Brain Drain
Africa:
Does a 'Brain Drain' Threaten Africa's Development?
Are some of Africa's best trained and most talented individuals leaving the continent, causing a "Brain Drain"? If so, how can that be reversed into a "Brain Gain"? Host Vincent Makori explored those questions with his guests: Ndioro Ndiaye, Deputy Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Geneva, Switzerland; Karim Morsli, Chief Executive Officer for the Washington, D.C.-based outsourcing company Rising Data Solutions; Dr. Abdul Karim Bangura, Professor of International Relations at American University in Washington, D.C.; and Caglar Ozden, Research Economist at The World Bank. (VOA)

Australia:
Brain drain blamed on boastful parents
BABY boomers in the eastern suburbs are encouraging the drain of young talent overseas by bragging about their children's international success, demographer Bernard Salt says. "There's a polite game played between baby boomers in Adelaide," he told an Institute of Chartered Accountants conference in Adelaide yesterday. "The game is - compare how well your kids have been doing. "They're getting off on how far out of Adelaide they've been able to catapult their kids." (The Advertiser)

China:
China Faces Another Round of Brain Drain
China must take effective measures to check the third wave of brain drain. China's closer integration with the international market and the escalating trans-boundary wrestle for talented professionals are helping transporting more and more well-educated Chinese technicians and executives to alien lands. (Peoples Daily)

Germany:
New Research Challenges Notion of German "Brain Drain"
Since the 1990s, Germans have been engaged in a heated debate about whether highly skilled professionals are leaving the country in increasing numbers for better economic opportunities in the United States. Fueling the debate is Germany's lagging economy. With little economic growth, unemployment hovering around 11 percent, and wage and social security tax totaling about 47 percent, there is great concern that these conditions are pushing out the country's most highly skilled and educated workers. (Migration Information Source)

India:
Now, it's brain drain reversal of 360°
Call it brain drain reversal of 360 degrees. To overcome the scarcity of quality faculty, India is looking forward to recruiting professors from abroad, primarily from European countries. And what could be a better place than the IITs to kickstart the process.  The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have already made lucrative jobs offers to several European professors and the latter have agreed to join as permanent faculties. The process started during the recent IIT-EU alumni conference during the Hanover Fair last week, which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. (indiaWatch)

High Salaries Can Reverse Brain Drain
Talent hunters from the big global names in business and finance, who regularly scout India's top business schools, are suddenly finding themselves competing with local companies, ready to match the top dollar salaries. On Mar. 13, Gaurav Agarwal, a student at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) at Bangalore, found himself surrounded by television cameras after it was announced that the British investment banker, Barclays Capital, had offered him an annual salary of 193,000 US dollars. It was a record of sorts but one which lasted barely three weeks. (IPSNews)

Brain drain in ONGC, to demand wage hike
New Delhi: India's largest oil producer Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd. (ONGC) has lost nearly 900 of its skilled experts in the last one year to its competitors, who have offered four to five times more salary than the state-owned firm. "In last one year alone, ONGC has seen 900 key personnel leave the company to joint mulitnationals or private companies... and this outflow is expected to increase to alarming proportions in the near future," warned ONGC's Association of Scientific and Technical Officers (ASTO) president L K Mirchandani. (Press Trust Of India)

Ireland:
Latvia concerned by 'brain drain' loss to Ireland
Latvia's European Commissioner Andris Piebalgs warned yesterday that the brain drain of young qualified people moving to Ireland from Latvia is hurting its economy. He said the huge amount of migration since Latvia joined the EU was "worrying" and a clear wake up call for the Latvian authorities to try to attract people back from the Republic. "I personally have fears even if it is 15,000 and not 40,000 people, it is still a huge number of people," Mr Piebalgs told The Irish Times. "The difficulty is these are generally people with initiative and it is a significant number of people out of a population of just 2.3 million." (Irish Times)

Italy:
BRAIN DRAIN CONTROVERSY HEATS UP
 Italy's outgoing government has denied a report published this week claiming it has frozen a key plan aimed at attracting back to Italy leading scientists and researchers who were forced to leave the country for lack of funding. The report, published in Rome-daily La Republica, said the ministry for education and research had blocked funding in the 2006 Budget, compromising a project kickstarted in 2001 which had brough back to Italy 466 researchers. Brain drain is a huge problem in a country which exports every year 30 thousand researchers and imports only three thousand. (AdnkronosInternational)

New Zealand:
Former NZ PM warns of brain drain
Former prime minister Jim Bolger has entered the debate over the brain drain to Australia, warning New Zealand risks becoming a "shell country" if it continues. Mr Bolger was speaking at National's 70th anniversary dinner on Thursday night, just hours after a new report showed New Zealand slipping behind other countries in its international competitiveness and amid concerns about the impact of Australian tax cuts on trans-Tasman migration. (smh.com.au)

Nigeria:
Brain drain in the health sector
THE World Health Organization (WHO) reported recently that there was an acute shortage of health service providers globally. It is estimated that 2,360,000 health service providers are needed to fill the gaps in the health sector. Sub-Saharan Africa (Nigeria inclusive) is said to be the most affected. The region is estimated to be sheltering about 11per cent of the world's population and carrying 27 per cent of the global burden of diseases but having only three per cent of world's health workforce to contend with. (Nigerian Tribune)

Philippines:
Skilled Labour Migration from Developing Countries: Study on the Philippines

Trinidad and Tobago:
Preventing brain drain
After years of industry, this country has not yet put in place a system which would produce jobs in desired supply to absorb its tertiary institution graduates. As a result, UWI grads continue to seek employment in the US and the UK. Not only is there availability of jobs in these countries, but the remuneration is much higher than in Trinidad and Tobago. Admittedly, we have sought to accelerate industrialisation through the creation of new industrial estates and the expansion of existing estates, for example Point Lisas. We have also made natural gas available at attractive rates for energy- based companies wishing to invest. Last week, UWI principal Dr Bhoe Tewarie, pointed out that the region was among the top regions in the world in the export of its intellectual capital. The UWI head named three of the countries in the region — Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago — as the prime countries with respect to the export of intellectual capital. (Newsday)

Understanding the brain drain
Dr Bhoe Tewarie has, not for the first time, commented on the general problem of the "brain drain" experienced by this country as well as Jamaica and others in the region. This is not an entirely new phenomenon in the country and region, although the scale of the current drain is a matter for concern. (TTExpress)

US:
'Brain drain' still a factor for Philadelphia
As educated people flock to big cities, Phila. still has difficulty keeping smartest grads
Philadelphia lags behind other major cities in the percentage of residents who have education beyond high school, a recent Associated Press study shows.The cause, some say, is the flight of recent graduates of the city's colleges from the region, and Penn is no exception to the trend. The study, which analyzed more than three decades of U.S. Census data, found that in 2004, only 25 percent of people 20 and older in the City of Brotherly Love had at least a bachelor's degree. (Daily Philadelphian)

Preparing for the baby boomer brain drain
About once a month at International Truck and Engine Corp.'s headquarters in suburban Warrenville, Ill., a crowd gathers in a large room on the executive floor for cake and tributes to a retiring colleague. The occasion is a reminder of a worrisome reality. The truck maker's work force, like that of the nation, is swollen with employees approaching the end of their careers. More than half the company's 600 managers and executives will be eligible for retirement within five years, according to a 2004 report to the company's board. The finding jolted the company into action, spurring practices such as assigning younger employees to "shadow" veterans before the older workers retire. (Ventura County Star)



Report Anticipates Increased IT Brain Drain
The Government Accountability Office released a study May 3 which found that the proportion of postsecondary students obtaining degrees in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields has fallen significantly. While 32 percent of postsecondary students obtained degrees in STEM fields in 1994 and 1995, the percentage fell to 27 percent in 2003 and 2004. (Channel Insider)

Nation's nuclear industry suffers from brain drain
As the nuclear industry stirs with the first plans in 30 years to build power plants in the United States, there is an unexpected hurdle to be overcome: There might not be enough nuclear engineers to build and run them. But what's worse, the generation that built and ran America's nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities is aging and headed toward retirement, taking away decades of know-how that have kept them operating safely. (AbqTrib)

Brain Drain: Is It A Reality?
Brain drain, the out-migration of young, college-educated workers from the nation's rural areas, poses a serious threat to the social and economic vitality of rural America. Anecdotal accounts from the Midwest to Maine describe an exodus of young college graduates, lured away by big-city living and better-paying jobs. Yet, nationwide the number of college graduates has steadily increased over the past few decades. In fact, between 1970 and 2000, the share of the population over age 25 with a college education rose in every US county but five.
The rising level of human capital, reflected in the increased share of the US population with a college education, is an important trend. Recent studies have shown that capital and skilled labor are complements, so as advances in technology reduce the cost of capital, the demand for skilled workers increases. Other research suggests that the clustering of college-educated workers may have spillover effects, enhancing a region's productivity and the potential for economic growth. The trend has also implications for income inequality, because the wage gap between those with a college degree and those without is widening. (Choices)

Zambia:
Zambia acts to combat brain drain among health workers
An increased exodus of skilled health workers from Zambia has forced the country's leading health institution, the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) in Lusaka, to introduce incentives to retain labor and provide improved health care services.  Having lost more than 50 percent of its medical personnel to Europe and neighboring countries, the UTH has decided to offer an additional 18,000 U.S. dollar package per month in allowances to doctors, nurses and paramedic for part-time work to reduce the impact of the brain drain on the institution. The money earned by the medical workers is an addition to their monthly salaries. (People's Daily)

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