Where Are They Going?

UC fears talent loss to deeper pockets

Larry Gordon, LA Times, 6/29/11

UC San Diego faced a losing battle recently when it tried to hang on to three star scientists being wooed by Rice University for cutting-edge cancer research. The recruiting package from the private Houston university included 40% pay raises, new labs and a healthy flow of research money from a Texas state bond fund. Another factor, unrelated to Rice, helped close the deal: The professors’ sense that declining state funding for the University of California makes it a good time to pack their bags.

“What’s happening now is that the UC and most of the public schools are getting in a much weaker position to play this game,” said physicist Jose Onuchic, who has taught at UC San Diego for 22 years but will head to Texas next month, along with fellow physicist Herbert Levine and biochemist Peter Wolynes.

…UC officials say that, so far, they have managed to fend off most raids in a system that employs about 18,000 faculty members. But matching the growing number of outside offers comes at a cost, using funds that could help fill vacancies and hire additional professors. And when they don’t succeed, grant money often moves with the departing researcher, along with a dose of academic prestige.

Last year, about 75% of UC faculty who received firm offers from other schools were persuaded to stay, about the same as in recent years, according to Lawrence H. Pitts, the UC system’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. This year’s figures were not yet available, but Pitts said he did not expect much change…

A recent report to the UC regents showed a troubling trend. Of tenured professors hired in 2000-01, 28 had left UC eight years later, compared with 19 hired the previous year, the study said. The most common destinations were Stanford, NYU, USC, Columbia and Harvard — private schools that tend to pay more — and the University of Michigan, a top public university.

The rise in departures of tenured professors “is of particular concern because these are high-quality faculty in whom UC has made a substantial investment,” the authors wrote. In addition, new faculty hires dropped from 607 in 2008-09 to 379 last year, the most recent figures available.

Private research universities increasingly pay professors more than public institutions, with the gap growing from an 8% advantage in 1980 for full professors at private doctoral-granting schools to about 25% this year, according to the American Assn. of University Professors.

…UCLA and UC Berkeley reported no significant change in outside recruiting this year and some experts said that because the two campuses are seen as the most prestigious in the UC system, faculty may be more reluctant to leave. Nevertheless, Scott Waugh, UCLA’s executive vice chancellor and provost, said concerns about state finances loom larger these days in faculty decisions to stay or move to UC, along with traditional factors of family and housing…

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-brain-drain-20110629,0,3320287.story