What could Brexit mean for universities’ non-academic staffing needs?
This year’s Edinburgh Festival has brought the UK’s stringent visa regime back into the spotlight. Foreign authors invited to the world’s biggest arts festival struggled with a visa application process described as “Kafkaesque in complexity”. Earlier in the summer, the Womad festival of world music reported similar issues, with some international artists being refused visas by the Home Office. Such difficulties will be extended to even more overseas visitors and workers after the UK leaves the EU’s freedom of movement area. While much has been written about the impact this may have on the recruitment and retention of international academics at UK universities, less attention has been paid to what Brexit could mean for universities’ non-academic staffing needs. Highly trained technical staff are vital to STEM disciplines, supporting excellent research and training in fields like clinical medicine, biosciences and engineering. Will universities be able to adapt if Brexit makes it more difficult to recruit such staff?
Why are technical staff so important to universities?
The teaching and research conducted in UK universities is not delivered solely by academics. Highly-trained technicians support the research groups in which PhD and postdoctoral researchers operate. For undergraduate-level teaching, technicians help with practical sessions in labs. Russell Group universities alone employ 9,000 technicians, 13% of whom hail from outside of the UK. While this is lower than the proportion of academics with an international background, it is still a sizeable number, with STEM subjects particularly reliant on being able to hire talented technicians irrespective of their nationality. Technicians may not be classed as academics within their universities, but as a workforce, they tend to have excellent academic qualifications. Almost 90% of non-UK technicians at Russell Group universities are educated to degree level or higher, with 25% holding a PhD. Such scholarly backgrounds ensure that technicians are well-versed in the theory behind the research and training they support.

Brexit’s threat to the recruitment of international technicians
While a range of factors contributed to the Leave campaign’s victory, concerns about immigration have been cited as one of the most significant reasons for the Brexit vote. Theresa May has committed to ending free movement for EU citizens after the UK has left the bloc, with immigration rules expected to become more restrictive. This is unwelcome news for universities wanting to recruit international technicians. Despite how highly educated most technicians are, the Office for National Statistics classifies their roles as below degree level and underneath the threshold for a tier 2 visa. At present, this only impacts the recruitment of technicians from outside of the European Economic Area. If the current immigration system is applied to EU nationals after Brexit, it could become prohibitively difficult for universities to recruit technicians from anywhere overseas.
Setting aside the issue of new recruits, Brexit also presents a problem for the retention of international technicians currently working in UK universities. From the government’s use of EU citizens as a bargaining chip in negotiations to the Home Office incorrectly issuing deportation letters, or the rise in xenophobia since the referendum, the UK may be losing its appeal for workers from the EU and beyond. Technicians’ skills make them highly employable in academia and industry; universities should be concerned about keeping those they already have, as well as the problem of recruiting new staff.

How would academia be affected by greater curbs on international recruitment?
Estimates suggest that at least 70,000 new technicians need to be recruited every year, if the UK is to fill the vacancies created by retirement and new positions. A skills gap makes it difficult to find all of the necessary recruits domestically; cutting the UK off from talented technicians from overseas would make the annual target even more challenging to fulfil. While a better pipeline of UK technicians can be developed over time, that is not a solution for the short-term. Moreover, to increase the pool of domestic expertise, universities need existing technicians to help provide the training. Shutting out international staff will impede that process.
Universities, industry and research institutions concur that international technicians should be spared any post-Brexit tightening of the immigration rules. A joint statement on the matter attracted signatories including the Russell Group, Universities UK, the Wellcome Trust, the Institute of Cancer Research and the Science Council. Lauding the contribution made by technicians, the statement noted the significant benefits derived from “tapping into new ideas, skills and innovative approaches developed overseas and this is as true in technical skills as it is in research more generally.” It goes on to highlight the risk to the UK’s world-class STEM research if adequate numbers of technicians cannot be recruited.

Back in the world of festivals, the founder of Womad despaired of the UK becoming a country “that is losing the will to welcome the world.” Edinburgh International Book Festival’s director echoed that point, when he opined that “unless things change now, after Brexit it will simply get worse.” Similar thoughts must be crossing the minds of university vice-chancellors and research institute directors. Without the ability to recruit the best technicians from around the world, it will be more difficult for universities to deliver the teaching required to fill the country’s skills gap. Nor will the research needed to maintain the UK’s position as a leader in scientific and medical innovation be any easier. Bearing in mind how much the success of ‘Brexit Britain’ depends on a highly skilled workforce and ongoing excellence in research, the government should consider the wisdom of welcoming talented university technicians whatever their nationality.
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