This is a story I head last weekend when a friend was visiting. I’ve changed some of the particulars, to preserve privacy…
Our school landed a great post-doc student – we were able to lure him away from a well known college into our program, and things were going swimmingly. Unfortunately, Princeton University had their eye on him as well, and made a better offer. The student transferred to Princeton, and we were left with a dilemma.
We sat down and pondered the situation. There was certainly a budget for luring away post-docs, but we just didn’t have enough to lure him back to our campus and give him his own lab and department.
We did, however, have enough to get him transferred to Harvard.