Europe and the Challenge of the Brain Drain

Sami Mahroum, IPTS

Issue: Increased demand for highly-skilled personnel worldwide and a broadening range of international education opportunities will inevitably exert pressure on the European stock of highly-skilled labour. Europe needs to be aware of these changes and other developments in international skills supply and demand.

Relevance: Europe could be losing its brightest and best scientists, academics, managers and engineers. In particular it could be losing the younger S&T and managerial personnel, who are probably those with the most up-to-date training.

Introduction

The labour market for skilled professional personnel is becoming increasingly globalized in terms of both supply and the demand. Overseas students, for instance, account for an ever greater proportion of the university population in most industrialized countries, and international mobility schemes for researchers are available at most universities. Multinational companies too draw more than ever on personnel with high qualifications from around the world to enhance and ensure a high-quality performance.

‘Brain drain’ is defined by the encyclopaedia Britannica as the "departure of educated or professional people from one country, economic sector, or field for another usually for better pay or living conditions". The OECD report (1997) on the movement of highly skilled people identifies two main basic concepts regarding Brain drain: Brain exchange and brain waste.

Brain exchange implies a two-way flow of expertise between a sending country and a receiving country. Yet, where the net flow is heavily biased in one direction, the terms "brain gain" or "brain drain" is used. A further term, ‘brain waste’, describes the waste of skills that occurs when highly skilled workers migrate into forms of employment not requiring the application of the skills and experience applied in the former job (OECD, 1997) (1).

Recently, Johnson and Regets (1998) have introduced a new concept into the debate, namely ‘brain circulation’. This refers to the cycle of moving abroad to study, then taking a job abroad, and later returning home to take advantage of a good opportunity. The authors believe this form of migration will increase in the future, especially if economic disparities between countries continue to diminish. Such circular migration has been observed amongst Malaysians who had studied in Australia, for example.

In an OECD study carried out in 1997 (2), it was stated that "despite the importance of migration by the highly skilled to the development and management of international economy, knowledge of the patterns and processes of their movement is poor". A typology which accommodates the diversity of this group, and its sub-categories, is still lacking and there is no agreed concept or definition of the highly skilled.

The flows of skilled personnel are influenced and determined by a variety of factors. Firstly, on the supply side, science is becoming more internationalized than ever. Participation in international education and training, including the various international exchange schemes and fellowships, has stimulated the interest of young scientists in working abroad and has helped give domestic graduates a more international perspective (Stein et al. 1996). Smaller countries, such as Sweden, Holland, and Ireland, in particular, are seeking to produce more graduates with international experience suitable for work abroad, in order to cope with their growing international businesses activities.

Secondly, on the demand side, call for highly skilled personnel with international experience is on the rise. Local shortages of certain types of expertise are among main motives for recruitment from abroad, especially, employers seeking top quality candidates (Stein et al. 1996). Immigration incentive policies are also a factor in many countries where such policies exist.

The overall volume of European migration to the US has been more or less steady over the last few years. The number of immigrants to the US from Europe in 1994, 1995, 1996 totalled 62,658, 44,870 and 46,776 respectively. In 1994 the numbers were higher than in 1995 and 1996 due to changes in US immigration law that allowed many students to stay on.

Emigration varies across Europe. The UK and Ireland rank highest in the total number of migrants they send abroad (see Figure 1). The UK also topped European countries in the number of professionals migrating to the US (2,934), followed by Germany (1,501), and France (688). Figure 1 above provides a good picture of the distribution of EU migrants in the US in terms of citizenship. Of these immigrants, around 25% went to California, making the largest single group, around 10% went to New York state, and around 8% went to Massachusetts (US INS sources).

7,638 EU professionals were granted permanent US visas in 1996. These included executives, architects, engineers, surveyors & mapping scientists, mathematicians & computer scientists, natural scientists, doctors, nurses, and pre- and post-secondary teachers.

Figure 2 shows that the broadest group of professional EU immigrants to the US is made up of those who have executive and managerial occupations (4324 persons). These often originate from temporarily intra-corporate transfers that turn later into long term and permanent ones.

About 50% of all Europeans completing a Ph.D. in the US stay on for longer periods afterwards, and many of them stay permanently (Finn, 1997). This also could be reflected in the National Science Foundation (NSF, 1995) data on European doctorate holders. The data show that in 1995 there were around 17,000 Europeans who had remained in the US after having completed their Ph.D. Of these around 11,000 had become naturalized citizens, and about 3,900 of them had become permanent residents. These include Ph.D. holders in all fields.

In science and engineering, 8,760 of Ph.D. students graduating in the period between 1988-95 (7 years) were Europeans. The US Department of Labor statistics show that over half of these are still in the US even 5 years after graduation (Johnson & Regets, 1998). European doctoral graduates have a much higher stay rate in the US than their Korean and Japanese counterparts. The difference between Japan and Europe in the propensity to stay is large; only 8% of Japanese Ph.D. graduates stay.

Graduates from the UK have the highest stay-rate in the US. Whereas, most German graduates go back (approx. 75%), only around 30% of UK graduates do. Greece lies somewhere in the middle between Germany and UK with a return rate of approximately 60%.

However, there are also large variations between fields of study. If we take the UK as an example, 73% of engineering graduates stay compared to 65% of those from the Life sciences, and 60% in Physical sciences. Additionally, it is perhaps interesting to note that in 1996 1000 of the Ph.D. graduates who started their own businesses in the US were Europeans.

Despite the US being the main destination of European migrants they tend to be attracted by just a few places. California, New York state, and Massachusetts remain the most favourite destinations for European scientists and engineers and other highly skilled personnel (US INS sources 1993). Similarly, in a study on brain drain from France to the US (CNRS, 1997), it was found that the States of California, Massachusetts, and New York attracted most French post-docs to the US. These places seem to have certain specific dynamics that give them advantage over other centres in attracting top scientists and engineers, and thus hosting top research.

The key difference between the American and European experience resides in scientific capability. It is true that European research institutes may perform better in some fields than the US, but they lack the magnet power that can transform them into pivotal points in their fields. European universities, for example, attract fewer international students than US universities do despite the fact that tuition is free in many European universities (European S&T Indicators Report, 1997).

The presence of centres of excellence in certain locations and their absence in others represent two major pull and push factors. The US seems to have many such centres, combined with flexible and open career structures, a strong entrepreneurial culture, and high living standards and quality of life. For instance, when in 1996 the German Research Society sponsored 1028 German fellows to go abroad, 641 (approx. 60%) chose the US as a destination. Similarly, in Europe, Switzerland, a country that hosts major research and academic centres (such as CERN, the IBM Lab near Zurich, and the Federal Institutes of Technology in Basel, Lausanne, and Zurich) and which enjoys living standards which are among the highest in Europe, is also successful in attracting Ph.D. candidates from other European countries (26% of that country’s candidates) (3).

This scientific pull, in turn, has a knock-on effect that drives all sorts of other related activities in the location in question, thus, attracting even more scientific activities. The inflows of doctoral candidates, post-doctoral researchers, and senior scientists provide the receiving countries with a pool of knowledge that places these countries in an advantageous position with regard to their competitors. Zucker, Darby, and Armstrong (1994) report that for an average firm, 5 articles co-authored by an academic star and the firms’ scientists result in about 5 more products in development, 3.5 more products on the market, and 860 employees.

The IT sector in the US is widely believed to be suffering from staff shortages. As a result, the US IT sector is feared to be draining other countries. However, more recently this has been challenged by some studies in the US, which have accused firms in this sector of preferring foreign engineers recruited from developing countries who are willing to accept lower wages than their native counterparts. In a Workshop organized by the Sloan Foundation in the US dealing with the issue of "Migration of Foreign Scientists and Engineers to the US" in 1997, the following remarks were made. Professor Paul Ong of UCLA (University of California in Los Angeles) found that immigrant engineers were paid up to 30% less than their native peers. Furthermore, an investigation carried out by Norman Matloff of UCLA found that only 2% of 120,000 annual employment applications to Microsoft are accepted, hardly an indicative of the claimed shortage.

In the same workshop another study carried out in the US by Robert Zacher of the Harvard Smithsonian Observatory was presented. The study found that the US is now training 2 Ph.D. scientists for every available job. The Immigration and Naturalization Services too did not think the IT industry lobby will succeed this time in increasing its quotas of foreign workers or to relax any further immigration policies. The mood in the US towards this issue seems to be changing. The demand for foreign skilled personnel is associated with the search for cheaper labour and not a response to shortages in supply.

Immigration policies of this type, however, usually target cheaper labour, drawn from countries with lower living standards than those in the EU. The push and pull factors for the international mobility of skills between advanced countries revolve around competing for excellence. Individuals search for excellent career opportunities, and organizations are looking for top quality individuals. It is where supply and demand meet that excellence is produced and maintained.

Developing and developed countries feel the impact of labour market changes on the mobility of highly-skilled labour in different ways. For developing countries it might be argued that their balance of payments has benefited more by sending people abroad from where they can send home substantial amounts of cash. In Europe, however, this is not usually the case and the negative effects of the migration of highly-skilled personnel is not outweighed by any cash they may send back, given the smaller differentials.

Brain drain fears in Europe centre on the so-called la crème de la crème, i.e. "star scientists" who are the brightest and best and whose talents can have many spillover benefits for their host countries. For example, in the past, European researchers in the US have always been an important source of input to the their host country, in particular many US Nobel prizes winners came from Europe. Also, the fact they are often recruited on a competitive basis tends to ensure they are of above-average quality. The majority are also young, between 20 and 40 years old, thus, in their most productive years. Moreover, the pull factors that attract them tend to be different from those that attract scientists from developing countries.

In the context of European emigration, "excellence" and "chain-effects" are central to the issue. The quality of the recruits from Europe might have a positive chain-effect on their employers’ ability to attract more high-quality staff. This mechanism is observed for instance among mature students recruited by American universities (Lambert, 1992). Universities that recruit top performing academics tend to attract top students too (Ibid.).

The fact that significant numbers of top European scientists are abroad could pose a serious challenge for Europe in certain emerging sectors such as the biosciences. For instance, it is believed that historically research on the contraceptive pill moved from Europe to the US as a result of European scientists emigrating during the post-war era (Marks, forthcoming paper) (4). A study by Zucker, Darby and Brewer (1996) (5) on the rise of the biotech industry in the US, commented that "we conclude that the growth and diffusion of intellectual human capital was the main determinant of where and when the American biotechnology industry developed […] Intellectual human capital tended to flourish around great universities."

Policy Implications

Once abroad Europe’s scientists often find it difficult to return. The private sector could play a bigger role in absorbing European repatriates and in encouraging them back. The public sector alone cannot absorb all these talents. In the US the private sector employs the greatest proportion of Ph.D. graduates (approx. 30%) after the academic sector (NSF, 1995). The private sector can play a very useful role in joint ventures with the public sector whereby research and engineering centres of excellence could be set up across Europe. This would inevitably change the situation from an eventual "brain drain" to what some have referred to as a "brain circulation" (Johnson & Regets, 1998).

Keywords

brain drain, competitiveness, education, training, innovation, skilled labour

Notes

1. This report was drafted by Professor John Salt at the department of Geography, UCL.
2. Entitled "International Movements of the Highly Skilled" Occasional Papers N0 3.
3. Source: Second European Report on S&T Indicators 1997, Page 643.
4. To be presented at the American Historical Association Conference in January 1999.
5. Zucker, Darby, and Brewer (1996).

References

• Johnson, J. M. & Regets, M., International Mobility of Scientists and Engineers To the US- Brain Drain or Brain Circulation?, NSF Issue Brief 98-316, June 22, 1998.
• Présence Française en Science et Ingenierie aux Etats-Unis: Cerveau en Voyage?, Bureau du CNRS a Washington, 1997.
• Finn, Michael G., Stay Rates of Foreign Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities, 1995, 1997.
• Lambert, R. D., Foreign Student Flows And the Internationalization of Higher Education, American Council on Education/ Series on Higher Education, 1992.
• National Science Foundation Data Sources,1995.
• Salt, J., International Movements of the Highly Skilled, OECD Occasional Papers No 3, 1997.
• Sloan Foundation Workshop, 21 May, 1997, http://econ.bu.edu/ied/saesum.htm
• Stein, J. A. et al., International Education and Training of Scientists & Engineers and their Employment in European Industry, PREST Report, published by the European Commission, 1996.
• Zucker, L., Darby, M. & Brewer, M., Intellectual Human Capital and the birth of US Biotechnology Enterprises, NBER Working Paper Series, 1996.
• Zucker, L., Darby, M., Armstrong, J., Intellectual Human Capital and the Firm: The Technology of Geographically Localized Knowledge Spillovers, NBER Working Paper N0. 4946, 1994.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank his colleagues at the IPTS for their valuable comments.

Contact

Sami Mahroum, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies

W.T.C. Isla de la Cartuja, 41092 Sevilla, Spain

E-mail: Contact Form

About the author

• Sami Mahroum has a first degree in Political Science from the University of Oslo and a Masters degree in Science and Technology Policy from the University of Amsterdam. He worked as a Researcher on International Research Collaboration at PREST, University of Manchester, before joining the IPTS to work on issues related to the geography of knowledge flows through human capital. He is now also working towards his Ph.D. on the international mobility of scientists at the department of Geography at University College London.