This is really interesting and relevant to me!!!!!!!!!
I apologize for all the exclamation marks, but I keep seeing English-language advertisements for academic positions in Germany, and I've been talking with a few academic friends in the UK about how they're planning to move to Germany. (Or feeling forced to leave the UK for various reasons, including possible medication shortages due to Brexit? I don't really understand the situation, tbh.) The topic that keeps coming up are the many, many postdocs, research fellowships, and teaching positions available at German universities. The salaries aren't competitive with American universities, but they're far above what someone just out of grad school in most other countries in the EU (and Israel+Northern Africa) could expect to make, and I've been wondering what's going on there since I went on the job market myself.
There's been a similar push to hire foreign professors and researchers in East Asia, but I think this trend probably has something to do with American universities setting up branch locations in Asian countries that send a lot of international students to the U.S. - in other words, it's about American capitalism, either taking advantage of it or resisting it. I doubt that's what's going on in Germany, but I really don't know.
I don't know a lot of things, honestly. Academia in the United States is about as insular as you might expect, and it's really depressing sometimes.
In any case, it's interesting to catch a glimpse of what that looks like from the German side, although "the chance that one of your mandatory courses this year happens to only be taught by someone who speaks approximately enough German to order coffee" doesn't sound like a happy, productive, or sustainable situation...
Sorry for going on about this, but I wanted to thank you for your comments. And for the iguana icon as well, because that is a very handsome creature!
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Date: 2019-02-24 09:55 pm (UTC)I apologize for all the exclamation marks, but I keep seeing English-language advertisements for academic positions in Germany, and I've been talking with a few academic friends in the UK about how they're planning to move to Germany. (Or feeling forced to leave the UK for various reasons, including possible medication shortages due to Brexit? I don't really understand the situation, tbh.) The topic that keeps coming up are the many, many postdocs, research fellowships, and teaching positions available at German universities. The salaries aren't competitive with American universities, but they're far above what someone just out of grad school in most other countries in the EU (and Israel+Northern Africa) could expect to make, and I've been wondering what's going on there since I went on the job market myself.
There's been a similar push to hire foreign professors and researchers in East Asia, but I think this trend probably has something to do with American universities setting up branch locations in Asian countries that send a lot of international students to the U.S. - in other words, it's about American capitalism, either taking advantage of it or resisting it. I doubt that's what's going on in Germany, but I really don't know.
I don't know a lot of things, honestly. Academia in the United States is about as insular as you might expect, and it's really depressing sometimes.
In any case, it's interesting to catch a glimpse of what that looks like from the German side, although "the chance that one of your mandatory courses this year happens to only be taught by someone who speaks approximately enough German to order coffee" doesn't sound like a happy, productive, or sustainable situation...
Sorry for going on about this, but I wanted to thank you for your comments. And for the iguana icon as well, because that is a very handsome creature!