An international demand for high-skilled professionals, as well as stronger investments in international studies and migrant economic assistance in receiving countries in the past decade has consequently developed a global chain of exchange, wherein developing countries have the opportunity to send their highly skilled labor force overseas, with the expectation of higher returns to the economy via remittance sending and improvements to human capital when migrants return. According to the OECD indicators of talent attractiveness for OECD countries, the top receiving countries are the United States, Canada, and Australia. According to data provided by the Brookings Institution, the United States has been experiencing a gradual shift from semi-advanced industries, such as semiconductors, telecommunications, and wired & wireless telecommunications carriers, to advanced technological and service sectors such as software publishing, information services, and the most significant growth has been in computer systems, design, and services. This is, in due part, caused by a global race to advance technological and capital-intensive industries, with China, South Korea, and Japan leading alongside the United States. As the Department of Defense (DOD), in its Fiscal Year 2020 Industrial Capabilities Report states,
“Today’s education pipeline is not providing the necessary software engineering resources to fully meet the demand from commercial and defense sectors, and resources required to meet future demands continue to grow“
(Department of Defense, 2021; 102)
There is, therefore, a positive trend in the number of foreign-born STEM workers in the U.S. to make up for this deficit and to compete with foreign competition. In fact, according to a study conducted by the American Immigration Council, between 2000 and 2019, the overall number of STEM workers in the United States increased by 44.5 percent, making up almost one-fourth (23.1 percent) of all STEM workers in the U.S (American Immigration Council, 2022).
However, while OECD countries are benefiting from development in their advanced sectors through the increase in employment sourced from an increase in the acceptance of high-skilled labor from the Global South, sending countries stand to lose out and become vulnerable with a decline in professionals in health and services domestically. Shin and Moon explain this bottom-up global diffusion of highly skilled professionals using the discourse of brain circulation and brain linkage (Shin & Moon, 2018). These processes have undoubtedly contributed to greater interconnectivity between the developing countries and developed countries, opening opportunities to access higher education and careers in advanced sectors available and in-high demand in receiving countries. However, least developed countries (LDCs) are vulnerable to a domestic drain of human capital, or brain drain (Shin & Moon, 2018). Consider Figures 1 and 2 provided by an OECD report on Migration-Led Development in 2017: comparing the net enrolment rates (Figure 1) and share of individuals with post-secondary education who plan to emigrate (Figure 2), it can be observed that enrolment rates and the motivation to emigrate are positively correlated. For example, it can be seen in Figure 1 that the Philippines is among the highest of the 10 sample countries with the highest enrolment retention whilst also having the highest ratio of individuals with post-secondary education with intentions to migrate observed in Figure 2.
Figure 1: Net enrolment rates in primary education and mean years of schooling vary in the ten partner countries
Source: Enhancing migration-led development by facilitating investment in education | OECD iLibrary
Figure 2: Individuals with post-secondary education are more likely to plan to emigrate
Source: Enhancing migration-led development by facilitating investment in education | OECD iLibrary
A separate study conducted by the Scalabrini Migration Center on the Philippine migrant labor force concluded that health workers and highly trained professionals were the most prominent group of the labor force to emigrate (See Figure 3). According to the IPPMD Philippine questionnaire, on average, 19% of all individuals in the sample are planning to emigrate, compared to 29% of individuals with post-secondary education (OECD 2017; 140).
Alternatively, Burkina Faso has the lowest enrolment retention, as well the lowest ratio of individuals with post-secondary education with plans to emigrate (OECD/Scalabrini Migration Center, 2017).
Figure 3: The health sector and highly skilled occupations are losing more workers to emigration
Source: Migration and the Labour Market in the Philippines, OECD Ilibrary
By analyzing these figures, the relationship between education development, especially tertiary education in LCDs and developing countries and the trend in emigration outflows cannot be ignored. Southeast Asia and developing countries in East Asia such as India and China are the forerunners of this migration-led education development model (ASEAN-Australia, 2023). Despite these ambitions and the provision of resources such as scholarships and visas from receiving countries, there remain substantial barriers to achieving equitable education attainment domestically between ASEAN member states and the greater East Asian region, as knowledge and skills sets are sent abroad to fill the needs of demand.
The Case of the Philippines
The Philippines has been the leading country of origin of foreign-trained nurses in many OECD countries, including New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. A tight domestic labor market and low employment opportunities have drawn Filipino citizens to seek employment in other countries where labor supply is scarce and wages are comparatively higher. In his study of the de-privatization of Philippine education, University of Amsterdam professor Kidjie Saguin states that in order to depressurize the labor demand domestically, the Philippines had set government policies to subsidize tertiary education and reformed standardized curricula to meet market demand abroad (Saguin, 2023). Notably, programs in healthcare and medicine are the leading educational programs in state-owned universities such as the University of the Philippines. Therefore, with government assistance, Philippine nurses and medical professionals have become the most prominent labor sector to migrate abroad. Consequently, a shortage of highly skilled nurses and the massive retraining of physicians to become nurses elsewhere has created severe problems for the Filipino health system, including the closure of many hospitals. It is critical to note that while Philippine nurses account for 27% of foreign-born registered nurses in the United States, domestically, the country was short of more than 200,000 healthcare workers as of September 2022, including more than 100,000 nurses.
Recommendations
This then brings the question: how should developing countries avoid the brain drain trap? The case study of the Philippine tertiary system highlight a key component of its brain drain problem, and that is the development of education policies that emphasize migration, rather than developing policies that will incentivize return migration, or brain circulation, such as lowering wages or providing temporary government assistance to help returning migrants to meet the same financial returns they would receive abroad (Shin & Moon, 2018). In addition, as observed from the OECD studies on tertiary education and migration trends, the motivation to migrate and the development of tertiary education within a country are in tandem, and therefore must be addressed. Policymakers in sending countries should also find a balance between investing in migration-led education, as well as primary and secondary education that are localized and prepare students for the conditions of the domestic market. My blog post titled, “Philippine Tertiary Education: An Emigration-Oriented and Market-Driven System,” further investigates the effects of a market-driven tertiary education system and its implications on the quality and access of tertiary education in the Philippines.
References
American Immigration Council. (2022, June 14). Foreign-born stem workers in the United States.https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/foreign-born-stem-workers-united-states#:~:text=As%20shown%20in%20Table%202,the%20STEM%20workforce)%20in%202019.
Anderson, S. (2023, May 23). New Immigration Data Point to larger U.S. workforce issues. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2023/05/22/new-immigration-data-point-to-larger-us-workforce-issues/?sh=6024bd391a91
Andira, A. (2023, June 11). Living in an integrated regional economy: Tackling Regional Brain Waste and brain drain. ASEAN-Australia Strategic Youth Partnership. https://aasyp.org/2023/06/11/living-in-an-integrated-regional-economy-tackling-regional-brain-waste-and-brain-drain/
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Getzoff, M. (2023, October 30). Most technologically advanced countries in the world 2023. Global Finance Magazine. https://gfmag.com/data/non-economic-data/most-advanced-countries-in-the-world/
ICMPD (February 2023). Same but different: Strategies in the global race for talent. https://www.icmpd.org/blog/2023/same-but-different-strategies-in-the-global-race-for-talent
OECD (2017), Enhancing migration-led development by facilitating investment in education, in Interrelations between Public Policies, Migration and Development, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264265615-7-en.
OECD (2017). Migration and education in the Philippines. 2017 (137-157). https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/9789264272286-10-en.pdf?expires=1612566300&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=38B6DA2EC8F70C1B5B884A2DBE9309C1
OECD (2021, November 9). International migration of doctors and nurses. OECD iLibrary. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/health-at-a-glance-2021_d969fe68-en
Quartz. (2023, September 27). Rich countries are importing a solution to their nursing shortages-and poor countries are paying the price. https://qz.com/rich-countries-are-importing-a-solution-to-their-nursin-1850691166#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Philippine%20health,including%20more%20than%20100%2C000%20nurses.
U.S. Department of Defense. Industrial Capabilities Report to Congress | 2020 Annual Report (2021, January). https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jan/14/2002565311/-1/-1/0/FY20-INDUSTRIAL-CAPABILITIES-REPORT.PDF
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Xavier de Souza Briggs, C. C. J., Ajay Agrawal, J. S. G., & Martin Neil Baily, E. B. (2023, September 8). The nation’s advanced industries are falling behind, but place-based strategies can help them catch up. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-nations-advanced-industries-are-falling-behind-but-place-based-strategies-can-help-them-catch-up/
