The THE recently carried quite a careful article on whether UK universities would be better off in / out of the EU. Or, it might have been about whether UK university research would be better off in / out of the EU – I could never quite make up my mind. These are not quite the same thing of course.
As ever, there are academics with good stories to tell – mostly about the excellence of collaboration – and ones with not-so-good stories – mostly about the EU's awful bureaucracy and decision-making processes. As it happens, I can tell both kinds of story with exactly these features. I am now safely out of the system, of course, and need no longer be apprehensive about the EU's decision-making which always seemed whimsical, at best, and quite cynical at its worst. The collaboration was always excellent.
From a Brexodus perspective (my preferred term because of its appropriately Old Testament overtones), the issue is whether we'd be prevented from collaboration. This is the same sort of question as: would the Germans stop selling us cars? Well, it's not quite the same question.
Meanwhile, UK universities still seem to manage to get big EU grants to study dodgy topics like the benefits of ESD. Maybe a Brexodus would end these? A price worth paying perhaps; now, where did I put that UKIP membership form ...
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