Professor Keefe, soon after winning the world's most coveted prize expressed his concern over UK's immigration policy warning the government that polices on immigration and animal research are risking Britain's scientific standing.
Calling the present immigration rules "a very, very large obstacle." to hiring the best scientists, Professor Keefe who is in charge of hiring over 150 neuroscientists in his role as the director of the new Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for research said, "I am very acutely aware of what you have to do if you want to bring people into Britain and to get through immigration, I'm not saying it's impossible, but we should be thinking hard about making Britain a more welcoming place."
The comments come at a time when a majority of Indian students have admitted to feeling highly unwelcome in Britain.
In what has been a deeply worrying trend for Britain which earns £7.9 billion a year from international students alone, a study of the attitudes of 3,100 international students by the National Union of Students recently revealed that almost 50% feel the UK Government was either "not welcoming" or "not welcoming at all towards overseas students".
Almost 63% of Indian students doing their PhD in UK felt unwanted. Students from India also admitted openly to advising their friends against studying in the UK.
England has therefore recorded a sharp dip in overseas students enrolling in British universities — the first fall in nearly three decades (29 years), thanks to Indians giving it a skip.
Data revealed by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) shows that the number of Indian students fell from 18,535 in 2010-11 to 13,250 in 2011-12 and further to 10,235 in 2012/13.
Numbers of male entrants to Masters courses started to decline in 2010-11.
Prime Minister David Cameron meanwhile has pledged to reduce net migration to less than 100,000 a year by 2015 while Home Secretary Theresa May has spoken about reducing it to tens of thousands.
Prof Keefe said, "Science is international, the best scientists can come from anywhere, they can come from next door or they can come from a small village in a country anywhere in the world, we need to make it easier. Britain punches way above its weight in science and I think we need to continue to do that and anything that makes it easier to bring scientists in will be very welcome."
http://ift.tt/1l2CWaH O'Keefe,Higher Education Funding Council for England
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