Foreign Brain Drain Is US Brain Gain

From 1983 to 1988, more than 200 well-known scholars in the fields of history, philosophy, political science and physics left British universities to take positions in some of the top universities in the U.S.

Their departure resulted from budget cuts that froze professors¡¯ salaries and left many vacancies unfilled, the abolishment of tenure and the suspension of promotions and reductions in funds for libraries and assistants, while U.S. salaries were often more than three times higher than in Britain with large research funds, assistants, and sophisticated laboratories.

Today, a British scholar who has not received at least one attractive offer from an American university may even start questioning his or her reputation outside Britain.

With the communism in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a large number of top Russian scientists have been heading to the U.S. either permanently or on temporary work visas. This exodus of Russians is quickly becoming the largest brain drain to (and brain gain of) the U.S. since the end of World War II.

Many top Russian scientists are working in U.S. computer, biological and chemical laboratories and the number of scientist flowing into these fields keeps growing. Their productivity in America is ten times more than in Russia and their salary is also 100 times more than in Russia.

Foreign students getting advanced degrees in the U.S. and then choosing to stay instead of going back to their home countries is another form of brain drain.

For instance, 62 percent of the students receiving engineering doctorates in the U.S. were foreign born in 1990. More than 70 percent of the foreign-born students getting Ph.D.s in the U.S. remain after getting their degrees, greatly benefiting the U.S. and harming the nations of origin.