1049 



veloping countries are the size and quality of a nation's stock of trained 

 specialists and high-level scientific manpower and its capacity to en- 

 large this supply to satisfy demand. Accordingly, the principal con- 

 cerns of the advanced countries, like the United States, are not eco- 

 nomic development per se but rather rates of growth and innovation, 

 assurances of a large and expanding supply of skilled people, and 

 assistance in launching and sustaining the technology-intensive enter- 

 prises upon which national standing and power increasingly depend. 



In contrast, the principal concern of developing nations is of the 

 most elemental type that hinges upon resolving the human resources 

 problem and closing the gap between national goals and the supply 

 of skilled manpower. The manpoAver needs of both developed and 

 developing countries conflict on this vital and fundamental issue.*' 



Thus tlie brain drain deals with the migration of people, attitudes 

 of nations and governments, the status of development in the prein- 

 dustrial and postindustrial stages of national growth, and science and 

 technology as instrumentalities for modernization. It impiriges on for- 

 eign policy not so much as a specific issue in state-to-state relations but 

 rather as a generalized, all-embracing problem that affects the growth 

 and maturation, or retardation and decline of nations. 



Inherent Difficulties and Limitations : Magnitude and Complexity of 

 the Prohlein 



The magnitude and complexity of the brain drain issue inevitably 

 create many difficulties and impose many limitations. This is a global 

 problem. It concerns Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. It is 

 also a sociological problem. It concerns man and society in varying 

 stages of development. Both are strung out upon a chain of human ad- 

 vancement reaching from the economic and social level of primitive 

 Africa to that of the advanced level of the industrial West.^ It con-- 

 cerns the interaction of traditional cultures with the forces of modern- 

 ization and the effect of that interaction upon changing values in 

 changing societies. It is also a problem in human psychology. It con- 

 cerns people moving within and betvreen changing national environ- 

 ments. Movement of persons into modern incTustrial societies from 

 those less developed raises questions about individual goals and expec- 

 tations in life, the value of loyalty to the nation and its culture, and 

 the extent of one's personal interests and life goals paralleling those 

 of the nation-state. Speaking of an approach to solving the brain drain 

 problem, Dr. Charles V. Kidd, a long-time student of science policy 

 and science advisor to President Lyndon B. Johnson, characterized 

 the issue as ". . . not a problem to be solved, but a situation to be 

 adapted to. And we are dealing with a process, I think, and not an 

 event." ^ 



Much of the difficulty in dealing with the brain drain stems from 

 the elements of controversy that it has provoked. There are first of all 

 disagreements as to the relative harm or loss which developing coun- 



8 The Council on International Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Govern- 

 ment, The International Migration of Talent and Skills. Proceedings of a workshop and 

 conference. Charles Frankel, Assistant Secretary of State, Chairman, Washington. U.S. 

 Department of State, October 1966, pp. 1-2. (Hereafter cited as. Proceedings of Work- 

 shop on the International Migration of Talent and Skills, October 1966.) 



■' James A. Perkins elaborates on this aspect of the brain drain problem in, "Foreign 

 Aid and the Brain Drain," Foreign Affairs (July 1966), pp. 60S-612. 



* Hearings, House Government Operations Committee, Brain Drain, 1968, p. 81. 



