Every six months or so I read alarming reports of the Brain Drain in Germany. Yesterday, the New York Times chimed in with a story of an engineer from Eschborn who wants to leave with his familty to Canada:
In December, as his work with the company became an intolerable grind because of labor disputes, Mr. Thoma quit and made plans to move to Canada. In its wide-open spaces he hopes to find the future that he says is dwindling at home. As soon as he lands a job, Mr. Thoma, his wife, Petra, and their two teenage sons will join the ranks of Germany’s emigrants.
For the NYTimes reporter, Mr. Thoma is but the latest representative a of disturbing trend in Germany: the flight of highly-educated professionals to greener pastures abroad:
The trigger for this latest bout of angst was the release last fall of new government statistics showing that 144,800 Germans emigrated in 2005, up from 109,500 in 2001. At the same time, only 128,100 Germans returned, a decline of nearly 50,000 from the year before. That made it the first year in nearly four decades that more people left than came home.
How real is this trend? Hard to say. I read similar alarmist reports coming from the UK, from France, from Scandinavian countries. Richard Florida, in his book The Flight of Creative Class, warns that religious intolerance and the Patriot Act are leading to a US Brain Drain.
The truth is, the world has flattened, and there is a global competition for talent. Germany does have some structural problems which are slowly being addressed. Earlier I wrote about the innovation deficit and the mediocre system of higher education in Germany. I also found two organizations in the US - the German Scholars Organization (GSO- sponsored by the Robert Bosch Stiftung) and the German Academic International Network (GAIN - sponsored by the Max Planck Institute) which provide support to German scientists and scholars who want to return to Germany. These are band-aid measures. Until Germany restructures it university system - creating true meritocracies - and develops a robust network of private equity resources to support innovative ventures, the Brain Drain will continue.
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