Brain drain - Part 1

This topic has been at the fore front of minds in several of the developing nation regions around the world. I can only share the experiences of my own country - Trinidad and Tobago - when it comes to the topic of the "Brain Drain". It is a real and sad reality of everyday living in Trinidad; not that crime isn't any worse but that we will leave entirely for another blog.

What is the "Brain Drain" - well I define it simply as "the mass migration of an educated and skilled population."

Simply put - young people leaving the shores of Trinidad and Tobago getting first class education outside of the country and never returning home.

I am one of those who will admit to never wanting to return to Trinidad. As I termed it - "there was nothing here for me". So I contributed to the problem for 4 years (if you don't count my first degree). However it is a well known fact that if I were given the opportunity to stay abroad I would. Like most of my colleagues who reside in some other part of the world that they will never call "home". They chose to stay there rather return to Trinidad.

There are few people I know who actually want to return to their homeland. Those that do want to return either miss the food, their family, and most of all Carnival. They never return because there is great opportunity here, or because they can make loads of money. They return for what the country has to offer other than a professional future.

What causes the brain drain? It is a cycle - just like poverty. The discussion always start - young people need to return to their countries to help the country develop. The counter argument is - what will I be doing? Meaning what will I am doing as a professional?

Most people who are born in a third world and/or developing nations but are educated and live in the first world/developed nations rarely see the "benefit" of returning home. To be perfectly honest there is no material benefit - the raw facts are they will NEVER earn the same income that can be earned positioned in comparative jobs in your homeland versus that of the first world. We see Europe and America competing for labor based on salaries - even though they are miles away - but because of their status in the world they can offer similar salaries, similar benefits that will attract young professionals into their workforce. That will never be the case for say America vs. Trinidad.

So as a young person having graduated from some school in the USA or Europe, having been exposed to the culture, the standard of living, the cost of living and compared that with a reasonable salary, it should be no wonder why so many young adults choose to stay there rather than return to their homes.

As young adults we are thinking about a future - our future - and we know from our limited experience that no longer are we tied to one nation. The world is literally at our finger tips. There are so many places that people all over the world can migrate to, work, have a better life for themselves and their families. Why would any of them choose to return to a mundane existence, a dead-end job that has a grand title but nothing monetary to back it, a job that has no return and adds no real value. Why would a young person looking start their professional life choose to shoot themselves in the foot and start at the bottom of the rung when the choice is there to start higher up. Why would a young professional after having gained all the skills necessary to perform in a first world country leave that country?

Why? Why would they not return home? Why would they stay in the US, Canada or England? Because they have a choice. Usually a choice means that there are two things in front of these young people - one is better than the next, one is more appealing than the next, one provides more than the next.

Choice is exactly why they stay and that's why our country's suffer from "The Brain Drain"