The complexities of 21st century brain ‘exchange’ – University World News

The emerging economies of the BRICs – Brazil, Russia, India and China – will, it is assumed, lure back home both students who go abroad to study and some graduates who have settled in the West, because of their dramatic economic growth and expanding higher education systems. The problem is that data seem to show this is not the case.

The brain drain, now euphemistically called the brain exchange, seems to be alive and well.

International Higher Education published research last August by Dongbin Kim, Charles AS Bankart and Laura Isdell showing that the large majority of international doctoral recipients from American universities remain in the United States after graduation.

Even more surprisingly, the proportion of those choosing to stay in the US has increased over the past three decades, seemingly regardless of growth and academic expansion.

There is strong evidence that we live in a worldwide era of global mobility of highly skilled talent in general and of the academic profession in particular, but this mobility flows largely in one direction – from developing and emerging economies to the wealthier nations, especially to English-speaking countries…

via The complexities of 21st century brain ‘exchange’ – University World News.