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A potential supervisor asked for a Zoom meeting, then didn’t show up. What should my next step be?
A potential supervisor asked to speak with me over Zoom, and sent me a Zoom link. However, the day came and went, but they didn’t show up, and haven't replied to my emails (for about 5 days now, as of November 16).
What should the next step be?

Previously, they had asked for a meeting, but after I agreed to the specific day they suggested, they completely disappeared for a month. They then emailed me to apologize, saying they broke their arm and were unable to answer messages. So now I’m just guessing that they probably have an issue with their arm again and can’t reply.

@user2316602 Under normal circumstances not replying for a couple of days would be OK. Missing an agreed-upon meeting is not a normal circumstance. In this case, there should be an apology within a day, especially if the student wrote e-mails after the missed meeting. Otherwise I would see this as a red flag.

Previously, they had asked for a meeting and after I agreed for the specific day they suggested they  completely disappeared for a month. They then emailed me apologizing saying they broke their arm and was unable to answer messages. So now I’m just guessing that they probably have an issue with their arm again and can’t reply. Is this plausible?

@Msar Very plausible. Please don't badger someone dealing with a broken limb.

How hard would it be to ask a colleague to e-mail you on their behalf? Absolute silence in this situation is unprofessional.

Anything is possible.  They may have been hit by a bus.  At this point, you have no way of knowing and I would avoid jumping to conclusions, especially if this is a job you think you might want.   If this Zoom meeting was arranged in the usual fashion after some initial email discussion with a recruiter, someone in HR (human resources), or perhaps a department admin, I would reach out to them and report that the meeting was missed, your email has gone unanswered, and you're concerned that something has happened.
If you later learn the supervisor is just being very rude, I would take that as good to know and look for a job elsewhere.  Good luck.

You asked "What is my next step?"
I would suggest contacting other people at the same place.
If there is an office, contact them.  Otherwise look for somebody with a title like "secretary" or similar. As a last resort, contact another academic.
First try an email. KEEP THAT EMAIL SHORT. They don't want or need your life history.  I suggest:

Hi!
I had a zoom meeting with prof X at DATE.
They didn't show and I have been unable to contact them later.
Are they all right?
Your name here.

I am not sure about how fast you should expect an answer or what your next step should be.

"I have been trying to reach Prof. X after a conversation regarding a PhD position, but I could not contact them." No need to say they missed a meeting.

@Pedro why not state that?

@VScode_fanboy I don't see why it is relevant to state that detail, unless this was a formal meeting.

@PedroTamaroff hm. yes.

@PedroTamaroff What's a "formal meeting"?

@PedroTamaroff IMO it's relevant. It's a good justification to be worried. Simply asking if the person is all right with no context would be weird. I would put the question asking if they are all right at the beginning though, then the context for asking afterwards.

@Kat I do not see why the email should be "I am worried about Professor X" rather than "I need to know if I should expect to hear from Professor X as other PhD interview are waiting to hear from me". If this person knows Professor X personally, I would try finding them on their phone instead of bringing it up at work. The email that this answer is suggesting seems somewhat unprofessional.

@AzorAhai-him- A formal meeting would be something like a meeting scheduled for a PhD job opening (example, interview) that is tied to deadlines and where other candidates are participating, and which is happening in the context of the OPs job hunt, which means this interview is tied to deadlines of other positions, too. If this was just a "next year there is a job opening, we can have a quick Zoom call where I can give you some details about it" maybe this would be informal.

@PedroTamaroff I don't see why this distinction matters re: your original suggestion that there's "no need to say they missed a meeting."

I agree with the suggestion NOT to mention that they missed a meeting with you. It sounds like you are being critical of them or ratting them out.  You can express the necessary information much more neutrally by just stating that you were unable to get in contact with them. If it turns out that something really awful happened to them, then you might sound like a jerk complaining that they didn't attend your meeting.

I live in a region where uncertainties are common and would consider some possibilities that others might not be quick to recognize.  I would suggest that you tick these off the list before jumping to conclusions as to your potential supervisor.
Possible Reasons for Lack of Communication

Their internet, computer, or power has failed.  Even in Portland, Oregon, USA, thousands of people had a weeks'-long power outage this year due to an unusual ice storm and its aftereffects.

Your potential supervisor experienced an unexpected medical emergency.  For example, I had a sudden case of severe keratitis this year which prevented me from doing much of anything with my computer for a couple weeks (everything was too blurry to read).

As it seems highly unlikely that, in ordinary circumstances, someone would go to the effort of making a zoom appointment, communicating the time of the meeting, and sending you a link for it and then just not show up, it is prudent not to simply assume the worst.  Try to learn the facts of the situation before making judgment calls relative to someone's character or motives.
You do not know what happened.  You have no reasonable way to know why it happened.  Until you have more knowledge about both of these, avoid making unwarranted conclusions.

This doesn't answer the question. OP is not speculating about what the cause is, they are asking what they should do about it. What actions do you recommend OP take?

Get in contact with that research group / department's secretariat, or other members of the academic staff as physically close to that potential advisor. Ask them if there's anything wrong with Prof. Whats-their-name. Either they say yes and you have your explanation, or they say no, and you tell them you were supposed to have a Zoom conversation but you haven't been able to get in touch with him. Don't sound accusative - use a more confused/worried tone, so that it won't appear as though you're going around complaining about them.

confused/worried is the perfect tone here! If they mentioned the broken arm before, check in with the groups secretariat, or with anyone else you've been in touch with earlier in the process. Be friendly, polite, and mostly concerned for the academic, and it'll go a long way. We had a beloved professor die suddenly last year, and we'd way rather people reached out, so we could let them know what happened. (He was also leading a program to get people from non traditional backgrounds into Phds, so we were all calling in favours to try and get spots for the students past the interview stage)


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Applying for PhD after Engineering work on MS
I'm considering revisiting a PhD, my last MS I felt I basically spent my time on engineering work the advisor needed to get done vs actual research. I was effectively an engineer working for a small salary without help.
I don't think what I ended up doing for my MS was particularly useful from the perspective of research and my advisor basically offered zero help.
When applying to PhD programs at other universities how should I address this?
I graduated from every program I entered, generally good theoretical understanding of topics and a high GPA but I don't have any publications because of the above.
I also felt my role was just researchy enough to not really count as true engineering experience because of how hackey I had to approach problems since I was doing it solo, under limited time.

I imagine most folks entering a PhD program have no publications.

What country or countries are you applying in?

Only the US ...

Welcome to the early stages of research in an experimental field. I’d say you did well. Stop worrying about it.

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Part time PhD while working, who owns IP?
I'm interested in doing a part time PhD on the same topic I am currently working at a company for.
What do I need to do to make sure that I can fulfill my PhD obligations while protecting the IP of the company? How is this dealt with? Plenty of people work on start-ups after their PhDs which continue their research in some way so there must be a way to separate the two.

You need to run this by all relevant parties and legal departments. Universities often have ownership of works created by people employed by them using university resources. This could create issues with your primary employer. IP can be thorny.

The difficulty of this is one reason that both companies and universities may put restrictions on whether you can work simultaneously for anyone else. I don't see how a general answer could be possible. If you're serious about this you probably need to ask a lawyer experienced in this area in your jurisdiction, not StackExchange. They will probably have to help you draft contracts with the relevant parties.

Suppose I am not funded by the university but by an external source, does the university still own anything?

Most universities will have commercialisation departments specifically for working through these issues.  You need to get an agreement in place before starting.  The most important conflict will be your (and your supervisor's) need to be able to publish results, compared with your employer's need for confidentiality.

@FourierFlux It would be extremely difficult (and useless) to use zero university resources while conducting PhD research.

Adding to @CameronWilliams, there's three parties that potentially have rights: university, employer, and funding source. Projects can have more than one funding source and collaborators at other universities, so there's an unbounded number of parties that have to agree.

Since the university presumably has some input, e.g., through discussions with your supervisor (because otherwise, it would be independent research, not a Ph.D. project), the university will at least have a reasonable claim on IP.
We can't tell you. You will need to talk to your employer's legal and/or Human Resources team, and get them in contact with the university. There may be policies on situations like these on one of the two sides which the other side is happy about; then things may be easy. There may be policies on both sides, then negotiations may ensue. This may take a while.
As an example, if I collaborate with a university on some research project, my employer typically wants to own all IP generated, but will license it back to the university involved for research purposes at no cost. If the university is fine with that, they can just sign our contract, and everyone is happy. If they are not, things get tricky.
Whatever you do, start soon. I have been quoted a six month time frame for such negotiations from my employer's legal team. Also, note that if more than one university is involved, e.g., in some research collaboration, the negotiations may become very involved - I personally have been counseled not to even try a constellation like this, because coming to an agreement is likely impossible.

Six months is perhaps a bit on the low side in my experience. But it is highly dependent on which university - some (CalTech) are excellent to work with (and they actually bill on time at the end of the fiscal year). Others? Not so much.

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Focusing on one specific academic field?
This question has already been asked, albeit not so much, in this thread. This, however, still gets me thinking. I am an early career research (not even done with my PhD yet). A PhD candidate told me that despite all my papers being focused in one country, I am "all over the place." Meaning, my published works are in different fields (i.e. sociolinguistics, politics, anthropology, international relations) - all of which I have a good grasp with. What is common among all my publications are my ideological standpoints. I remained consistent.
My degrees are in area studies, and I did (and still does) all the researches for my degrees in the fields of sociolinguistics, the politics of language, and political rhetoric. Area Studies is so broad enough that it can be considered multi- and interdisciplinary.
However, will writing and being able to have my works published in various fields in the social sciences affect my profile (positively or negatively) when I apply for faculty positions in the future?

It's impossible to answer such a specific question about your situation in a way that will be useful to other readers.  You could try to generalize the question so that it isn't so specific to your particular discipline.

To give a general answer: If you can show you have a significant, long-running research agenda, i.e. if you can bind the different publication or most of them with a single narrative - than it's probably ok. Of course, expectations depend by field, country etc.

Often these things depend on how you sell them when questioned about it. Working in a few different fields can be positive or negative, but often it can put you in a position to offer a unique perspective that people who only work in one area might not have. Also, people who have worked in A, B and C are often more adaptable and able to pick up D than someone who has spent their entire life working only on B.


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displaying mean with sem or confidence interval
When I look at scientific papers, bar charts I usually come to see are shown with mean +/- sem.
As stated here,

When standard error (SE) bars do not overlap, you cannot be sure that
  the difference between two means is statistically significant

and

If 95% CI error bars do not overlap, you can be sure the difference is
  statistically significant (P < 0.05).

Even if the reverse is not true, why don't we always use the confidence interval instead of the sem in bar charts, since it seems more informative ?

This question is probably more suitable at Cross Validate.

Actually, it's also on Cross Validated, but I think it belongs to Academia also (and as I thought, answers are a little more relevant here)

Oh... that's naughty. Users do not like cross posting here. :) You should perhaps delete this question.

I know, but I really od think my question is about stastistical validity as much as scientific publicability, so it should belong to both, don't you agree ?

So-called "dynamite plots" (bar plots with whiskers - no matter what the whiskers represent) are rather disliked by statisticians, since they compress (that is, lose) information more than alternatives while falling prey to perceptual problems. See here and here.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because a proper answer would require a too technical discussion and would be largely beyond the scope of Academia.SE. Even the premise "If 95% CI error bars do not overlap, you can be sure the difference is statistically significant (P < 0.05)" is questionable in many experimental situations, but discussing this would really bring us too far.

Even if you have some points, I really don't understand the need to close topics like this one, that's not like it could do anything wrong, and so far I got some interesting answers... I don't understand the "too far" concept neither, if someone doesnt want to answer, they don't and that's it... Also, my post on Cross Validated didn't get the same answers, so basicaly by closing this topic you really prevent me from getting a good answer.

See Is cross-posting a question on multiple Stack Exchange sites permitted if the question is on-topic for each site?

My guess: SEM needs to be multiplied with the constant from the probability distribution of concern (e.g. t-distribution) to become confidence interval. In some study, sample size is so low that the constant can make the bars look huge.
Yet, in your cited link there is another important phrase:

No surprises here. When SE bars overlap, (as in experiment 2) you can
  be sure the difference between the two means is not statistically
  significant (P>0.05).

So, SE may not serve to tell if there is a significance difference, but can tell if there is likely none. Depending on the researchers' motive this could be a good feature.
What I'd advocate, however, is not to believe these visual comparison as if they are definitive. One illustrative explanation can be found in this online pdf.
Anyhow, a graph is a graph and as long as it's labeled clearly I'd consider that acceptable. What can confuse people is when the authors use this kind of error-bar like device but did not footnote what the bars represent.

So if SE bars overlap, it's definitively not significant and if CI bars dont overlap, it's definitively significant. Others possibilities are unsure. Am I right ?

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Is it ethical to submit to a journal if I know the editor-in-chief?
Is it ethical to submit to a journal if I know the editor-in-chief?
I'm curious about 3 different cases:

Case 1: We know each other (from talks and emails) but never worked
together.
Case 2: We haven't worked together, but are currently in contact
about a potential collaboration.
Case 3: If I am one of the editor-in-chief's collaborators (but the
paper submitted is not part of the collaboration).

In all cases, I don't know if the editor-in-chief is going to give me an easy time (I am not even looking for that) or a hard time. I mean no promises. I will even ask, in the cover letter, for my paper to be reviewed by at least two referees to comply with my University's regulations (so that I can use it for promotion purposes at my Uni).

In well-known science journals, the editor-in-chief is unlikely to see your paper.

@AnonymousPhysicist It is a new journal, and I am sure he would see the paper. But I assume he/she will assign it to one of the editors as stated on the website of the journal.

Once you've reached a certain level in most sciences, you'll know everybody in your (sub)field. You'll submit papers to editors that are co-authors. Your reviewers may have met you and personally like/dislike you (half the people I asked have been asked to review their own paper at some point by an editor on an offday). Your own paper will be in the special edition you're editing. It's all inevitable.

There are no ethical concerns about submitting. If there are any ethical concerns, they are completely on the other side. The editor should make some arrangements so that people are treated fairly in the interest of good scholarship. The normal way would be for them to pass all decisions about your paper to someone else.
Editors know a lot of people. Being named an editor shouldn't close out opportunities for those you know and have worked with. But care should be taken so that the process is fair and transparent.
Stepping aside also avoids the possibility that you will blame your "friend" if the paper isn't accepted.


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UK faculty salaries are much lower than US – is there any upside?
I was looking at faculty jobs, and most of the jobs in UK publish the salary range and band, which (from my understanding) is essentially non-negotiable and adopted by most universities in the UK. It ends up being roughly 65k USD for an assistant professor / lecturer entry level position, even for top-tier universities in places like London, compared to places like NYC or Boston where beginner faculty salaries are easily upwards of 100k to start.
From reading a bit about this, and from looking at other posts on Academia.SE, people often say you can't compare these, or that the UK has other perks. But what exactly are these? The tax rate in the UK is 40% of what you make over 50k GBP (20% below), so even if you do get a good incremental raise, you lose almost half of it; and on top of this you pay 12% of your paycheck for National Insurance. UK universities do tend to have good pension matching (20%), but that's common in a lot of US universities too. They offer good leave (5 weeks) but many US jobs are only 9 mo contract, and still pay in the 80-100k range. So you can either take 12 weeks off per year, or, if needed, you work another up to three more months and have a higher salary supported by grants (which isn't possible in the UK scheme).
So... What am I missing? Are there hidden benefits? And otherwise how do good universities like Oxford, Imperial, UCL actually recruit good faculty?
I get that places vary a lot and some people can't move or they like one place more than another. But I'm not asking a hypothetical... I'm interested in specific reasons why you or someone you know has preferred the UK over a similarly ranked, better paying faculty job elsewhere in the world. I get that there are a lot of what ifs, like maybe the US uni has worse healthcare or childcare. But in my experience with R1 universities in the US, these perks are really really good, even for postdocs. The best answer so far is the non-tenure system in the UK, which does seem better.
For even more clarification, I'm asking this as someone that has never been to the UK, so I have no idea if I would like it more than the US. I don't care about less money – that's the whole point of my question. I'm happy to take less if there are other perks. But what I'm asking is what exactly are these perks? And ideally from the perspective of someone that has worked in academia in the UK vs elsewhere.

Various pros/cons of living in various places have been moved to chat. The conversation may continue in chat; however, comments below this one should attempt to clarify the question or suggest improvements only (sadly, we cannot move comments to chat more than once)

I think Why don't poorer countries suffer a complete brain-drain? is highly related.

This question (and reinforced by your comment on an answer; "what I really am asking is what is there to like about the UK?") seems like it has nothing to do with academia since what you are really asking is whether the UK is better than the USA in general. This question could be asked in almost identical terms about a job in just about any industry.

Dear OP, after 1.5 years maybe can you finally self-answer this question?

I'll answer from the perspective of someone who has worked in both the UK and the US and also in Industry as well as academia during my lengthy career.
Although all the other answers and comment raise valid points, many of which I concur with, they do not completely resonate with me, as someone who has done both.
One of the perspectives I noticed while travelling backwards and forward across the Atlantic over the years which may have influenced the question is the expectation that life elsewhere would be "just like here"; but it isn't. When I was in Houston, for example, I acted like an Englishman and walked from place to place and caught the Bus, much to the horror of my hosts who were surprised that I came out alive without speaking Spanish. I was horrified they were horrified! Similarly colleagues from LA tried to rent a car from Heathrow to drive to their hotel in Mayfair which I considered madness. They thought I was rather common sharing transport with other people. (Not academic examples but they exaggerate the point).
Although I am a native speaker of English and was aware of the cultural and linguistic differences I found that working in UK academia at a "lower salary" much more cost effective than when working in the US at a  much "higher salary". For example, although food cost more in the UK, housing cost less. Health care cost less, emergency provision cost less, child care and education cost less, daily travel cost less. I also found that the pressure on working hours was less and the time available for vacations and my family was much better. The pension scheme was (when I entered it, but not now) miles better and so on.
I have friends and colleagues who left the UK and remain in the US, both in Industry and Academia. It suits them. I miss much about the US, but there is much to like about many places and cultures where I have been. Every single one has value. I guess I long for Un monde sans frontières.

"I miss much about the US"... "...Houston...". So, that would be good Mexican food, right? And either good craft beer or Mexican beer???

"housing cost less"  Did the pound really fall that far?  I am not sure I believe you.

A quick google suggests housing is only slightly cheaper in the UK.  I'm not sure that applies to locations with universities.

London housing is cheaper than Boston, let alone NYC or SF.

Thanks for the comments --- but what I really am asking is what is there to like about the UK? I want a sales pitch. I've never spent much time there, and I'm more than willing to consider a job there, but at first glance there's no real benefit.

@AnonymousPhysicist Yeah, I'm specifically talking about London, which maybe I should have been clearer about in my post. This has one of the highest costs of living in the world.

@NoahSnyder That's not true at all. London cost of living is about 15% higher than Boston, with housing being about 5% higher in London. Just google "boston london cost of living" for a bunch of facts on this.

That’s exactly what I did, but I think I looked at rent (Boston more expensive) and you looked at buying (London more expensive). So it’s more ambiguous than I thought.

If you want a sales pitch, go talk to a sales person. Nobody here has any reason to convince you either way, of why you should go anywhere particular; if you want to know why other people would, well, that's the answer you've got, here. @user3037237

If you need a sales pitch, then you probably shouldn't come here, you won't like it. If you were the kind of person who enjoys the kind of lifestyle you can enjoy in England, you would know.

@Nij Sure, but basically no one here has really given much of a solid reply about their preference either. To the extent they have (health care, crime, etc.) this is not seeminly anchored from experience, i.e., it's people that have never lived in the US and presume it's worse or better. I'm still waiting for someone that lived in the US and lived in the UK to tell me the pros/cons of taking a faculty job in a big city like London, and how that compares to a similar job in a big city in the US. No one has done that yet, and you haven't contributed either.

The problem about comparing "cost of living" is that it tends to compare the costs of an identical lifestyle in two countries, and if you're going to enjoy living in a different country, then you have to adapt to a different lifestyle.

@MichaelKay totally agreed, and that's sort of what I'm asking. What make the quality of life good (or different) in a place like London, specifically with respect to a faculty job? I currently live in another country in Europe, so I'm quite aware of cultural differences. But that being said, quality of life can certainty be compared across cities to some degree. That is, if one only considers costs of necessities such as housing, food, transportation etc., then certainly the cost of living can be compared.

Then you're conducting a poll, and that's just not what SE is for. People have already described what perks (beginning, or continuing) a career in the UK provides, compared with the USA, and why the focus here is the wrong one. The question has been answered; changing it because you don't like the answers is not how SE works, either.

@user3037237 Advice - this is a decision you should make. Not us. What we can do is give insight into both worlds, but you have to make the choice. Take this decision. Face it. Don't let want strangers on the Internet decide instead of you, even if it gives the illusion of lifting the weight of responsibility off of your shoulders - it does not. Write your own life.

Personally, I wouldn't live in London if you paid me. Or in any other large city. But life 50 miles away can be very pleasant. It all depends on what you're looking for.

I see with some of your comments to some of the offered answers that you consider the social benefits (healthcare and other forms of job security, life security), the community and safety (gun violence, walkability of cities), work benefits (annual leave and how it is perceived) as "not real benefits" or as "reasons that the UK sucks a bit less".
I can understand that as somebody coming from a country where these things are not standard and nor, you assign value to these things as "added bonus". However, as somebody who comes from this system, these are absolutely dealbreaking for me.
For example:

I am absolutely horrified by the idea that I would have to keep a certain amount of money (I heard as much as $10k from friends and acquaintances) aside just in case I needed to call an ambulance.
Honestly compared to other European countries where I've lived prior, the social protections, worker protections and health care in the UK are not even the best I've ever experienced. Giving even more up would feel like a step backwards to me.

You put the US 9-month contracts (where you could make extra money by working for the remaining 3 months) in the same context with the UK 5 weeks of annual leave "during which you can not make extra money".
The very approach to this is fundamentally different. The (government-backed) attitude here is that any worker needs time off work in a year (and I mean more than just weekends). This is fully paid annual leave. The UK academics have a more generous leave allowance than some UK jobs, but there is actually a minimum prescribed number of leave days that you are obliged to take annually (28). Taking time off here is expected; nobody will interpret it as being unmotivated to work.
(Check "What does it mean to have vacation time in European academia?" for an old but excellent question on the vacation topic specifically)

The whole gun thing in the US. The idea that you can get one without going through a rigorous certification process. Shivers down my spine.

Car-oriented cities vs human-oriented cities.
I am already disappointed by how car-oriented some UK places are and how hard it is to get around on foot, by bicycle or using public transport. But I am still generally succeeding in having a high standard of living without driving at all.

The reliance of the Higher Education system on tuition fees.
(Decided to edit this one in after a discussion in the comments).
Obviously, when considering an academic faculty position, the considerations about tuition fees are different from an undergrad. I actually think there are two aspect to this one.
The first academic position is one of the earliest points of stability in an academic career that allows one to plan for a family. I am of a firm opinion that education should be free. I would never start a family in the US, knowing that I'll either have to save up substantially for my children's education, or settle them with a crippling debt before they ever join the workforce. And while the UK is definitely not Europe (the Universities are still tuition-reliant, and the tuitions are high), it's certainly not the US either; residents of Scotland do not pay tuition, and the UK student debt is treated much differently to the US one (for one, most of the students are never required to repay the majority of it).
But even beyond hypothetical future children, there is a personal motivation for doing research. One of the reasons I chose academia over industry was the potential for my work to be more widely accessible rather than behind a paywall. The idea that the students should pay to access my knowledge goes fundamentally against why I'm doing research.

You might not consider any of these as a tangible benefit, and I can respect that. But basically, I would never consider a job in the US, academic or otherwise precisely for these reasons. With my current perception of the society in the US, I think living there would necessarily induce sacrifices to my standard of living which I am simply not prepared to make.

It's a late answer, but it captures the more emotive aspects, as compared to the predominately financial aspects noted in https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/182132/70455 Personally, I suspect these have more influence over our decisions.

There was a time when an answer offered a day after the question was asked was not considered a "late answer" on academia.se. I do want to say however, that I do not consider these "emotive aspects" -- these are very tangible benefits for me. I don't consider social security/workers rights/community and city organisation to be an emotional issue for me. I understand that somebody with little experience with these things might not be able to assign a value to them (at all, or at least differently to me) -- in fact, they influence how I make financial decisions in the long run.

emotive doesn't mean "not tangible", not does it mean "secondary importance". You may not have an emotional response to social security, or event the matters of physical security (gun culture) that your answer touches on, but I think many people do, myself included.

This captures very well the reasons why I never considered applying for a permanent position in the US. I've heard similar sentiments from many others. The transportation part btw also ties into financial aspects: It's very viable to not own a car in many/most? places in the UK. Also, the US has about 4x the UK per-capita rate of fatal traffic accidents.

If the question was about any other EU country, I would also mention free Uni for any kids I may one day have (or not) -- but I think the UK is becoming the US of Europe with the ridiculous tuition fees.

@penelope That's also the norm for nearly all universities in the US.

@user3037237 Hence the term "US of Europe". But to be fair -- as bad and horrifying as the UK tuitions seem to me, UK student loans are statistically more likely than not to be waived before the (now ex-)students are anywhere close to fully repaying them, and they're not taken into account when considering current debt for e.g. a mortgage. So again, quite a different level. But the idea that I (or my eventual offspring) would start an adult life, after completing a degree, any poorer than penniless (i.e. with a crippling debt) is just unfathomable to me.

UK universities have fees, but you don't have to pay them. You get a "student loan" but it's not like any other loan you will ever find - you only have to pay back a percentage of your income over a threshold. If that's not enough to cover the loan after a certain period, the remainder is cancelled. IMHO you shouldn't think of it as a loan, you are selling the government a bond and they are taking a stake in your future.

I'm not an expert, but you have to remember how big the US is, the gun control thing can depend on exactly where you are.  In some areas, gun control is strict.

@penelope I'm talking about faculty jobs, not tuition or undergraduate degrees.

I think this is a good answer because it perfectly captures why EU countries are not experiencing insane brain drain towards the US. I completely disagree with every single bulletpoint but I do agree that a lot of people have the same mindset, so +1.

Worth noting that it's not quite true that the UK doesn't have free university, university is free for residents of Scotland.

I wouldn't (also @Clumsycat) call a next-day answer a late answer.  For my own questions unless an answer is definitive (e.g. from a LaTeX package author about their package recently) I would allow a minimum of 24 hours before considering which answer to accept, as a way of giving a wide range of people time to answer.  Some topics might need longer, or attract activity for longer.  The bar is higher once there are already answers, whatever the timescale, but this answer adds new material and easily passes that test

@user3037237 Having a faculty (permanent, academic) position is the first time in my life that I even allowed myself to think about having a family -- the life of a postdoc is too unstable. So naturally, when considering where to 'settle down' in a faculty jobs, the ease of raising children is one of the factors. Further, the relationship between faculty and students is different based on how accessible the said education is. And finally finally, if I don't support the US tuition-reliant Uni model, but I accept a job at such a Uni, I am indirectly supporting a system I am against.

My answer builds on excellent comments of Massimo Ortolano and Buffy.
You question stems from the assumption that high salary is what makes an occupation most attractive. Although it might be true for some, people who choose academic careers typically are aware that academia is not paying very well. You will see a much more attractive paycheck if you work in IT, banking, finance, management and administration, distribution of illegal goods. However, there are obvious downsides in doing a career in distribution of illegal goods; and similarly some people see downsides in other well-compensated employments. Paycheck is important; but other factors are also important, and academics are not mostly motivated by a paycheck.
Obviously, there is a huge difference in academic salaries in the UK and US. If you include EU, China and Asia, Russia and post-Soviet countries in comparison, the difference is even more striking. For many academics the scale of US salaries and research budgets is a sufficient motivation for the move - if you look at the faculty lists of many US Universities you will find a lot of surnames associated with China, Russia, European countries, etc. But obviously, not every non-US academic is motivated enough to move to the US. Why?
Well, we already answered it: not everyone is motivated to move. Moving countries is a big challenge!

When families move, often both partners have to leave their jobs, and only one partner has a job offer at the moment of the move. Another partner may or may not have work permit in the country, and may or may not have good chances to get a well-payed job, depending on their background, skills, language proficiency, etc. Even when salary of one partner improves, family as a whole is forced to leave on a tighter budget at least for some time.
US immigration system is not the easiest to manage. EU citizens do not experience immigration issues while working in EU (UK leaving the EU recently has caused many UK academics to move to EU and US).
US does not always look like to be the country that particularly welcomes refugees and economic migrants - and work migrants can feel that they will not be particularly welcome as well. People working in their own country do not experience systematic bias based on how they look and speak.
US healthcare bills look exorbitant; healthcare in many EU countries, including UK, is free for patients.
Childcare, education and University tuition fees vary from country to country. While children of faculty are typically considered home students (vs international), they may not be eligible for loans to finance their education, making it less affordable.
The cost of life, including cost of accommodation, is very high in some places in the US, making it not affordable for academics and even higher-payed IT specialists, etc.

Arguments above apply to more or less any professional employment.
There are also a few specific differences between academic employment in the US and UK/EU.

Tenure in the US is competitive and takes ~5 years. Tenure in the UK (a permanent lecturer post) is awarded after a probation period, which is between 1-3 years in most UK Universities. The probation process is non-competitive and typically >90% of lecturers in the UK pass their probation without issues.
Work-life balance differs from place to place; some US departments are notorious for their exploitative work practices towards non-tenured academics and PhD researchers.
The academic culture, teaching practices and student expectations vary from one place to another; some academics find US students not adequately prepared for their classes and expecting/demanding too much from their professors.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

US healthcare bills look exorbitant => they're really not if you have good health insurance. This is a very common myth that's unfortunately hard to dispel. If you work for a good institution/company you'll have good insurance. And as a European you don't care about things like getting cancer - worst case you just pack your bags and fly home. Europeans living in the US get to eat their cake and have it too in this regard :)

@JonathanReez There are multiple accounts of PhD students and Assist Profs working at US Universities who discovered they are not covered by the health insurance.

@DmitrySavostyanov not all US Universities are equal, yes. You should make sure you get a good healthcare plan before signing the offer.

and only one partner has a job offer at the moment of the move --> this is called the two-body-problem.

@JonathanReez It's not a myth, it's a simple fact. Health insurance does not make bills lower, it just means your insurance is paying for them. US healthcare bills are not only high, they are also unpredictable. On top of that, US health insurance is notoriously difficult to navigate. For every person who got excellent care with reasonable out of pocket costs, you will find someone who thought they had good coverage and still got a large bill. That stress is much lower in European countries.

@fgysin I am tring to avoid using academic jargon for the sake of clarity to people who may not be aware of its precise meaning. But thank you for this important contribution.

There's not really such a thing as tenure if you're a lecturer in the UK. You have a permanent contract, sure, but that just means getting made redundant comes as a surprise rather than at a known date :-) . Since I started my first degree in '93 to finally leaving university employment for industry last month I studies/worked at universities where there was constant abolishing / closing-down of departments and accompanying removal of lecturers as subjects went in/out of fashion and student numbers dropped.

@Relaxed I have extensive experience with the medical system in the US, my company work email has constant threads about insurance/hospitals, and insurance is one of my favorite topics of conversation within the tech community here. Worst story I've heard involved having to pay $3.5k out of pocket for childbirth and having to make 10 separate payments for it. All the bad stories that people hear on the other side of the pond are about companies/institutions without a good healthcare plan. American healthcare system is bad, but not for the top ~20% of earners.

@JonathanReez It's definitely better for some but hiding behind "good healthcare plans” is kind of begging the question and “no true Scotsman“ argument. Even if you're in tech and you have a good coverage now, it matters in multiple ways. My experience goes beyond the tech community and it's definitely not the top 20% of earners who have nothing to worry about (how many people do you suppose work in tech?) The simple facts you're still dancing around is that (a) the bills are high and unpredictable and (2) you have to worry about what insurance you get.

Add to that the fact that academic careers are notoriously erratic (you admitted yourself even working at a university is not enough to know that will get something reasonable!) and you have already got a very different experience than that of the healthy 20-something engineers or double income couples you're chatting with.

@mgraham Its true that there is no tenure in the UK. However, the protections that tenure actaully grants are more or less the same as what are provided to all workers in the UK by law after 4 years. Now perhaps US institutions don't get rid of people as often as UK places do (although its still fairly rare - we are currently in an industrial dispute with my uni because they are abolishing a department for the first time in 50 years) - but legally the protections are the same. US unis can sack tenured staff for the right reasons, they just generally don't.

@JonathanReez I worked at Harvard Medical School, and had one of the best heathcare plans around. I still had to pay $250/month out of my paycheck, on top of the $2000/month the employer was paying. And I still had to pay an alarming large co-pay when I went to the ER with chest pains and a numb arm. As a brit who had never paid a penny for any healthcare in my life, this was quite a shock.

@Ian your health plan didn’t have a yearly out of pocket limit? Yeah you sometimes have to pay more but even if you hit the out of pocket limit you still get way more cash after tax than in Europe. Only thing that matters is final amount of $$$ in your account, everything else is a distraction.

@Relaxed the bills are unpredictable but every plan has a yearly out of pocket plan which is perfectly predictable. You do have to worry about it I guess but it would be well worth the differential in income for top tier academics.

@JonathanReez That's, again, not quite that easy. Not all plans have one and, even if things have improved with Obamacare, the limit is not insignificant. I assume many tech companies will offer a plan with an out-of-pocket maximum to their engineering staff (not necessarily to the customer support staff, contractors, or the gig-economy workers they arbitrarily defined as not being part of the staff) but that's only the beginning. The yearly out-of-pocket maximum is a cap on co-pays and deductibles for things that are covered in the first place, most importantly not out of network care…

@Relaxed my own plan includes both an in network and out of network yearly limit. So goes for the plan provided for employees of University of Washington. If you really want you can just assume you’ll hit the yearly out of pocket limit every year and use that number to calculate your expected income. Most peoples limit is at $5000/year for out of network - sounds like a lot until you realize that the pay differential is $50-100k/year after tax for a highly qualified academic employee. As mentioned above the only thing that matters is final expected amount of $$$ in your bank account.

@JonathanReez Not really, there are many other aspects to qualify of life and you should not only look at your current situation but also at how it constrains your future choices. That's not the most important thing, though, you're constantly begging the question with “top-level academics” and “good plans”. Most people having a $5000 yearly out-of-pocket maximum for out of network care is pure fantasy. And that's a lot to understand and to worry about, in a context where bills are objectively very high (your original “myth“).

@JonathanReez You are an established academic who is lucky to work in a top-tier University providing very good remuneration and benefits. Most entry-level academics in the US do not enjoy the same privileges. Perhaps, consider yourself lucky without dismissing an objective problem as a "myth".

@Relaxed you are right - most people in the US don’t have such a plan. But if you can get a job with such a plan (which applies to a large number of Academia.SE users), you should plug in the numbers and get the total annual expected income, rather than relying on abstract generic claims like “US healthcare is expensive and unpredictable!”. I think we can both agree that it’s important to have all the right facts and numbers in your head before making a choice. That choice might be to stay in Europe but it should be a fully informed choice.

@Dmitry there’s tons of people on Academia.SE with insane h-indexes or amazing research progress who could get any job in the world. I don’t want those people to potentially lose millions of dollars in lifetime compensation because of myths perpetuated over and over again on the Internet. They could choose to sacrifice those millions of course but then it’s an informed choice, not one based on myth.

@JonathanReez The question is asked from the perspective of an entry-level faculty, not an established professor. Your comments seem to target a different group of people, but you never indicated that. This is confusing, because many entry-level faculty in the US won't enjoy the same benefits as you do.

@Dmitry there’s entry level positions in Harvard and Stanford and MIT too. If you’re good enough to get an entry level job at Oxford (as a lot of Academia.SE users have) you’re probably good enough for a top tier US college as well. And those top tier colleges all have great healthcare plans where you don’t have to worry about anything. I don’t know the exact cut off but I suspect the top 20 colleges in the US should all have excellent healthcare plans.

@JonathanReez You could have made a more inclusive comment or at least indicate explicitly that the privileges of "excellent healthcare plans" only apply to top 20% of the applicants. Instead you continue your argument like the applicants who end up at the remaining 80% of schools do not exist or do not matter.

@JonathanReez I do not care that much about having excellent health insurance, if the median person sitting next to me in the BART cannot access the health system and are  having (spreading) tubercolosis and they cannot cure it. (this was valid before Covid19, will be valid after Covid19 and will be valid for the next neoCovid).

@EarlGrey that’s about as valid of an argument as saying moving to the US is a bad idea because your kids will get shot in school. Technically possible, statistically implausible.

@JonathanReez Exactly!

A major thing to keep in mind is that it's relatively unusual for someone to have multiple offers that differ only by one being in the UK and one in the US. For example, many people only have one offer. But also suppose you have two offers, one in London and one in Iowa City, then most likely your opinions on living in a major city vs living in a cute college town is going to matter just as much as salary. Similarly, perhaps the offer in the UK is at a more prestigious school than the one in the US.
Speaking of prestigious schools, at the very top schools in the US there are no permanent entry-level jobs, whereas in the UK there are. Someone deciding between Princeton and Cambridge at a junior level is deciding between a temporary job and a permanent one, which allows Cambridge to be competitive. Moreover, at the senior level someone deciding between Princeton and Cambridge will likely be offered some kind of very fancy chair in the UK where the salary bands don't apply.
A second thing to keep in mind is that most faculty made their job decision in the past and not the present, and if circumstances change it may be unappealing or impossible to move to a comparable new job. This is especially important when comparing the US and the UK because right now the Pound is worth $1.3 but between 1990-2010 it was usually around $1.6 and got as high as $2 several times. A 25% pay raise would make British positions significantly more appealing. Especially with Brexit I do think it will be increasingly difficult for UK academia to maintain its historical competitiveness, but it takes decades for these trends to play out.
Finally, as everyone has said culture, familiarity, and proximity to family plays a huge role. Generally Americans prefer to stay in America and British people prefer to stay in the UK.

one in Iowa City -- I can't help but wonder how Iowa City as an example came about ... :)

Well, everyone knows that River City is where the real trouble is...

I wanted a place that was small but actually secretly a nice place to live, and also where people might actually have some idea where it is even if they're not USian (so having Iowa in the name is a plus). Thought about using my own town (Bloomington) as an example, but then it makes it sound like it might be a decision I actually made. I have had offers in neither Iowa City nor any of the schools in London, but have visited both!

My impression in speaking with UK colleagues is that there are no really permanent positions in the UK system, inasmuch as your unit can be unilaterally closed by admin with consequent redundancies.  Did I misunderstand?

@ZeroTheHero That's true of any job - if your employer closes down, you are made redundant

@NoahSnyder Yeah it's true that people don't generally have the luxury. But I was pretty successful on this last hiring round and have a few competing offers. The problem is I've never lived in any of the cities, and so I'm trying to get some idea of why people might like one place vs another. None are close to me right now, so I'm moving either way (I live in another country in Europe currently). And I don't really care about the GBP/USD exchange rate -- it's really about cost of living relative to salary, i.e., local purchasing power. The tenure system differences are definitely a plus.

@user3037237 I think the problem here is if you don't have a preference and have multiple offers, the usual determinant would be not your perks, etc., but what's on offer for your research. We don't know what area you work in, but for me (lab-based research) I'd be thinking cash for my group for e.g. equipment, students, and wider environment e.g. shared equipment, potential collaborators.

@JosephWright have you found that those sort of lab-based perks are good in the UK relative to the US? Are there other perks you've found?

@user3037237 I'm afraid I can't comment on that: I've only ever worked in the UK, so whilst I know what I'd expect as 'start up' here in my subject area, I'm really not sure what one would get in other parts of the world.

@JosephWright sorry but maybe I was not clear: the admin. at my university cannot reorganize my job away.  To close my unit would require extraordinary circumstances and a process spelled out in full in the faculty agreement.  As a tenured professor, I am essentially immune from redundancy by administrative shuffle.

@ZeroTheHero Sure, that's just covered though by standard employment law: in order to make someone (compulsory) redundant, there has to be a process including union consultation, etc. There have been redundancies at UK institutions, but they've attracted 'attention' and link to ceasing to teach certain areas. That tends to lead to people wanting to leave anyway: the usual issue is retaining enough staff to teach-out the course.

Fluctuations in exchange rate make very little difference to your life unless your income is in one currency and your expenditure in another. Which shows that applying today's exchange rate to compare salaries doesn't make much sense.

@MichaelKay I don't care about the absolute differences in salary, but rather the relative differences in relation to cost of living, i.e., as quantified by local purchasing power.

I was looking at faculty jobs

why? Are you considering a career in teaching? in research? are you looking to maximize your bank account and retire as a 45 years old? What are your motivations?

the UK has other perks.

Like lower death per gun related crimes constant autumnal weather (hey, someone likes it), a national health service which cares of you even if you are unfit to work while being sick (even if you are without contract from your employee: try to get cancer while a postdoc on 1-year contract in the US system ... the nice and generous health insurance offered by the uni will end as soon as your contract ends)
Why don't you consider moving to Singapore? there the academic salary are among the highest in the world.

"constant autumnal weather". Rain IS the best weather, nobody can convince me otherwise.

@Clumsycat only if you work for an umbrella maker IMO...  ;)

I was about to upvote for "lower death per gun related crimes" but though I wish you well and bear you no ill will, I cannot bring myself to upvote an answer presenting the UK's weather as a perk no matter how much I may agree with everything else you write. I have my limits!

@terdon Today is the first day above freezing in many months where I live, I'd take it.

Unnecessarily condescending tone.

You've totally missed my point. I'm not gunning for more money, but all else being equal everyone would take a job with more money. So assuming the US and the UK are not equal, I'm asking for someone to enlighten me as to that makes the UK good. I haven't spent much time there, and I'm considering applying for a job there. Sure, you've mentioned a few points, like crime and health care and weather, but these are negative values, i.e., the UK doesn't suck as much. Are there anythings that make the UK good??

@EarlGrey I'm looking at standard reasearch-oriented faculty jobs. I have a few offers from universities around the world, but I've never been to the UK so I', curious what people love about it. I have no issue taking a lower salary, provided there's a reason to do so. I'm not going to just because. That's the whole point of my question -- I'm happy to consider moving to the UK, I just need a bit more information about what people love about it, and if this is related to their perks as a faculty there.

@user3037237 so please reformulate your question to yourself, because in the question you pivot your discussion about money, either in form of salary or direct/indirect benefits.
What do you find attractive in the UK? There is no need to ask what people loved about it, you are not people, you are you.
Additionally, please consider the bias of your statistical sample: in the recent decade there is a number of people that moved from the UK to Syria (mostly to perform act of terrorism) ... ask them what they did not like about UK to have a view on what "people" think about UK.

@terdon Actually, for me the climate is a clear perk of living in the UK. It is hardly ever too warm or too cold (Wales, not Scotland). And the rain isn't THAT bad.

@EarlGrey Like I keep saying, I've never been to the UK, so I have no idea what there might be to love about it. I'm guessing you've never lived in the UK and hence why you can't answer a really simple question about what makes it great or why you might recommend it to someone that's never lived there. So perhaps my question isn't really for you.

@user3037237 I think a lot of it depends on what you personally value in a country. I you are a history nerd you would probably love all the old buildings and historical sites. If you like sunny beaches and warm weather the UK might not be for you. Maybe you could make yourself a list of what you value in a place to live?

"what makes it great or why you might recommend it to someone that's never lived there"
Dear OP, I suggest you to either stop basing important personal decisions on reviews/sales pitches from someone else OR feel free to check on the huge internet marketplace named after a big river if there are favourable reviews about the product "living in the UK" :) .

@EarlGrey I get it. You have no insight here. But asking faculty who've worked in the UK what they like about is a pretty honest question for academia.stackexchange. I'm not sure how else someone can make big life decisions about a place they've never been apart from doing research and getting people's opinions. Clearly you haven't been faculty in the US and the UK, so maybe this question isn't for you.

The joy of English weather is its variety - it changes from day to day, and is almost never extreme. We never get Siberian cold or tropical humidity; it's always within the human comfort zone.

@ClumsyCat - absolutely; this is truly a green and pleasant land, and maintaining that much greenery takes a lot of aerially-distributed water. A very, very small price to pay for having grass and flowers in my garden 365 days a year. I remember the summer of '76 very well indeed - it was a vision of Hell and I'd rather not see those days again :-)

In any developed nation, and most others, higher faculty are sufficiently well paid to afford you a decent quality of life well above the local median, therefore choosing between jobs in different countries based on the salary rather than just choosing the country you want to live in doesn't seem a particularly compelling idea.
There are many reasons you might prefer the UK to the US, or vice versa, but how you prioritise these reasons is largely personal preference. Equally so for other countries.

But that's my whole question -- I don't know if the UK is a place I want to live in because I've never lived there. But I'm totally up for considering it, I just want someone who's lived there (and ideally in the US) to tell me what they loved about it. It's a really simple question, and the one thing people are not doing across all these replies is telling me what they loved about it. Specifically I'm interesting in day to day quality of life.

@user3037237 That's not really a question that's linked to the nature of the job - you could be outside academia and ask the same. Making the question that broad sounds to me like it would take it off-topic (though I'm not a regular here).

@JosephWright That's a fair point. But ideally I'm asking for people that have been faculty there, and if there are any perks related to their job/profession/day-to-day-life.

@user3037237 In that case, framing your question around salary seems like a mistake. I would ask a different question specifically framed about differences in academic, research, and funding culture in the two countries or whatever it is that particularly interests you. The more general question seems too opinion based. For my part, I would never consider living in the US, and whilst I would have heartily recommended the UK to anyone a decade ago, the country is in a much worse state today and I would no longer do so, especially for immigrants.

@JackAidley Thanks for one of the first honest replies about your thoughts of living in the UK vs US.

This is a bit of a misnomer. Absolute $$$ numbers matter too, as those $$$ will then go further and let you lead a higher quality of life, such as booking business class/4-star hotels vs economy/1-star hotels. People say it doesn't matter, but then there's always other things that do matter to you and you'll get more of them if you have more $$$.

@JonathanReez Where you live, and spend 90% of your life, makes vastly more difference to your happiness and quality of life then whether you're in a 1-star hotel or a 4-star hotel when you're on holiday.

I think your initial premise that US faculty salaries are higher is flawed and looks only at part of the picture. There definitely are US universities and colleges where the starting salary for an assistant professor/ lecturer is 80-100k US$. There are also colleges where the starting salary is more like 30-40k US$. The range of potential salaries in the US is huge and prestigeous universities will pay significantly more than less prestigeous ones.
This happens to a much smaller degree in the UK and even less in continental Europe. The UK system is graded into lecturers, readers and full professors with significant salary differences between these but a reader will have approximately the same salary at every university in the UK.
This means that if you are able to get a position at one of the very good institutions in the US you will earn a much higher nominal salary both compared to an average institution in the US and compared to any university in the UK. If you are not among those select few the UK system might actually offer you a higher salary.

Sure, but I specified top-tier universities in big cities. Specifically I'm looking at a job in London, which starts at 60k USD. For comparison, my friend's starting salary at BU in Boston was 95k, yet boston is 15-25% less expensive than London.

Some concrete, financial, benefits for the UK salary:

The total cost of healthcare is zero (actually, overseas people do have to have to pay a one off charge, but most universities will cover that). Not only does this mean you don't pay your monthly contribution to health insurance (I paid about 10% of my insurance costs when I was a postdoc in Boston), but if you were to get ill, there are no co-pays etc.
The pension scheme is very different: the university doesn't match 20%. The university pays 21%, and the employee pays 9% - the university pays in more than twice what the employee pays in. What that gets you is also very different from a 401K scheme common at US universities. The exact offer is the subject of on-going industrial action at the moment in the UK, but which ever side wins, the scheme will be a defined benefit scheme: in retirement you will be paid a guaranteed monthly payment, irrespective of how long you live, or what happens to the economy (this guarantee is ultimately backed by the government). The size of the payment is dependent on how long you work and at what salary. At the moment the offer is 1/65th of your (inflation adjusted) average salary for every year you work.
If you are in London it is highly likely you will not need to own a car. This is a massive saving on many peoples outgoings.
When I was in the Boston, the sum total of federal, state and property taxes was actually higher than my tax bill in the UK (I guess MA is a high tax state).
You get legally guaranteed employment rights from day one, not just paid holidays, but 28 weeks of sick pay, 9 months of parental leave that can be split between the parents (that's just the minimum, most unis give a year). After two years you cannot be sacked without a "legally valid" reason, and are legally entitled to severance pay. After 4 years you are automatically a permanent employee, which means "your contract is up" is no longer a "legally valid" reason.
As the employment is full-time 12 months, you will never be expected to fund your own salary, nor your take home pay affected by your ability to bring in research funding.

While this all adds up to the UK salary being worth more in the best case than it first appears, what it really adds up to is it being worth much more than it appears if anything goes wrong in life. The UK  job offers more security, including financial security.

As I said without a "legally valid" reason. Inability to do your job is one such valid reason. However, the process is long and complicated. The employer must show that they've given you specific instructions on what you are doing wrong, and what exactly to do to make it better. What counts as a reasonable expectation would be decided by a judge by reference to normal expectation in the field if you were to bring a claim of unfair dismissal. I believe that processes to dismiss "incompetent" professors technically exist in most US tenure contracts, but are very rarely used.

@Trunk So, for example in the two cases you cite my colleagues were on "performance management programs" for well over a year before they were dismissed.

@Trunk Its tricky - grants here don't tend to explicitly cover much of the PIs salary - maybe 5 or 10%. But of course they come with overheads.... Having a summer without a grant is not going to mean you are not paid, but too long without a grant and your position become difficult to maintain.

If you're American, I don't think there is any particularly good reason to prefer an academic job in the UK. And in my experience there aren't many American academics working at British universities - fewer than there are British academics working at American universities.
However, UK universities have no trouble recruiting strong candidates from Europe, and from the UK itself, for whom there are clear geographical advantages of living at most a short-haul flight away from family. I would happily take a US faculty job if I didn't have family ties to the UK, but since I do it's simply not practical.

This is the best answer. Basically unless you're committed to a European lifestyle (see answer by @penelope), there's absolutely no reason imaginable to even consider such a move.

UK universities are willing to hire people who cannot legally work in the USA.  Many US universities do not want to hire people who cannot legally work at their location because the application for a work visa is tedious and risky.
In other words, the upside of US salaries is mostly only available to UK faculty who already have a work visa or passport for the US.
US universities may also decide not to interview someone simply to avoid the cost of an international flight.

I doubt top tier US universities are deterred by the cost of an international flight, but I do suspect as you suggest that immigration issues (especially these days) might be a significant filter in both direction: never mind universities not being so keen to step into this web, not every European necessarily would want to work in the US academic system even if they could.

@ZeroTheHero Yes, and this answer is about average US universities.  It certainly does not apply to the wealthiest 1%.  The cost of a flight is a deciding factor when you have many similar applicants.

I cannot imagine that many places would consider the cost of a flight ($1500) an important consideration in hiring someone who you will pay $100+k including fringe benefits for the next 30 years.

@WolfgangBangerth The search can come from a different budget than the salary.  And as I mentioned before, the applicants are often otherwise very similar.


text:
Do I owe potential collaborators an explanation for late follow-up?
I had a meeting with a potential collaborator month ago, and at the meeting I had agreed to email them within a week. However, shortly after I began going through a stressful divorce. I am worried that the potential collaborator may judge me for failing to reach out in a timely manner. Should I give them some form of minimal explanation for the delay?

You would be wise to bring them up to date and apologize for your absence. If you value the collaboration then you don't want the other person to think you just gave up on it.
The explanation could be minimal or not, depending on your personal relationship to the other person. "Going through a divorce" or "Time consuming personal situation". You judge, but definitely stay in the game.
Also, if the situation is expected to continue, you can warn the other person that your time, but not your commitment is limited in the short term.


text:
How important is it to have a PhD advisor in mind when applying to math PhD programs?
I am about to begin my final year as an undergraduate/masters student in mathematics (my school lets us pursue both degrees concurrently), and I will be applying to pure math PhD programs in the fall. I didn't decide to take the PhD route until somewhat recently, so I am trying to learn as much about the process as possible in a short amount of time.
This being said, I know that in many fields, it is expected that you apply to a PhD program after talking to a researcher at that program who you plan to conduct research with if accepted. For example, it is basically impossible to get into an anthropology PhD program studying archaeology if an archaeologist at that program hasn't already guaranteed you a research position in their lab. Is this kind of relationship important for math PhD programs? I have done a lot of online research about applying to PhDs, but I haven't heard much about needing a connection like this prior to applying to math programs.

This is a case where there are very large differences between disciplines and also large differences between countries.  In this answer, I address the situation in mathematics vs. laboratory sciences in the US.
In mathematics, in the US, most graduate students are supported as teaching assistants rather than as research assistants.  The research assistantships that do exist are usually given to more advanced Ph.D. students.
In the science disciplines in the US, where most students are supported as RA's it makes little sense to admit a student to a program unless one of the faculty is willing to support that student as an RA.  Since faculty want to get the most out of their graduate students they are very selective and put a lot of effort into training the students in the particular work needed in their lab. As RA's, graduate students are skilled and valued employees that contribute significantly to research.  This is particularly important in disciplines with lots of fieldwork or lab bench work.
What makes a graduate student attractive as an RA candidate is not always just their academic background.  Particular skill sets (programming and data analysis, or scuba diving, or mountaineering) can make a student attractive for certain RA positions.  For one project that I collaborated on, graduate student RA's collected rock samples at altitudes of 18,000 feet above sea level in Peru.  I've worked with other graduate students that did fieldwork in Antarctica.
At most universities in the US, first-year graduate students in mathematics are expected to take graduate courses, work as TA's, and start to look for a research advisor.  There's no rush to start on research because the students are supported as TA's and because they typically need one or two years of course work before they can do anything useful in research.  Furthermore, most graduate students in mathematics contribute little or nothing to the advisor's research.
As a result, graduate admissions committees in math usually work to admit the strongest available students without much thought about who the advisor will be.  Since these students will be working as TA's, there may also be some emphasis on recruiting students with the communication skills and personality to be effective TA's.
Note that mathematics departments with research groups in different areas of mathematics will often times allocate x TA slots to research group A and y TA slots to research group B.  This helps to spread the students out among the research groups.  It's based on the student having some idea of the general area of research that they want to pursue but not on whether a particular advisor wants the student.

The question in your title is not the same as the one in the body. :)

I know that in many fields, it is expected that you apply to a PhD program after talking to a researcher at that program who you plan to conduct research with if accepted...Is this kind of relationship important for math PhD programs?

Although this kind of relationship can certainly help, it's not a prerequisite at math programs as far as I am aware. Most students are admitted on their merits, not on prior connections.

Note: The answer starting from this point is probably less applicable to math than other fields -- see comments by Andreas Blass and paul garrett.

However:

How important is it to have a PhD advisor in mind when applying to PhD programs?

Not only is it important, it is critical. Probably the most important factor in doing a successful PhD is a good advisor. That means an advisor who (1) matches your interests, (2) is actively publishing and working with students, and (3) who you work well with. All three criteria are quite important, but at this point you would probably mainly be thinking about (1) and (2).
Accordingly, when you are researching programs to apply to, generally you want to look for the set of potential advisors (or research groups) at each program. Typically, you would then list these advisors explicitly in your cover letter (and your application may be sent to one of their desks at some point to see if they want you).
The ideal program has multiple possible advisors that you can see yourself working with (in case one of those doesn't work for currently unforeseen reasons). Keep in mind that the precise details of how students are matched with advisors depends on the program.

My impression is that many beginning Ph.D. students in math don't yet have a particular adviser in mind, nor even a particular subfield of math. When I was applying to graduate schools, I had no advisers in mind at any of the schools I applied to; I thought I wanted to specialize in topology, but I ended up writing a thesis in set theory. Admittedly, that was a long time ago, but it seems to me that similar situations are still quite common.

Echoing @AndreasBlass' comment: in the U.S., in math, most entering PhD students have at most a tentative idea of interests for a PhD... if only because it is very difficult to have any clear idea of what various areas would truly entail, due to lack of experience. So it's very difficult to understand what it is that most research-active faculty do, and whether it might be interesting a year or two later after studying more. Yes, advisors are critical, but I think it's hard to make a sensible, informed choice up front.

Good to know @AndreasBlass and paul garrett. I will add a disclaimer.


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Should we include tool usability evaluation based only on the research team opinions in the paper?
My team is developing a tool which solves certain problems we encountered in our work. We decided to describe the tool in a paper and attempt to publish it. We got stuck on evaluating the usability of our tool.
We found a SUS measure - Subjective Usability Scale, which appears to fit our case. It consists of a few questions that users of the tool should answer. The problem here is, that our tool has only been used by our team (sample size 7) and it is difficult to get a broader range of users to test it.
In such case, do you think we should include the evaluation using such scale based on our team members only? Or should we rather skip the evaluation part completly and simply describe the tool leaving the evaluation to the reader based on the features of the system we described.
If we should include it, what statistical method should we use to compare our results with the reference results of the SUS scale?
https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/system-usability-scale.html

This is a question about research methodology, usually not considered on topic for this site. It varies a lot by subfield what is considered an adequate user study; in my field I think it would be pretty frowned upon to evaluate a tool using a survey of the team who created it.

We decided to describe the tool in a paper and attempt to publish it.

Why do you want to publish the description? Do you expect that other people will want to use this exact tool? Then you may need somebody outside the original team to evaluate it. Do you expect that nobody will use this exact tool, but the ideas and concepts might be useful to others in developing their own tools?  Then the usability aspect is probably irrelevant.


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Can I write a referee report too fast?
As a math postdoc, I received my first invitation to referee a journal article today, and I accepted the invitation. I've already read a preprint of the submitted article (which has been available on arXiv for a few months and coincides with the submitted version) in great detail some time ago and therefore I already have to say a lot about the article's content and presentation. I was given two months to write a report.
My question, which might be stupid, is now:
Can I write the report "too fast"?
Or, more precisely:

Does it make a bad impression to the editor if I submit the report too fast (say after a week or two)? Since the editor is an influential and important person in the field, I don't want him to think of me as a bad referee, but I fear that he might think "The report came in so fast that the referee clearly did not put much effort into it. I'll better not ask him next time".

Even if I've read the article before, is it better to "let it sink" for some more time and not rashly send the report to the editor? At what point should I feel confident that the report is ready?

Update: Thanks everyone for the good advice! I sent the report after around 10 days, and it was really appreciated by the editor!

You could mention, in a cover note to the editor, that you had already studied the preprint version of the paper. That would account for your quick report.

Why waste everybody's time? You read the paper before, now check for possible changes, and off you go. The editor can see in your report whether it is in-depth.

In my opinion a week is not fast.  I hear math has slow reviews, though.  For the paper I am reviewing today, the editor asked me to reply in a week.

@AnonymousPhysicist for math, a week is lightning fast

@AnonymousPhysicist A week? Nature or Science may be entitled to ask for this, but when some random cottage journal asks me for such a short turnaround time as they are now increasingly wont to be, this is simply not on. One has other things to do than reviewing.

It's possible to turn things around too fast.  Can't you just write it up and keep it by, then send it off once a few weeks have passed?

If I get the report back in 3 seconds after I submit I'm gonna assume you're a bot.

@AnonymousPhysicist Math journals also expect a different level (depth) of review than physics journals.

Fast is great! Just be warned that it means editors will like you and send you more requests so you’ll have to learn to say no.  If you also say “no” quickly and suggest alternatives, then you’ll still leave a good impression with the editors.

No such thing as "too fast" in reviewing :-)

It will take a while before you get too many requests.

@AnonymousPhysicist: Yes, but it's like the proverbial frog boiling, it can get overwhelming before you notice that it's happened.

@NoahSnyder Even when I know I'm overwhelmed, it's hard to turn down a refereeing request from an editor who is a good friend.

@WolfgangBangerth "Sloppy" is certainly a thing, however.

@Anyon That explains the quality of reviews one gets nowadays.

There's no drawback (from the editor's/author's point of view) to you submitting a quick review, but you should mention to the editor that you've already seen the paper before. It can be suspicious as a case of the author reviewing his/her own paper:

The reviews themselves were not remarkable: mostly favourable, with some suggestions about how to improve the papers. What was unusual was how quickly they were completed — often within 24 hours. The turnaround was a little too fast, and Claudiu Supuran, the journal's editor-in-chief, started to become suspicious.

See the source for more.

Well, this was just waiting to happen. I guess it's the counterpart of the antagonistic reviewer.

Statistical outliers always attract attention.
a) Your speed will be judged against the content and professionalism of your report: Were you speedy or just in a hurry to finish with the damn thing?
b) Even if your speed is not useful to the Editor (because, maybe, there is a second referee, so what will matter for the publication process is the lowest speed, not the fastest), still, if a) above is positively concluded, then your speed will be appreciated and remembered.
c) Always "let sink" anything you write. For how much it depends, but my experience says that if I have a week, I give it a week, so that I am distanced not only from the content but also from syntax and overall structure.

Surely a competent editor can separate the quality of the review from the time needed to write it without making the association "fast = sloppy".

@WolfgangBangerth Yes. There are very thorough and at the same time thoroughly wrong reviews. There are short and competent reviews. And there is everything in between.

A rapid "accept" recommendation with nothing else might seem unusual (but not always, e.g. if the paper is very short, or the work is in your particular area of expertise).  But a week is not rapid, if you happen to immediately have spare time.
Regardless of anything else, I advise giving concrete reasons for your recommendation.  I suggest including a short summary of the paper, so the authors either know that you understand what's going on, or the authors can identify your misunderstandings.
I've sent off some extremely quick recommendations at times, particularly when it's my area of expertise:

I think my fastest was in a matter of hours, when I could immediately see that there was simply no hope of it being published in the journal they sent it to.  It wasn't even in the same ballpark.
I've sent off a quick "revise" recommendation when the authors were unaware of a fundamental paper in the area, which would require rewriting a fair chunk of their work.
Sometimes I send a quick recommendation explaining "this is all I have time for right now", and include as much as I can in a short time.  If the editor doesn't like my response, they can enlist someone else.

Once your report is detailed and accurate, with substantive and balanced comments, submit it, irrespective of how quick the turnaround is.

The waiting time for a review comprises of:

The reviewer taking care of more urgent/important tasks in their job as a researcher.
The reviewer doing the actual review.

Since almost everything takes precedence over reviewing, the first part usually takes up most of the time. On the other hand, it is highly variable by nature and it may as well be non existing. For example, if the review request comes at a time where the reviewer is just in a gap between two projects, needs a break from something, or waits for their self-running experiment to finish, it is conceivable that they attend to the review the moment they receive it.
As the first component does not impact the quality of your review, the duration of the review is not useful proxy for its quality. Editors should be aware of this. As an author and reviewer, I have seen sloppy reviews that took excessively long.
Thus the only way a review report can be too fast is if it is shorter than the time needed to diligently perform the actual review.
What this is depends on the field and the length of the paper:
In my field, an initial review is about half a day’s work, but in fields that require extensive proof-checking, it can be in the order of magnitude of a week.
In the latter case, handing in the review after a day would indeed be “too short” in the sense that it will probably arouse unwarranted suspicion.
But even then, you can simply state that you were intimately familiar with the preprint, which actually speaks for you being chosen as a reviewer.
While the quality of your review may improve by revisiting it with some temporal distance (as suggested by another answer), I find at least for myself that the quality increase of the review is not worth it. I rather save that time and energy to diligently review the revision (or other papers). On the other hand, for your first few reviews, this is probably a good idea.
Finally, for whatever it’s worth I reviewed a paper within a day several times, and so far I have not received any complaints. Most journals solicited reviews again after this to the extent that I feel that I became a sort of emergency reviewer who is chosen when the originally chosen reviewers failed to deliver and the journal did not want to keep the authors waiting any longer.


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Question regarding copying and pasting on exams
On Wiley Plus, will students be able to copy and paste homework questions if not on a lock down browser? If so, can I detect that through any many means? I have been reprimanded before for not being critical on cheating, so I want to figure out any means I can use to minimize cheating among students. As a physics professor, I find it difficult for students to not look up their answers or have them not use a source like Chegg.

Already part of your other question.

I think there was a similar question in the last few days, you might want to have a look!