Competing for brains
International talent is crucial for the innovative capacity of a country’s academic system. A look at strategies in the Netherlands, Australia, and Switzerland shows which policy directions are helping to shape incentives and reforms in the global competition for talent.
Over the past 20 years, universities around the world have pushed to internationalize their faculties and staff, and for good reason. Studies have shown that researchers with international experience are more productive and more likely to establish connections with colleagues abroad. International faculty bring different perspectives to students, preparing them for work in an increasingly global world. Attracting the best minds in the world invariably means hiring beyond national borders.
In 2023, Germany employed just over 4,000 international professors – barely eight percent of its total across universities, universities of applied sciences, and art universities. Counting all academic staff, the number was 15 percent. By way of comparison, in the Netherlands and Australia, that number is almost 50 percent; and at Swiss universities, 45 percent of all academic staff hold foreign passports.
What makes these countries so successful at attracting international talent? There’s no one recipe: Reforms and policy changes have to be made at all levels. Certain strategies – targeted recruiting, or attention to dual-career couples – are made at the institutional level. Others, like internationally competitive pay packages, easing visa requirements, or teaching courses in English, may require policy change on a national level. And sometimes, a high proportion of international faculty is an unintended outcome of other policy choices, like expanding offerings for international students, who then stay on in the higher education system.
We asked experts from three countries with high numbers of international academic staff how their universities succeeded in attracting global talent – and what the lessons might be for Germany.
The Netherlands – pragmatism and political will
When it comes to internationalization, few countries have transformed their higher education system as dramatically as the Netherlands. Since 2003, the country’s universities have more than doubled the number of non-native personnel, with some now exceeding 60 percent. Evelien Hack works for Nuffic, the Dutch agency responsible for internationalization in education, as the team lead for strategy and innovation. She says the country’s success comes down to the practical, entrepreneurial Dutch culture – and political will.
Policymakers in the Netherlands have focused for decades on recruiting international faculty. For a country of 18 million, it was a matter of pragmatism. “We, as a small country, can’t exist without the outside world, so let’s give our students as many tools as possible to succeed internationally,” Hack says.
One key step was introducing English-language research programs and curricula. Today, many master’s programs are offered exclusively in English. That has attracted international students, created a level playing field for international candidates who teach in English, and increased the demand for international faculty. “For the last 25 years, it’s been really easy to transform research programs into English,” says Hack. Criticism regarding the loss of culture was muted, although there has been increased pushback in recent years. “Our traditions are still there, but we’re pragmatic too – if we can get numbers up, let’s do it.”
Hack also highlights the importance of “expat” tax codes that benefit highly-skilled migrants. Until very recently, high earners weren’t required to pay taxes on a portion of their income for their first five years in the country. Tax benefits also lowered the cost of buying a house for migrants. Both policies were designed to lower barriers faced by people moving from abroad and starting a life in the Netherlands from scratch. “It was devised to make coming over and staying attractive for professors,” Hack says. “You can also get a visa much quicker. These are all national regulations designed to make it easier to attract faculty.”
Dutch universities also post jobs on international portals, and salaries are competitive with positions in peer countries. There’s also been a concerted effort to address the needs of dual-career couples. “There was a recognition that this was a barrier, so now universities also offer spousal support,” Hack says. The results are impressive. In some fields – like engineering, economics, and natural sciences – the proportion of international faculty and staff is well over 50 percent. The country has reaped concrete benefits. Dutch universities secure a disproportionate amount of European research funding, ranking third behind two much bigger countries, Germany and the UK, in European Research Council (ERC) grants in 2025. This is due in part to the fact that faculties are well-networked across the continent.
What the Dutch example also shows is that making it easy to come isn’t enough – it’s also important to make it attractive to stay. In her role as Nuffic’s team lead for strategy and innovation, Hack often interviews professors about why they chose to stay in the Netherlands. Many list academic freedom, its egalitarian culture, and the country’s balanced approach to careers. “Work-life balance is something many professors appreciate,” Hack says.
Making it easy to come isn’t enough – it’s also important to make it attractive to stay
Australia – international networks and targeted recruitment in Asia
Unlike in the Netherlands, internationalization of Australia’s universities is closely tied to the country’s migration policy and its sustained efforts to attract and keep skilled immigrants.
Until 1939, Australia’s higher education system was small and heavily influenced by its history as a British colony. That began to change after World War II, when Jewish scholars from Europe took refuge in Australia, along with a flood of post-war refugees from Central and Eastern Europe. In more recent decades, Australia has attracted immigrants, including many scholars, from nearby East Asian countries including China and Vietnam.
In a recent article, University of Sydney education researcher Anthony Welch argued that one important pull factor for faculty to come to Australia is pay, which tends to top salaries for professors in other English-speaking countries like Canada and the UK. It’s also higher than in nearby Asian countries, for whom Australia is a sought-after migration destination.
The Australian university system’s English-speaking roots also make it easier to plug into networks shaped by the US and UK model. Almost a third of Australian academics earned their PhDs in either the United States or the UK.
“The UK, the United States, and Australia have similar practices and educational traditions, and a higher degree of interchange and alignment,” says Chris Ziguras, director of the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne. “While we may be very international, a lot of our engagement is with other English-speaking countries.”
For countries like Germany, that kind of integration with the US and UK higher education systems is hard to imagine. “German universities have their own internal logic, and the depth of the system and its history makes internationalization harder,” Ziguras points out.
More recently, Australian universities have pivoted to Asian neighbors. “Politicians have encouraged universities and schools to engage with Asia,” Ziguras says. Many universities have campuses in India, China, Indonesia, and elsewhere, all of which raise the profile of Australian universities and increase opportunities to recruit and collaborate with international scholars. And of the hundreds of thousands of international students who come to study in Australia, some stay to embark on an academic career. Overall, the results have been remarkable. In 2026, 45 percent of Australian university staff were born overseas, nearly twice the proportion of the overall population.
However, public opinion regarding immigration has shifted in the last few years, a situation that echoes what’s happening in the United States. Recently, the Australian government has encouraged universities to pull back on international recruiting and increased student visa fees. “That creates real opportunities for other countries,” says Ziguras.
As part of the hiring process, Swiss universities pay international scholars in the relevant fields to help evaluate candidates, ensuring talent searches are truly global
Switzerland – attracting the best talent is part of the national self-image
In contrast, immigration is an afterthought in Switzerland when considering how best to attract international faculty and students, says Hans-Dieter Daniel, a psychologist and higher education researcher at ETH Zurich. Trained in Germany, he spent nearly two decades as the head of the University of Zurich’s evaluation office. Daniel argues that support for recruiting international faculty is instead rooted in a Swiss belief in attracting the best talent. “In Germany, it’s different,” he says. “When jobs open up, they always talk about selecting the best, but if you look at the recruitment process it’s really about selecting the best German.” As part of the hiring process, Swiss universities pay international scholars in the relevant fields to help evaluate candidates, ensuring talent searches are truly global.
It helps that the country’s handful of universities are well-funded, with ample resources and staff support for professors, steadily increasing budgets, and a focus on cutting-edge science. While the Swiss university system is more research-oriented, “the focus in Germany is on teaching,” Daniel points out.
For a country with a tenth of Germany’s population, the results have been impressive. Three of the country’s universities are in the top 100 globally in the QS World University Ranking 2026, compared to five universities in Germany, and Zurich’s ETH is considered one of the world’s top ten. “That’s very important for the way the people of Switzerland see themselves,” Daniel says. In 2004, just over 40 percent of the country’s university professors were foreigners; today it’s over half.
Which strategies could benefit Germany?
In many ways, Germany is trying to catch up. But while the number of international academic staff at German universities has almost doubled since 2012, the number of international professors remains relatively low.
A lot more could be done to change that, according to Daniel. German universities funded at the state level often can’t compete with the resources of nationally-funded top universities elsewhere. Meanwhile, adopting tactics from the Netherlands, like simplifying bureaucracy and offering more opportunities to teach in English, could improve Germany’s attractiveness to foreign scholars.
Finding ways to retain students and junior researchers as faculty, Australian-style, could help too. Through DAAD and Humboldt fellowships, Germany funds thousands of international scholars for graduate studies and post-doctoral research, for example. Still more work at the renowned Max Planck Institutes and other internationally competitive research institutions. But very few of those bright minds go on to teach and research at German universities. “Why aren’t more postdocs from the Max Planck Institutes hired to professorships in Germany? They often understand and speak German and know the culture,” Daniel points out. “The pipeline is really leaky.”
Andrew Curry is an award-winning journalist who reports from five continents on a range of subjects, including science and politics. His articles have appeared in Science and The New York Times, among other publications.
