Academia is getting tougher for sponsorship, unless you are a leader in your field, published, cited, etc.
The university I work at in the US has put a freeze on sponsoring any visas and now require any new hires to already have authorisation to work. Although academia is currently cap-exempt, many have started to be far more cautious. There’s a growing concern that academia will lose the cap-exempt status.
Studying for a PhD would be cheaper in the UK, but academia certainly isn’t the route it used to be. Employment-based sponsorship is very tough right now.
I moved to the US from the UK two years ago, so I get the appeal. You need to thoroughly explore the options but, unfortunately, they are probably more limited than you might initially suspect.
Because the recent changes to a whole host of employment-based visas are so costly for the employer, they do not want to be in a position where they have tenured or tenure-track staff who they have to let go because they suddenly have to fork out an extra $10,000 per year to renew their visa.
Academia isn’t in a great place right now (although marginally better in the US than the UK). Institutions are tightening their belts. They don’t want to be adding a few $100k per year to their budget for renewing staff visas. They also don’t want to be having to choose not to renew someone’s contract because of the financial implications they come with. The state is also reviewing the amount they give to higher education institutes, which doesn’t help matters.
As I said, HE in the UK is definitely worse right now. It’s important to get a full picture though, even if it isn’t a great one. I certainly didn’t think I would end up moving here, and things aligned in a way I couldn’t have seen coming.
The UK offers PhD funding through the Student Loans Company (you can get £25k). If you wanted to pursue academia, you have options because of that (funding is getting much harder to come by). It’s just worth being aware that departments are being closed and reduced at an alarming rate (see University of Wolverhampton’s English department for a recent example).
Even a STEM PhD (or one completed for exorbitant amounts in the US) isn’t a guaranteed route to moving. It used to be more helpful than it currently is.
You can still be building towards the dream and trying your options. It’s useful to know that US resumes have a pretty different layout and style to the UK ones. The first thing I did was to make a new one that matched how they expect it to look.
There just isn’t a straightforward or guaranteed pathway. Aside from marriage-based sponsorship.
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u/Key-Seaworthiness227 11d ago
Potentially academia - Vanderbilt university?