1137 



to Dr. Pacifico Marcos, President of the Philippine Medical Associa- 

 tion, only half of the 28,000 registered medical doctors were in 

 active practice. The Philippines' seven medical schools were then 

 graduating 1,200 medical doctors a year, but only 800 were actually 

 able to go into active practice.^^* 



The Philippines, therefore, suffers from both a surplus in medical 

 personnel and an insufficiency in other science and technical related 

 fields.229 



Yet, a paradox seems to exist in this situation of apparent man- 

 power plenty in the LDCs : The demands may seem to have been met, 

 as evidenced by the surplus, but not necessarily the needs of the LDCs. 

 Indeed, here seems to be the crux of the brain drain problem. As 

 Gregory Henderson explained, the principal general cause of the brain 

 drain seems to lie in the inability of the LDCs to create an ejfective 

 demand for professionals despite the presence of an almost unlimited 

 need. All other causes are subsumed under this anomaly.^^" 



EMIGRATIOX, AN ESCAPE HATCH FOR ELITE 



If the results of manpower mismanagement and the misconception 

 of educational reform were predictable, so were the secondary conse- 

 quences. In time many LDCs accumulated unmanageable surpluses of 

 educated elites, discontented, unemployed, sometimes unemployable, 

 perhaps more often underemployed. Caught in a scissors of exploding 

 populations and limited economic resources, their economies could not 

 expand at a rate sufficient to absorb the surplus. Avenues for indi- 

 vidual progress were closed off by limited jobs and restricted career 

 opportunities. A catalog of economic and social problems for this elite 

 inevitably accumulated from this depressing situation: low salaries, 

 unpleasant working conditions, limited chance for professional ad- 

 vancement, demoralization, frustration, discontentment. Then there 

 were the further burdens of lost prestige and personal dignity that 

 come with rejection. For the educated professional the "job" is his 

 profession, his way of life. Deprivation of the opportunity to pursue 

 professional goals can create within him a devastating spiritual void. 

 Lane Kirkland of the AFL-CIO described the feeling in these brusque 

 terms: "The job is still the secret to a guy's general happiness and 

 attitude. If you like your work, you're happy. If you don't, you're 

 miserable." Albert Camus put it more poetically : "Without work all 

 life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies." ^^^ 



Faced with this hard reality, the superfluous educated man in the 

 LDCs has two options. He can stay home, living and working beneath 

 his potentialities and possibilities at a subprofessional level. Or he can 

 emigrate to an advanced country in the West, notably the United 

 States — and to a new world of opportunity and professional fulfill- 



228 Harold E. Howland, Brain Brain: As it Affects the Philippines. Foreign Service 

 Institute, Department of State. 9th Session, Senior Seminar In Foreign Policy, Washington, 

 D.C., 1967, p. 4. 



229 Amador Muriel, "Brain Drain in the Philippines : A Case Study," Bulletin of the 

 Atomic Scientists (September 1970), pp. 38-39. 



230 Henderson, op. cit., p. 146. 



231 Quoted in, "The Worker's Day" (editorial), The Washington Post, Sept. 3. 1973, 

 p. A26. 



