Why French Scholars Love U.S. Colleges

Introduction

Clockwise from top left: Associated Press, Agence France-Presse — Getty Images, Alexis Duclos/Associated Press, University of Chicago, Eugene Salazar/European Pressphoto Agency and M.I.T. They've all come to the U.S., clockwise from top left: Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion, Olivier Blanchard and Esther Duflo.

A recent article in The Times described the fears in France of a brain drain to the United States, as top French scholars move to American universities to teach and do research.

A study by the Institut Montaigne found that academics constitute a much larger percentage of French émigrés to the United States today than 30 years ago: 27 percent of the total from 1996 to 2006, compared with 8 percent from 1971 and 1980. In particular, many of France’s best biologists and economists are now in the United States.

Why would France's leading scholars and researchers want to leave a place that reveres intellectuals? More money, more freedom, more competitive energy -- what really drives the global academic marketplace?

Read the Discussion »

Debaters

This Highway Runs Both Ways

Peter Baldwin, U.C.L.A. historian and author
Why They Are Here

Thomas Geoghegan, author of "Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?"
Wine, Cheese and Torpor

Veronique de Rugy, George Mason University
Work in the U.S., Play in France

Mireille Guiliano, author and former executive
The Invention Factor

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, president emeritus, George Washington University
It Will Get Worse for France

Jean-Pierre Lehmann, IMD Business School
‘Porosity of Borders’

Annie Cohen-Solal, National Center for Scientific Research in Paris
The Immigrant’s Motive

Richard Vedder, Center for College Affordability and Productivity