The reasons for brain drain vary from country to country, but they typically include some of the following elements:
Improvement in any of these elements would certainly be useful in its own right, but all of them should be on a nation's agenda if it is to ameliorate its brain-drain problem. Chances of success in attaining such progress depend, in turn, on understanding the complex nature of the problem's fundamental causes - in the national, regional, and global contexts.
Success also depends on having a cold-eyed view of reality. It is inevitable that scientists and engineers will wish to emigrate to parts of the world where they are most likely to have promising careers. And it may be assumed that the active recruitment of talented individuals from the poorer countries to the richer ones will continue, exacerbated by the general demographic trends of aging populations in the richer countries and youthful populations in the developing ones.
Nevertheless, some nations - the East Asian Tigers, for example - have been relatively successful in addressing such basic problems, with the result that they have retained, even enlarged, their pool of S&T-competent nationals. Moreover, they have often provided stimulating ambiences for these individuals' research, and given them incentives not to look abroad, in two productive ways: by promoting targeted initiatives in commercially promising areas of science and technology such as information and communications technology; and by facilitating the collaboration of governmental, academic, and industrial scientists and engineers for ultimately generating innovations in the country's products and services. (For a description of ambitious new program in China to recruit young science and engineering talent from abroad, see Box 19.)
It is especially important that the young talent feel appreciated by their societies, and that they be able to join the worldwide science community without having to leave home. The reward in attracting, cultivating, and retaining bright young talent is not only great but self-perpetuating: they are ultimately bound to become leaders who help change local mindsets, especially in directing the attention of politicians and their constituents to the importance of science and technology for sustainable development.
Other ways to address the brain-drain problem include programs for collaboration between the communities of expatriate scientists/engineers and their countries of origin; and a significant increase in support - financial and technical - from the receiving countries to the sending countries to help compensate them for their losses and reduce brain drain in the future by enhancing their institutions, capabilities, and opportunities.
Actually, countries that appear to benefit from a migration of scientists and engineers to their shores may not necessarily be winners in the long run unless they take some serious actions of their own. An inability to develop the needed human resources at home - basically, to 'grow one's own' - does not bode well for a healthy and sustainable path to achieving or maintaining national competencies in science and technology. These countries might actually do more for their own long-term interests, and cultivate lasting and rewarding bonds between national communities, if they helped train foreign students (along with their own nationals) while also providing incentives for them to return to their countries of origin when their training has been completed. (For a description of an international program to encourage short-term repatriation of expert consultants, see Box 20.)
Meanwhile, private and public enterprises in developing nations should enter into collaborations with academic institutions that will inevitably translate new knowledge into useful products and services. Such university-industry partnerships not only result in innovations but also create jobs and a reliable source of well-trained individuals to productively fill those jobs. This opens new opportunities for young people in these fields, helps energize the local economy, and reduces brain drain.
A related problem in almost every country, whether it counts itself among the brain-drained or not, is that many of the brains never actually left home. More than half of most countries' populations - their women - have traditionally been overlooked for important jobs or were deprived of the education needed to make them even nominal contenders. This has robbed countries of enormous reservoirs of talent, particularly in science and technology. Even when stereotyping or gender discrimination have largely been absent, the biological or social roles unique to women - and their consequent multiple responsibilities - have often prevented them from pursuing their careers uninterrupted or fulltime during phases of their lives. Achieving greater participation of women should be a major goal in the S&T communities, and not only because it is the decent thing to do; in reality, societies simply cannot allow themselves to be deprived of the abilities and potentialities of women.
In a similar spirit, active outreach to minorities is much needed. Just as the traditional exclusion of women has deprived S&T professions, and numerous others, of half of humanity's brains, the meager representation of most of humanity's ethnic groups and cultures has hobbled progress. A great many talented individuals with much to contribute have simply not been given the opportunity to do so - sometimes out of indifference or incompetence, other times because of outright prejudice. Given its tradition of meritocracy, the S&T community should make strong efforts to eliminate such barriers by acting as pioneers and models.
For a typical doctoral program in an industrialized nation, entering students are selected from a large pool of national and international candidates. In this process, the potential usefulness of the training for the student's home country is rarely considered. Moreover, the student's choice of a specific thesis-research topic is mostly determined by the values of the host nation. As a result, these students are trained for cutting-edge research fields that typically require expensive equipment unavailable in their home nation. Naturally, together with other factors mentioned earlier in this section, these students are unlikely to return to their country of origin after they receive their degree.
An antidote to the resulting brain drain is the university doctoral 'sandwich' program. Students begin their graduate studies at an institution in their home country, and they eventually receive their degree there. But after having selected (during an initial period of some one to two years) a thesis-research topic important to their country, they temporarily relocate to an S&T-advanced nation for a corresponding doctoral program. Given the nature of their research topic, they typically stay in close contact with their home institution and community. In that way, the students are not only well trained but likely to return home, where they can develop research problems amenable to being further pursued there. (See Boxes 21 and 22 for descriptions of successful university sandwich programs in South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.)
Sandwich programs thus simultaneously address the objectives of focusing on high-quality education and training; retaining S&T talent; and building international collaborations for education, training, and research.
