À atenção do senhor Costa

 

Nós somos um dos países que contribuímos para o florescimento intelectual de outros países em virtude da má governação: salários baixos, oportunidades nenhumas, desprezo pela educação e pela situação dos outros que não são banqueiros ou amigos políticos. Estão a condenar o país aos poucos e poucos.

Higher education in the UK is morally bankrupt. I’m taking my family and my research millions, and I’m off

Ulf Schmidt

After 25 years I feel Britain has broken my trust. I’m one of many academics who now see their future in Europe

Why am I am going back to the country of my birth? England no longer feels like home. Instead, since the Brexit vote of 2016, I have felt like a “leaver” in a waiting hall. Now I am going, and the emotional cost will take a long time to come to terms with.

I was from Germany, but I no longer feel I am from there. My seven-year-old son was born in England. His first language is English – he is English through and through. 

The problem cannot be fixed unless politicians and university leaders recognise that the commodification and commercialisation of knowledge is fundamentally flawed. Knowledge needs to be free.

Young people are told they are “consumers” in a shop where they can choose what and when to learn. They can expect a “service”. Some have taken their university to court if their course did not “deliver” promised results. This is no longer a viable, decent learning environment in which students from all walks of life and cultures are supported to achieve their potential. This is not a place in which the next generation of citizens can flourish. The rise in the number of students suffering from mental health issue speaks volumes. A student suicide is “managed” by the media department for fear of bad publicity. What matters are “bums on seat” to keep the ship afloat.

Britain’s cherished higher education sector, once the envy of the world, is on the brink of collapse. The humanities were world leading – and still are in many areas. Scholars in English literature, creative writing, the arts, languages, history and philosophy were acclaimed across the globe. But now the sector as a whole is bankrupt, not just financially, but morally. It has lost its integrity and seems unwilling to engage in critical reflection about the causes of this unprecedented malaise.

Likewise, research is taking a massive hit in post-Brexit, post-pandemic Britain. There is good evidence that the exodus of more than 10,000 scholars from Britain’s universities since the referendum continues unabated. Scotland has lost almost 2,500 academics. Countries such as Germany are beneficiaries of this mass migration of intellectual talent. Scholars and their families are voting with their feet. Britain is experiencing a significant “brain drain”. Life is too short to wait until the country has come to its senses is what most Europeans – and many British academics – think.

Berlin, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Munich, Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna and all the other major European cities have not been idle. They know this is a historic opportunity to attract some of the best minds in the world. 

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Prof Ulf Schmidt was director of the Centre for the History of Medicine, Ethics and Medical Humanities at the University of Kent. This month he becomes professor of modern history at Hamburg University.