Global Flows, Competition and Recruitment of Academics

In contemporary public policymaking, the assumed practices of the Medieval Scholar often inform the common image of an Academic today. This Scholar is a man who possesses deep and unique knowledge in his field of learning. He is perennially on the move, trekking from one centre of learning to another, sharing his latest inventions and discoveries with learned colleagues while spreading his doctrines to eager disciples. Patrons—often royal—support his scholarly ventures: financially (by funding travel, subsistence, or access to collections) and politically (by granting safe passage). A visual that emerges is one of free flow of knowledge even though the actual practices of scholarly mobility—especially in Medieval times—are rarely unhindered and without conflicts. So why is this image so enduring? For policymakers at the university, national, and regional levels, this image is ever present because a mobile scholar generates seemingly untold benefits, not least in scientific terms and, more recently, economic gains. In this paper, we examine the crafting of policies to enable academic mobility in an era of automisation. We begin with an overview of scholarly mobility in the 21st century, outlining assumptions about the benefits of academic mobility and how they in turn fuel the policy imagination. Next, we contextualise the case of academia and many universities’ strong efforts to recruit faculties from abroad within the global competition for talent. This is to show how assessing policy efficacy and effectiveness in talent migration recruitment is ultimately very difficult. We conclude with a discussion of what automisation means for the competitive recruitment of academic talents today.