Brain Drain; Causes and Implications (CSS Essay)

The term “brain drain” designates the international transfer of resources in the form
of human capital i.e., the migration of relatively highly educated individuals from the
developing to developed countries.

This phenomenon, in the terminology of development economics refers to the loss of

high quality manpower, which was once productively employed in the native country. The
last decade has seen an increase in the international mobility of highly skilled, talented
individuals in response to the expansion of the knowledge economy accompanying
globalization. This international movement of human capital can be identified, in practice,
as the movement of scientists, doctors, educationists, engineers, executives, and other
professionals across frontiers. These are people with special talents, high skills and
specialized knowledge. The irony of international migration today is that many people who
migrate legally from poor to richer lands are the ones that the Third World Countries can
least afford to lose: the highly educated and skilled. Since the great majority of these
migrants move on a permanent basis, this perverse brain drain not only represents loss of
valuable human resources but could prove to be a serious constraint on the future economic
progress of Third World nations. Expenditure on education in Pakistan and other developed
and developing countries: Research undertaken both in developed and developing countries
reveals that for an increase in output, the quality of labour is more important than the
quantity. A clear picture emerged if one looks at the experience of different countries. No
country with educated and technically trained human resource is poor and no country with a
predominantly illiterate, untrained human resource is rich.

In general the quality of human resource is much more critical in economic

development than the availability of natural resources. Japan is a country which has almost
no mineral or energy resources but has high economic productivity because of highly
literate, trained and an efficient workforce. Rapid progress of the East Asian countries is
largely attributed to their excellent system of education. Unfortunately, in Pakistan we have
not paid due attention to the general education of the masses and as a result, the country is
far behind than others of the region in education sector. According to official sources, the
current literacy rate in Pakistan is 51.6 per cent where female literacy rate is 39 per cent
while that of male is 64. It means that two women out of every three and one man out of
every three men are illiterate.

The following table shows the national actual expenditure on education in Pakistan as a
percentage of the GDP.

Table 1 reveals that the expenditure on education as percentage of the GDP is much below
than what it actually deserves.

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 Brain Drain; Causes and Implications (CSS Essay)

TABLE 1: NATIONAL ACTUAL EXPENDITURE ON EDUCATION AS A PERCENTAGE

OF GDP (Rs IN MILLION)

Items 1997-98 1998-99 1999-2000 2000-2001 2001-2002

Actual Expenditure 49083 49407 54002 57053 66022
% of GDP 1.83 1.68 1.71 1.66 1.8

Table 2 shows the comparison of education expenditure with other countries brings
forward a picture which exhibits the importance of this sector in Pakistan. It reveals that
our expenditure on education is the second lowest and it is amazing to note that we are far
behind in expenditure on education as compared to the countries that are not much
economically sound i.e., Bangladesh and Nepal.

TABLE 2: PUBLIC EXPENDIUTRE ON EDUCATION AS PERCENTAGE OF 2010-2012

GDP

Country name 2010 2011 2012

Argentina 5.8 6.3
Bangladesh
Canada 5.5 5.4
China
India 3.3 3.4 3.4
Korea, Rep. 5.2
Nepal 4.7
Pakistan 2.3 2.2 2.1
Sri Lanka 2.0 2.0 1.7
United Kingdom 6.2
United States 5.4

The present government has realized the importance of education and consequently
the Higher Education Commission (HEC) has been established with a view to guiding higher
education policy and assisting universities and degree awarding institutes in the pursuit of
quality education at the seat of higher learning, both public and private.

Its objective is to work with the academic community for qualitative and quantitative
improvement of higher education and to aid in the socio-economic development of Pakistan.
Besides, the Education Sector Reforms (ESR) are designed with a view to increasing access,

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 Brain Drain; Causes and Implications (CSS Essay)

enhancing equity and improving quality at all levels of education.

Developed countries immigration policies: In order to accumulate human capital, many
industrialized countries are aiming to attract highly skilled immigrants. Among them are the
United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and
Australia. The policies that encourage such movement target highly trained science and
technology personnel, particularly from developing countries.
These trends are likely to have been confirmed in the 1990s in the face of the increasingly
“quality-selective” immigration policies introduced in many OECD countries. Since 1984,
Australia’s immigration policy had privileged skilled workers, with the candidates selected
according to their prospective “contribution to the Australian economy”.

Canadian immigration policy follows along similar lines, resulting in an increasing

share of highly educated people among the immigrants selected; for example, in 1997,
50,000 professional specialists and entrepreneurs immigrated to Canada throughout the
world with 75,000 additional family members, representing 58 per cent of the total
immigration.

In the US, since the Immigration Act of 1990 – followed by the American
Competitiveness and Work Force Improvement Act of 1998 -, the emphasis has been on the
selection of highly skilled workers through a system of quotas favouring candidates with
academic degrees and/or specific professional skills. For the latter category, the annual
number of visas issued for highly skilled professionals (H-1B visas) increased from 48,000 in
1989 to 116,000 in 1999, the totality of this increase being due to immigration from
developing countries, especially India.
Situation in Pakistan: At present, Pakistan is also facing the problem of brain drain. The
migration of professionals to foreign countries such as the US, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand has increased considerably in recent years. Young, educated, and skilled Pakistanis,
particularly engineers, doctors, IT experts, scientists and other professionals have either left
the country or are planning to do so. This situation hinders the government from achieving
its proposed goals. To date, no serious efforts have been made to stop this disastrous brain
drain.

According to IMF, the migration rate (from Pakistan to the OECD countries) of
individuals with a tertiary education is more than seven per cent, while for India it is about
2.7 per cent; these figures, however, fail to take into account the sizable flow of
professionals from the subcontinent to Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab
Emirates and therefore neglect an important component of the brain drain from the relevant
source countries. The estimates show that there is an overall tendency for migration rates to
be higher for highly educated individuals

The latest Gallup survey indicates that not only qualified professionals and university

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 Brain Drain; Causes and Implications (CSS Essay)

graduates want to leave the country, but even semi-skilled and unskilled workers want to
migrate in search of better prospects. About 62 per cent of the adults interviewed for the
survey expressed the desire to go abroad to work, while 38 per cent say that they would
prefer to settle permanently outside the country. This shows that many Pakistanis are
gradually losing faith in the country’s economic future.

According to a study the ratio of researchers and scientists, who opted for working
in foreign companies, is higher in the research wing and breading and genetics institutions
of the agriculture department. In some departments of agriculture research institutes, over
30 per cent seats are vacant, mainly due to the fact that the researchers left the country for
better opportunities. And, due to ban on recruitments, since 1993, these vacancies could not
be filled.
Remittances vs brain drain: No doubt that we are getting foreign remittances as a result of
brain drain. But could we think that the money they send could be a better substitute in
exchange of the services what they are extending for others and becoming a source of their
rapid economic, scientific and technological development. If proper infrastructure is
provided to them within the country, Pakistan could earn manifold than the money is
received as foreign remittances.

Factors responsible: Economic factor, however, is not the sole factor involved in
brain drain. There are also other factors that contribute to the migration of skilled people to
developed countries from developing nations. One of the important factors behind the
acceleration of brain drain is low income at home. Skilled and educated people expect some
kind of reward. But when they get no reward for their hard work and labour, they feel
disappointed and frustrated.

The value placed for a scientist with an advanced level degree in Pakistan is Grade
17, with a salary that is even insufficient to meet the basic requirements of a family.
Grabbing the opportunity, the advanced countries take away these people by offering them
lucrative incentives.
In addition to low economic incentive, promotion process in developing countries is also
very slow. It takes them several years to get promotions. Apart from that, mutilation of
merit is a routine feature. Non-deserving people bypass the deserving ones. All the
frustrated scientists and skilled people feel compelled to leave the native country in search
of better opportunities.

In Pakistan’s case, professionals who are going abroad are mostly government
servants and belong to the scientific community. These are the people who complain about
the general attitude of society towards professionals, particularly scientists.

An important determinant of the international migration of scientists and technology

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 Brain Drain; Causes and Implications (CSS Essay)

experts is the availability of resources to conduct research and higher salary levels for
researchers in recipient countries. These are the things that facilitate the experimentation
and creative process. Unfortunately, the funds allocated for this purpose in developing
countries are very meagre, which often leads to the rusting of intellect. In Pakistan annual
average expenditure on education from 1997-98 to 2001-2002 has been 1.7 per cent of the
GDP.

The available information shows huge disparities in the distribution of resources for
science and technology, between developed economies and developing countries’ GDPs.
According to UNESCO (2001), the developing countries that account for 78 per cent of
world population (and 39 per cent of world GDP) only contributed to 16 per cent of global
research and development (R&D) expenditure in 1996-97. In contrast, the developed
economies with 22 per cent of world population account for some 84 per cent of global R&D
expenditure. One of the major causes of brain drain is the growing frustration among the
youth and the non-availability of opportunities in the existing social set-up.

Implications: The implications of the brain drain phenomenon are disastrous. It

entails loss of strategic manpower from key positions. An outflow of such manpower creates
many dislocations. It seriously affects skill formation and involves the loss of money invested
in education and training. The loss of strategic manpower affects education, research &
training, infrastructure building, creative talent, present and future technology and the
entire intellectual milieu of a country and creates a growth retarding backwash effect.
Trained and skilled people constitute a very scarce resource for poor countries. Losing them
sets development back in these countries. In fact, many countries, having lost their best
brains to the industrial world, have had to import expensive consultants from abroad. Such
a cycle of events sometimes represents a double loss. An economy spends its precious
resources to educate and train its people. Losing them to developed countries is a form of
reverse foreign assistance, from resource-poor to resource-rich countries.Another important
implication of the brain drain is that investment in education in a developing country may
not lead to faster economic growth if a large number of its highly educated people leave the
country. Also, efforts to reduce specific skill shortages through improved educational
opportunities may be largely futile unless measures are taken to offset existing incentives
for highly educated people to emigrate.

Remedies: If Pakistan is serious about stemming its alarming brain drain, it must
provide:

1. Better job opportunities that properly remunerate workers based on their skills and
talents.
2. Proper infrastructure be provided for research and development.
3. A system of merit be adopted, otherwise, it will continue to lose its skilled labour to

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 Brain Drain; Causes and Implications (CSS Essay)

countries where benefits and opportunities are plentiful

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