gotten like blank check $10M offers from max planck and directorships with guaranteed $1m/yr funding, and still turned them down. | | |
| ▲ | jltsiren 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The US spends less on academic research than the OECD average. See, for example, https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb202326/academic-r-d-internatio... From a European perspective, the most noticeable sign of this is the scarcity of postdocs at American universities. Some fields and individual labs are better funded, but on the average, the universities lean heavily on students doing the actual research. | | |
| ▲ | drnick1 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Because postdocs are basically slavery. The expectation here is that after a top Ph.D. (which tend to be longer than in Europe), you get a real academic job (assistant professor). |
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| ▲ | jandrewrogers an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | They are referring specifically to research funding for people employed in academia. The US funds a huge amount of research outside of academia. A large percentage of the US DoD research budget is going to researchers outside of academia, for example. This includes a lot of relatively pure research with no immediate military application. |
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| ▲ | RetroTechie 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The more important US vs Europe difference is that in US there's much more funds for the research -> startup -> scaleup stages. There's plenty of academics doing fundamental research in Europe. But somehow the ball is dropped on turning that research into successful businesses. So eg. uni graduates doing research in EU, then move to US & found a startup there, is sadly a common pattern. As I understand it, mostly due to funding suppliers (gov, VCs, banks etc) being more risk-averse than in US. Regulation pressure doesn't help either. | |
| ▲ | jandrewrogers an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | The attribution here is that the researcher works for an academic institution. It reflects the reality that the US funds much more research outside of academic institutions than Europe. |
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