Many countries, including Philippines, are concerned about skills emigration – the so-called “brain drain”. Brain drain is also known as “The human capital flight” because it resembles the case of capital flight, in which mass migration of financial capital is involved. In simpler language, it is defined as the mass emigration of technically skilled people from one country to another country to work and earn money. Brain Drain has actually a problem and a subject of worry for the under developed and developing country like the Philippines. Since the early seventies, the Philippines have been experiencing a "brain drain" phenomenon with the migration of highly skilled physicians, teachers, seamen, mechanics, engineer, and others from the country. In the eighties, the exodus of those in the medical profession continued although mid-level professionals like nurses, medical technicians as well as paramedics increasingly dominated the flows. In the nineties, accelerated advances in information technology and the growth of the information communication industry triggered new waves of skilled labor migration abroad consisting of electronic engineer, computer programmers, designers, and allied skill workers.
Brain drain is also known as “The human capital
flight”. It can be simply defined as the mass emigration of technically skilled
people from one country to another country. Brain-drain can have many reasons,
for example-political instability of a nation,
lack of opportunities, health risks, personal conflicts etc. It is important to set context of the brain
drain phenomenon in the Philippines since majority of the number of students
here in our country think that there are much better opportunities outside the
country to work but what they don’t mind is that it actually has an economical
impact for our country. It is affecting the per capita income and the National
Income of the Philippines, when Filipinos keep on taking all the knowledge from
this native country and let other countries benefit from it. Indeed the massive amount of income they're bringing in
to the country through their remittances has been keeping the country's economy
afloat for many years and counting. But in other view, it is devastating to
know that our highly skilled physicians, teachers, seamen, engineers, nurses,
and many other professionals who received such a high level of university
training only to apply their knowledge and expertise in other countries.
Even if brain drain
is from the result of emigration of a large scale of technically skilled or
professional individuals, one measure to be taken in action to limit the growth
of brain drain is that our government officials should strengthen higher
education and research institutions. Education and training are among the key
elements to ensure the functioning of the democracies and efficient economic
processes, Philippines would take adequate measures to support develop healthy
both public higher education sector and private institutions.
based on Inquirer article
