Developing countries are facing a brain drain crisis as they try to balance their development agenda and being competitive with the international market. Romania, for instance, has been heavily affected by this crisis resulting in 40 percent of its higher education population migrating to other countries.
Migration to more developed countries from Eastern Europe and Asia has been on the rise. These countries have been left counting loses and unable to address this challenge. People with higher education are now traveling abroad in pursuit of happiness and greener pastures. This has led to a major shift in population demographics, especially when looked through the lenses of their education qualifications.
Romania has been one of the most affected countries with about 40 percent of its population with higher education living abroad. This is based on a report by the world bank which examines the effects of brain drain on the economies of Europe and Asia. The same report also has 3.6 million Romanians living abroad. This is approximately 18.2 percent of the country’s entire population.
Brain drain effect on the Romanian population
The total Romanian population based on the latest census of the country were 20.1 million as of October 2011. About 2.52 million Romanians had higher education based on the same census. However, the latest estimate of the population is about 19.4 million people in the country. This dwindling of the population has been contributed by the migration to other countries.
The number of graduates with higher education over the last decade has remained constant with no noticeable changes. This is despite students between 80,000 to 90,000 graduating from universities every year. Experts argue that the students graduating from universities do not add to the total number of graduates because each year, around the same number of people with higher education are leaving the country to look for greener pastures in other developed countries.
Brain drain is also a huge problem in other countries and is because of multiple factors. The main factor is that developed countries offer higher wages than their parent countries. This may lead to people migrating in search of higher quality life. Besides that, people migrate to advance their career, for family reasons and even for advanced studies in these countries.
