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Flight of the dashing dons: Ferguson joins brain drain to US

Money doesn't come into it, says the latest high-profile academic to emigrate. But the millionaire Oxford professor will triple his salary and cites a 'yawning chasm' between British and American universities.

Jonathan Thompson
Sunday 01 September 2002 00:00 BST
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Niall Ferguson is considered by many to be the finest British historian of his generation. The Oxford don is young, good-looking and rich. And now he is quitting British academia for Manhattan.

Ferguson, 38, professor of financial and academic history at Jesus College, will be taking up a post at New York University's Stern Business School in January. He is the latest in a steady stream of British academics who have made a move to more lucrative posts across the Atlantic.

The list includes the historian and broadcaster Simon Schama, Professor Alan Ryan, the warden of New College, who previously spent eight years at Princeton, and is now heading back to the US for a year at Stanford. And just last month, classics professor Richard Jenkyns, formerly of Lady Margaret Hall, announced he was on his way to Boston University.

"Some people leave Oxford jobs for money, some for love. I'm just trying to give myself a change of pace," Ferguson said, speaking exclusively to The Independent on Sunday. His is perhaps the biggest signing by an American university. The Cash Nexus, his latest book, was that rare academic thing: a bestseller about the seemingly dry relationship between war, finance and politics.

Though he refused to say how much he will be paid, the IoS has established that he will get well in excess of $100,000 (£65,000) a year for working just one semester. By comparison, the Oxford peers he leaves behind will earn, say university sources, between £30,000 and £40,000 for a full academic year. His contract will last for at least the next two years.

Glasgow-born Ferguson will leave his rooms at Jesus College and move to a modern faculty office on campus in New York with a personal assistant. He could also be eligible for up to $30,000 in medical insurance, pension funds and social security. And he will be given a luxury flat in Manhattan's fashionable Washington Square.

Already a millionaire through a string of bestselling books including The Pity of War, and The House of Rothschild, Ferguson is at pains to stress that his decision to leave Oxford was not driven by the bigger salaries in the US. But he added: "There is no question that when it comes to salaries and resources for research there is now a yawning chasm between American and British universities. The idea that because you were born in Britain you have to teach here is outdated. It's more accurate to say that academic life, like everything else, has become globalised."

He said the American higher education system has a lot to offer. "I am pretty sure that Oxford and Cambridge have some vital lessons to learn from the American system – above all, the benefits of being independent of government funding and interference."

A father of three, he is married to former Sunday Express editor Sue Douglas. She and their children will remain at the couple's Oxfordshire farmhouse, with Ferguson returning to visit regularly. He also has a £500,000 contract with Penguin books to honour, and a Channel 4 series on the British Empire beginning next year.

"My family is still going to be based here, and I'll be back every fortnight or so," he said. "The notion that you buy this one-way ticket to America is a rather 19th-century one. It took me longer to get up to Scotland than it does to fly to New York."

But other leading academics say there is little doubt that the intellectual traffic away from Britain's top universities is growing. Professor John Quelch, who left London Business School last year for Harvard, spoke of his concern over the trend. "Quite frankly, I think that academics in the UK are under-compensated," he said. "It seems impossible for British higher education to compete internationally in terms of compensation. Without this, you are just relying on inertia and patriotism to keep the best people."

Professor Quelch sees the problems at British universities as largely ones of funding. "Many people in UK academia are running around like chickens with their heads cut off because of the lack of research funding available," he said.

Professor Sir John Elliott, former regius professor of modern history at Oxford, echoed Professor Quelch's sentiments. Professor Elliott, who spent 17 years at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton before taking up his royal appointment in 1990, said that he had to think hard before returning to the UK.

"It was a scholar's paradise; to leave meant abandoning ideal research conditions, as well as taking a two-thirds slash in salary," he said. "There are a lot of opportunities on the other side of the Atlantic, and I'm all for movement. Until there is much less external influence on universities and a way can be found to increase academic salaries, we are going to continue losing out."

Those who have gone

Professor Linda Colley, Yale

Professor Simon Schama, Columbia University, New York

Professor David Cannadine, Princeton and Yale

Those on the US wanted list:

Professor Richard Dawkins, Oxford University

Sir Paul Nurse, Nobel Laureate, Imperial Cancer Research Fund

Dr Timothy Hunt, Clare Hall Laboratories

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