EU academics headed our way

If Britain leaves the EU in the near future, Australian universities may well benefit from a surge of new academics.

University of Western Australia’s Public Policy Institute director, Shamit Saggar, at UWA. Picture: Colin Murty.

If Britain leaves the EU in the near future, Australia will have to reconsider its trade and foreign policy relationships with the nation once known as the “mother country” and Australian universities may well benefit from a surge of new academics on the market, says a British professor of public policy newly arrived in Australia.

Speaking in advance of an open panel discussion titled “Brexit — What it means for Australia”on Monday, the inaugural director of the University of Western Australia’s Public Policy Institute, Shamit Saggar, said Brexit had the potential to affect many of Britain’s once ironbound links with Aus­tralia, as well as buffeting British ­institutions.

“It’s devastating for British universities,” said Professor Saggar, who was a senior adviser to British prime minister Tony Blair and has since worked in tertiary education, including his most recent position as associate pro vice-chancellor at University of Essex.

“We’re massively leveraged to foreign students and foreign academics, and within that massively to the EU.

British PM Theresa May and Brexit are lampooned on a float at a carnival in Dusseldorf, Germany, below. Picture: Getty Images

“There are disciplines and fields at most universities where the majority of younger PhDs and academics now are ­actually from the EU.”

The influx, he said, had been a great benefit for the universities and the fields of study in British universities where foreign academics predominated were now world-class. A looming Brexit had already begun to change that, he added.

“The chilling effect is already being seen, with fewer numbers ­renewing their stay in the UK, fewer wanting to come to the UK. These very talented people we’ve been picking up from eastern ­Europe, from Italy, from Spain, will become available on the global market, and no doubt Australian universities will snap them up when they get a chance.”

As Britain creeps closer to D-Day on March 29, where D stands for divorce from the EU, ­organisations around the world have been bracing for a so-called hard Brexit, without any sort of EU deal to cushion the blow.

Professor Saggar said the split, if it happens, would have trade and foreign policy implications for Australia.

“If we do manage to land Brexit — remember it’s all up for grabs in the next couple of weeks; it may not even happen and it will certainly be delayed — we will be looking for a new trading relationship with Australia, and the detail of that still needs to be ground out,” he said.

“There’s also the question of Britain’s foreign policy relationship with Australia.

“I think the Aussies have got used to doing business with Britain through the European Union, and obviously the EU is a very large grouping of powers, economically as well as in terms of foreign policy. Suddenly the Aussies will have to get used to the idea of Britain going it alone.”

He said some experts had predicted that a Britain unaligned with the EU might be more closely allied with the US. “If that’s the case, all our foreign policy partners, including Australia, will have to navigate that difference.”

Professor Saggar arrived in Perth at the weekend, direct from Britain, to began his work as the new chief of the Public Policy ­Institute with the public discussion on Brexit. He said that although he was deeply disappointed by the Brexit vote, he did not accept the position at UWA as a way of coping with the fallout in Britain.