1315 



Relevance of Brain Drain as a Problem of the Contemporary Era 



The relevance of brain drain as a problem of unique dimensions in 

 the modern era derives from a combination of intellectual, economic, 

 social, political, and diplomatic factors that are themselves rooted in 

 the reality of contemporary scientific-technological civilization. Sci- 

 ence, technology, and economics catalyze the normal forces producing 

 brain drain ; they quicken the process ; they complicate the solution. 



Yet science and technology do not function in a vacuum ; they evolve 

 in a world environment that has shown marked changes over the past 

 three decades. Unique political and economic conditions created by 

 these changes have encouraged brain drain to flourish as a contempo- 

 rary international phenomenon. The political aspects of the brain drain 

 problem are rooted in the processes of decolonization that have pro- 

 duced a "Third World" of independent states in Asia and Africa. The 

 economic aspects derive from the nature of an evolving and increas- 

 ingly globalizing industrial revolution with parallel developments in 

 the world of science and technology. This revolution has created an 

 expanding world economy, stimulated the universalization of knowl- 

 edge, and generated competing needs and demands, priorities and 

 goals, between the advanced industrial societies and the emerging 

 LDCs. The former seek expanding markets and resources, human and 

 material, for sustaining and enlarging their industrial systems; the 

 latter seek development and modernization of their undeveloped and 

 developing economies so that they can assume positions of some worth 

 in the society of nations. Both are motivated by the imperatives of 

 want; their competitive energies are directed toward the acquisition 

 , of trained professional manpower, a common need for a common pur- 

 pose — development and growth. 



But the advanced industrial countries possess most of the advan- 

 tages in this competition for human resources; the LDCs have few. 

 Structural maladjustments and inner disequilibria in the country of 

 emigration or immigration, or both, activate "push/pull" forces that 

 inevitably produce brain drain flows from the less developed to the 

 advanced nations. And it is the LDCs which suffer most from disloca- 

 tions that set into operation these brain drain forces. Added incen- 

 tives are often created by state policies that reorder immigration 

 priorities to stress quality over quantity, and that grant other allure- 

 ments at the disposal of the wealthy to induce immigration. The LDCs 

 cannot compete ; the odds are against them. Hence for this drain-off 

 of trained manpower it seems an inescapable conclusion that the most 

 advanced societies bear "universal culpability." The United States, 

 long the mecca of world immigration, has been one of the prime bene- 

 ficiaries ; and though, after nearly a quarter century of massive inflows 

 of professionals, the number of immigrant scientists and engineers 

 declined somewhat from 1972 on, the inflow of foreign physicians and 

 surgeons continues on a steady upward trend. What aggravates the 

 situation for the LDCs is that for nearly a decade the losses of profes- 

 sional immigrants to the United States have been shifting increasingly 

 from the advanced to the emerging countries ; in recent years flows of 

 professionals have been almost entirely from the latter. 



In the long view of human experience, the brain drain problem can 

 thus be seen as an historical reality, perhaps an historical inevitabil- 



