[andie5]

My husband and I will both be completing our PhDs in 2011 in the US. We are American citizens. We would like to move to London and get our next jobs there after we graduate.

What are the steps we need to take first to do this? And since we are married, does only one of us need to get a job first in order for us to move there? My husband would like to continue doing research, I would like to teach but am not sure if it is easy to get a teaching job over there since the education system is quite different.

Do we get a job first, then visa? Or do you need a visa before you look for a job? I really have no idea of the steps we should take first. Is there a UK government website that clearly explains the process?

 

[andie5]

I should mention that the teaching I would like to do is at the university level - teaching science courses or labs. I'm not sure if that is possible. In the US all I would need is my PhD degree and some previous adjunct teaching experience (which I have). So would I need further certifications in the UK for this type of position?

I just did the online points calculator and both my husband & I only obtain 70 points (when 75 are needed). This is because we each have very low salaries right now since we are getting our PhDs. Does this mean we won't be able to get a visa?

 

[andie5]

The obvious first question is "have you published". That's not enough as I well know from personal experience, but it is almost essential for validating your degree. These days, in the UK, if one's degree is not from Oxford or Cambridge or a handful of other universities depending on field, or Edinburgh (Scotland) or Queens (N.I.) things are tough. Not every minor or state university in America is recognised as equal, in part because of the disaster that making "universities" out of all the polytechnics, some of which rate rather badly in the way of community (ex-junior) colleges in the USA.

Fortunately science speaks for itself. But even so: my daughter, with a First from Cambridge in medicine, scarcely needed an interview to get her first quasi-research junior house doctor positions. Whereas others had to go abroad.

But maybe you're not scientists?

We are scientists. And we both have to have publications in order to get our PhDs. They usually won't let students at our school graduate until they have at least 2 publications.

So is the general concensus here that we need to get post-docs in the US first in order to get a job in England later? That doesn't make much sense to me. Even if we got a post-doc here our salary would likely not be high enough to get us the 5 more points that we need on the visa calculator. We are getting paid a stipend now (although it's not a lot once converted to pounds) and we are working in labs now full-time as PhD students. Plus I'm working on the side by teaching at a local community college (also for next to nothing pay). So would it still be better for us to get a job in the US after our PhDs? Then go to England a few years later? I don't think it would ever happen then if we had to do that. We want to go abroad when we are still under 30, then we can come back to the US later to have a family. We aren't too keen on staying around here for longer and getting jobs here first, then going to England later right when we want to be having a family.