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INTERNATIONAL HIGHER EDUCATION

Mexico’s Brain Drain

Sylvie Didou Aupetit
Sylvie Didou Aupetit is a researcher at Mexico´s Centre for Advanced Research and Studies and is head of UNESCO´s Chair on Quality Assurance and Emerging Providers of Tertiary Education. E-mail: didou@cinvestav.mx.

The Mexican press constantly expresses its concerns about brain drain, but, perhaps because its impact has been officially underrated, the matter has so far not appeared on the education research or policy agendas. While brain drain is calculated to involve only 5 percent of the students granted postgraduate studies abroad, that estimate is low—for the following reasons: (1) because it is based on findings from a sample used to evaluate the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) scholarship program over the past 30 years; (2) because it does not incorporate the free movers who have used alternative mobility channels to study abroad; (3) because the mobility of highly qualified personnel includes, other than to the academic market, additional fields of endeavor such as, for instance, the productive sector; and (4) because the intention expressed by young Mexican Ph.D. holders to remain in the United States after obtaining their degrees has increased (notoriously) in recent years—almost to matching the preference of Argentines and Chileans with U.S. doctorates to remain abroad. Given these factors, the brain drain estimation would be vastly surpass 5 percent. However, to reach a reliable approximation of the phenomenon would require mobilizing financial and human resources and organizing joint cooperative programs—to develop linkages between highly skilled Mexican institutions and institutions located in their countries of origin—as well as recognizing the existence of a vexing problem that the public authorities have opted to ignore.

From Conventional Policies to No Policies?
Paradoxically, while academic circles and antigovernment groups are expressing renewed alarm about the “exodus of talented minds”, the policies established 10 years ago to combat the trend are coming to an end. In the early 1990s, the PACIME Program (“in support of Mexican science”), cofinanced by the World Bank and the Mexican government, was set up in an attempt to repatriate doctoral graduates from abroad and invite interested foreign scientists into the country.

PACIME was a conventional program, aimed at definitive repatriation or medium-term stays, but it also focused on the multipolar flow of highly qualified human resources which were substituting partially the bipolar South-to-North dynamic. Under favorable international circumstances (the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the extended crisis in Cuba, and the difficult return to peace in Central America), the program’s success was striking. Not only did it attract a significant number of Mexican and foreign doctoral degree holders, but it also encouraged national state universities desiring to enhance their research capacities to enlist the services of these repatriates and visitors.

The apparent results were not sufficient, and once the PACIME program was terminated, the repatriation and invitation efforts went into decline. Mexico received 299 foreign academics in 1994 and only 49 in 2002. Jaime Parada, director of CONACYT, recently attributed this decline to the lack of a specific budget. His statement probably indicated the end of a policy that, despite its traditionalism, showed immediate and positive results. Will another kind of program take its place? There is nothing to point in that direction, but the situation calls for answers to several questions.

Does a country with substantial inflows of money from its citizens abroad not also need the academic assistance of its most educated expatriates? Can it be that Mexico lacks the means for utilizing the experience accumulated abroad (inside and outside Latin America) through brain bank, or the organization of scientific and productive diasporas? Is it that Mexico can only perceive the brain drain—a term that forms part of the national rhetoric in lieu of a more neutral expression, such as brain circulation—as a form of treason against the motherland, an absolute loss of capacities, or an inevitable consequence of neocolonialism and thus fail to understand the double meaning of both risk and opportunity?

Strategic Challenge
A country such as Mexico experiences many challenges especially under the present circumstances. Some are well known—the result of asymmetric professional working conditions between Mexico and its main trade partners, the difficulties faced by the national academic market in absorbing young doctoral degree holders, as well as all the country’s bureaucratic, credit, and fiscal requirements that discourage the creation of business enterprises.

However, the significance of some other issues is underestimated, despite their relevance in the context of nonterritorial recruitment dynamics and “circulating elites.” Developed countries are applying aggressive policies to recruit PhD holders, while developing countries have not yet substantially improved the working conditions offered. Mexico has adopted quality assurance policies, and, recently, pilot initiatives for the convergence of higher education systems, international harmonization of domestic degrees, regional equivalency in professional training—in the framework of bilateral or multilateral agreements, such as NAFTA. Consequently, the recruitment of Mexican postgraduates regardless of where their degrees were obtained, has become less risky for international employers. Those factors point to a scenario in which white collar migration will rapidly increase.

The situation described above calls for strategic decisions. One decision would have to involve national postgraduate scholarships. Mexico is providing funding for doctoral students in fields with a greater probability of obtaining employment abroad than of returning home. Another factor is the reestablishment of strategic linkages with scientific and productive communities abroad, based on the results achieved in Argentina, Colombia, El Salvador, and Venezuela, as well as in South Africa, China, and India. Still another area involves a science policy more focused on national priorities and on the expansion and reproduction of scientific communities and entrepreneurial groups. The goal is that the relations with the Mexicans living abroad will help to consolidate an official program for the reform of a national science system.

[Online] Available: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/Number41/p18_Didou.htm