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Migration of the highly educated
Concern with brain drain is not limited to developing countries. It arose during the dot com period in a number of European countries in the late 1990s when it was feared that many high technology graduates were leaving their home countries for high-paying jobs elsewhere, especially in the United States. It arises periodically when statistics are published on international students abroad or on the emigration of highly educated persons. Rarely evoked are the gains from immigration of the highly educated.
Definition
The figures in the table show, as a percentage of the total number of residents with tertiary education, the number of foreign-born persons living in each country, and the number of persons with tertiary education born in the country but living in another OECD country.
Tertiary education programmes include those that terminate with standard university degrees but also cover shorter university programmes and high-level practical/technical/occupationally specific education programmes that are geared to direct entry into the labour market. Tertiary attainment means completion of a tertiary education programme with a recognised qualification; persons partially completing a level are classified in the previous level attained.
Comparability
The tertiary qualifications of the foreign-born referred to in the statistics presented here may not necessarily have been obtained abroad. They may include degrees obtained by persons who arrived in the host country quite young and who obtained some or all of their education there. They also cover the qualifications obtained by international students who thereafter emigrate to the country where they obtained their qualifications or elsewhere. Likewise, the qualifications of native-born persons may have been obtained in another country as a result of study abroad.
The data also do not include emigration to non-OECD countries, which would tend to result in smaller net "gains” for some countries and larger "losses” for others.
In addition, although all tertiary programmes are treated equivalently in the table and chart, there are significant differences among tertiary qualifications. Some programmes may be two-year vocational programmes, some 5-year first-degree programmes and others professional qualifications obtained after long years of tertiary study. The nature of the programmes and the distribution of the qualifications obtained can differ considerably across countries, as can the quality of the programmes themselves, which may come from institutions in countries at widely varying levels of development. Notwithstanding these data comparability problems, the picture of gains from international migration conveyed by the available statistics is more than likely a fairly accurate one.
The data shown here are from a special Census data collection described in "The immigrant population by region of origin and gender”.
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Overview The issue of the extent of gains (or losses) from international migration is one that periodically comes to the forefront of policy agendas. Countries are afraid of losing their "best and brightest” to movements abroad, whether for study or for longer term expatriation, if not always permanent settlement. On the other hand, countries that recruit significant numbers of highly educated persons from developing countries are accused of contributing to brain drain from these countries and of hampering their economic development. Until recently there was little information on the actual extent of movement and on the net balance between immigration and emigration of persons with university qualifications. The results show that only a few countries gain from intra-OECD migration of the highly educated. These are Australia, Canada Luxembourg, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States. If immigration of persons with university qualifications from outside the OECD is factored in, however, the balance becomes significantly positive for another set of countries, including Belgium, Germany, Greece and Portugal. For most other countries, the negative net balance is considerably reduced. In short, although many OECD countries lose from migration of the highly educated, immigration from developing countries tends to considerably offset the loss. |
Source
Further information
Analytical publications
- OECD (1999), Classifying Educational Programmes: Manual for ISCED-97 Implemention in OECD Countries – 1999 Edition, OECD, Paris.
- OECD (2002), International Mobility of the Highly Skilled, OECD, Paris.
- OECD (2006), Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators – 2006 Edition, OECD, Paris.
Methodological publications
- OECD (2005), "Counting immigrants and expatriates in OECD countries – a new perspective”, Trends in International Migration: SOPEMI – 2004 Edition, OECD, Paris.
| Texts | |
| • | Indicator web page |
| • | Indicator in PDF |
| Tables (xls) | |
| • | Foreign-born persons with tertiary attainment |
| Graphics | |
| • | Foreign-born persons with tertiary attainment |
Foreign-born persons with tertiary attainment
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