Brexit has pushed British scientists into the arms of China

Brexit dealt a significant blow to the UK’s university research sector. The number of EU students – whose tuition fees help to subsidise academic research – has fallen sharply (Figure 1) following their loss of ‘home’ student status, which bumped up the cost of attending UK universities, in 2021. This, coupled with uncertain international student recruitment, has undoubtedly contributed to the sector’s financial woes. Just this week 600 job cuts across the sector have been announced, alongside an increasing phenomenon of institutions cutting research hours from academic contracts to help balance the books. For many institutions this was not just a financial loss, but a diminishment of intellectual diversity that fosters innovation.

Figure 1: Number of students studying at a UK university by European Union / Non-European Union International status by year

Source: HESA

Meanwhile, protracted uncertainty around access to EU research funding like Horizon 2020 was estimated to have cost the UK £1.5 billion. And collaborating with EU researchers has also become more difficult, limiting opportunities for joint projects, which in turn can lead to increased cost of projects where previously resources and facilities would have been shared across institutions.

A decline in opportunities and outcomes

Despite securing association to Horizon Europe in January 2024, these challenges continue to translate into poorer outcomes for UK researchers. A marked reduction in co-authored papers reveals that UK researchers are collaborating less frequently with their EU counterparts and, when UK researchers do collaborate internationally, they are now less likely to be in a senior position such as being the first author or responsible for the project funding. Meanwhile, the UK is now finding it harder to attract and retain the best academics amid a global “War For Talents”.

From knowledge brokers to junior partners

Whilst the Leave campaign claimed that Brexit would lead to a more open international research environment and enable “more exciting” global research partnerships, the results have been mixed. Research, like trade, was supposed to pivot away from the EU and towards the Anglosphere. In reality, British researchers have ended up collaborating less with North Americans, Australians and New Zealanders. Instead, our researchers are working together more with their counterparts in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North Africa.

Diversification of international research collaborations is positive, but it is notable that the role of UK researchers in these relationships have changed. When collaborating with EU colleagues UK universities typically “act[ed] as the main knowledge brokers” – that is, our academics and universities were regarded as experts, leaders in their fields, were at the centre of research networks and were often first-author on publications and/or were the party which held the research funding. In comparison, when UK researchers collaborate with Chinese academics, their Chinese counterparts increasingly hold first-authorship and/or funding. There has been an almost sixfold increase in the proportion of China-funded international collaborations that UK academics are part of. Amid growing concerns about Chinese influence on UK research – with Sir Iain Duncan Smith, co-chairman of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, claiming that China “sees the university system as a vulnerable strand of British intelligence” – Russell Group universities have reportedly received almost £50 million in funding from Chinese sources in the last four years. It is ironic that Brexiteers – who are also often China hawks – have pushed UK scientists into the arms of China. There’s a redistribution of power in global research partnerships – and the UK is losing ground.

China is fast outstripping us on nearly all measures

It is not just research partnerships in which China is speeding ahead. The latest Times Higher Education rankings saw Chinese universities rise in reputation for research and teaching, whilst the UK (and the US) face a rapid decline in their average reputation for both. This shift has been backed by substantial government investment in science and technology, despite China facing an economic downturn. And whilst overall the UK can boast of a strong research base, analysis by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy shows our research activity in engineering and science to be comparably low globally, whilst China eclipses all other countries in these areas.

The UK’s international standing for research is at risk

We have always punched above our weight for research – the UK ranks as the sixth-largest investor in research globally but produces the third most impactful research, trailing only the US and China. But whilst we were once powerful knowledge-brokers in the international research landscape and one of the most attractive destinations for top academics globally, the overall decline in our standing since Brexit is notable. Research was perhaps one of the most vulnerable sectors to the impacts of Brexit, and yet this message did not seem to “break out of the sector’s echo chambers” and into public consciousness.

There are certainly areas where we just cannot compete with China: quantity of funding, volume of data. But the erosion of UK-EU research collaborations was a self-inflected handicap, damaging our research outputs and reputations, undermining our competitiveness and making it harder to match Chinese scale. Undoing (or, at least, slowing the progression of) this will certainly require consideration of the UK visa system to encourage world-leading academics back to the UK – which the Chancellor seems to already be considering. But if we wish protect our international standing in research, more will need to be done to facilitate international collaboration with Europe, such as establishing joint research institutes focused on critical areas such as climate science and AI, and co-funding more large-scale scientific infrastructure similar to CERN and the European Space Agency.  As part of its “Brexit reset”, the government should prioritise rebuilding these links, and give us a better chance of regaining ground in the global research race.