A UK professor slammed the country’s salaries yesterday, saying he has lost out on top talent because there is a government university in India that pays more.
A UK professor has taken the country’s salaries to task, especially those for contractual staff, saying he has lost out on top talent because there is a government university in India that pays more. Anant Sudarshan, an Associate Professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick, shared a post on X highlighting his concerns about low salaries in academia.
Sudarshan said, “Salaries in the UK have become so low, even for the most skilled jobs, that they’re losing out to offers from countries like India, which is generally considered a developing country and where employee salaries are on the lower end.
UK salaries becoming a joke”
UK salaries are becoming an absolute joke especially for contractual staff. I have failed to recruit people eligible for the UK’s special high potential individual visa because a government university in India is willing to pay them slightly more in absolute terms than here,” Anant Sudarshan wrote on X.
The Warwick professor commented that the High Potential Individual (HPI) visa program is being undercut by unappealing salaries in the UK.
However, he admitted that on average, UK salaries are still more than those in India in absolute terms. “To be clear – there is no comparison in absolute terms on average and thus for most people (although PPP looks different). But on the margins, for the best people, the UK is now stunningly unattractive especially in academia,” Sudarshan explained.
He referred to Purchasing Power Parity, which adjusts salaries according to the cost of living, indicating that although the cost of living in India may make higher salaries there more attractive, his focus is on absolute salaries.
“The UGC pay scales are much lower but individual project staff on short term contracts can get paid more. That said, many contract teachers in the UK pull in about 30k pounds. PPP that’s about 7.5 lakhs annually,” the economics professor wrote in response to an X user’s query.
Dozens of comments asked him to “go back” or hire UK citizens for vacancies instead of recruiting foreigners. Sudarshan became the target of racist backlash for his post, with the backlash underlining the rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the UK and other parts of Europe.
“Maybe you should all go back!” read one comment under his post. “Whatever it takes. Go back,” another X account posted.
“Boo hoo. Hire citizens,” a third suggested, to which Sudarshan responded, “The point isn’t whether someone is a citizen or not. The point is whoever is hired is paid too little – citizens don’t get more!”
