The common European academic landscape is under threat after Brexit

Brexit makes sense to UK universities. Brexit has been about the economy, and some UK universities set their priorities thinking only about the money. Outside the EU, EU students will have to pay fees in Scotland and presumably the same fees as non-EU students. This will mean more money. Good news for Scottish universities like Edinburgh!

Needless to say, I utterly reject JR's preceding comment - but as a UK academic who has built much of his career around the wonder-world that is collaborative EU projects (first under FP, now H2020), I would say that, wouldn't I? In contrast, I found some crumbs of comfort in Martin Paul's commentary. I hope he is right that exclusion of the UK from H2020 and ERC will not be a major issue. It may well be true that, some years hence, the UK subscribes to these mechanisms from outside, as Switzerland and Norway do. But the problem I have is that, until the UK government gets round to that (and it will be very far down a long list of other pressing problems they will have to sort first) I have overnight become a Jonah figure for my European collaborators: until the future is clear, they dare not include me in their consortia. Even if the UK does eventually re-subscribe, I fear that understandable (if unadmirable) vindictive instincts will weigh heavily against any consortia led by Brits, or prominently including Brits, for years to come. As a serial FP-project Coordinator, this feels like an amputation of a large part of my research career.

Needless to say, I utterly reject Paul Younger's preceding comment. Some or many UK universities depend on recruitment. In Scotland, non-EU recruitment. When Edinburgh, for instance, claims that 40% of its students are non-British, what sounds like a toast to cultural diversity is nothing but a nod to non-EU fees coming in. This money-driven obsession has brought academic quality down in some subjects. The tragedy of UK universities is not that they will be outside UK, the tragedy is that, unlike German and other EU universities, they don't have the government's financial support. The major issue for UK universities is not leaving the EU, the issue is the money-driven culture that has prostituted academic excellence.