[foamdino]

I suspect (and I've heard tell, but I have no data to support this), that the UK universities cannot afford the same salaries as their US counterparts.

If your a prof and you have two offers (let's stay technical as it's HN):

1 Cambridge - £90,000/year (~$160,000) and you can go and watch the boat race (yay)

2 MIT (or caltech, berkley, princeton etc etc) - $400,000/year and you can live somewhere where it doesn't rain for 10 months of the year

Now which would you choose?

NB - figures pulled out of my ass, but I suspect that the ratio is probably accurate enough (ie US unis can afford to pay 2* UK).

One of my professors talked about the day he hoped the UK system would allow universities to become private institutions (they're quasi-private now in that 'foreign' students are charged a lot more than 'home/EU' students where the fees are capped)