The Exodus Of The Intelligent

Dr. Vladimir Grecic of the Institute for International Politics and Economics, who has studied the theme of migration for 30 years, said in a conversation with Vreme that approximately 12,000 highly educated people left SRJ for a country across the ocean in the period of 1991-1996.  Therefore, one can freely estimate that the total exodus of highly educated people abroad passed 20,000.  Grecic estimates that such migration would have taken place had there not been sanctions, but that, in view of migration patterns in other Eastern European countries, one can conclude that the departure of around 15,000 highly educated people is a direct consequence of the sanctions in 1992.
The production of one highly educated person (schooling, food, health insurance, living expenses, etc.) costs 300,000 dollars, therefore if 10,000 experts left, the lost is three million dollars; if one takes into account all those who have moved away, the loss is six million dollars (and that doesn’t account for the so-called bill, the lost profit which these scholars, engineers, architects, and programmers could have earned if they stayed in the country).

It looks as if the number of skilled and educated leaving the country peaked in 1993 and 1994.  The number of departures was 10 percent less, but that migration in the following years was constantly considerably high.

The U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand remained the most frequent destinations of the those leaving Yugoslavia in the following years, states Dr. Grecic.  From 1979 to 1994 around 28 percent of them went to Canada, whereas 34 percent went to the United States.  More than 50 percent of those who went were younger than 40 years old, whereas three fourths were younger than 45.

Motive:  The most important reasons why scientists and scholars from SRJ emigrate are the low standard of living, uncertainty, and housing problems.  Life abroad is attractive to them because of higher wages and material/technical conditions on the job.  The closest answers are found among those surveyed in their final year of study, as put forth in a study called “Migration of Highly Educated Personnel and Scientists from Yugoslavia” (project authors were Vladimir Frecic, Duro Kutlaca, Vlastimir Matejic and Obrad Mikic) made in view of inquiries that were made in ’90, ’92, and ’93...

Dr. Grecic says in conversation with Vreme that a high percentage of the educated think about going abroad, and 1/3 undertake steps in that direction.  According to some observations, in the technical faculties, approximately one quarter of those students who graduate seek a recommendation to work abroad.

Amongst those who leave, as many as 13 percent declare that they would leave for good. Serbia’s science-research institutions could not state the new address or new town, not even the new state to which even a third of their own people went.  Dr. Grecic states that ten percent of the research population has left this country, and warned that, for example, the departure of 116 experts from “Pupin” means (115x5=580) years of higher education and improvement, and that of those 580....

The departure of experts, according to one study of that problem, hasn’t increased the cost of research, it has already increased the aspiration toward leveling. Official statistics probably exaggerate when they say that SRJ has 17,000 researchers.  That number is the result of lax definitions.  The real number of researchers in SRJ is really less than 10,000, according to Dr Grecic’s calculations.

A Shortage of Experts:  One can hear the argument that we, otherwise, produce more experts than are necessary for this country, that today’s elite doesn’t show modern ability, etc.  Dr. Refik Secibovic, economic geographer, warns that the loss of educated people and the conduct of existing experts outside of working activities has already lowered the chance for the restoration of economic activity in the long-term.  Those who think that we have a lot of universities and a lot of students should face the fact that in our state (SR Yugoslavia) only 66 percent of the population has basic or lower schooling and only six percent have high school or higher education.  Yugoslavia has as many ?university? students as Berlin (around 143 thousand in 1992), and that seems to be around 1.3 percent of the country’s population.  For every 12,000 citizens there are 137 students, such that only China, the Czech Republic, Moldavia, Rumania, Slovakia, and Hungary have less.  Bulgaria, Austria, Croatia, Poland, and Russia have a higher number of students.  If it is true that 20,000 highly educated personnel left, that means that in a short period of time, two complete years, of all those young people who graduated in Serbia left—10,163 graduate during a period of one year (3 to 15 percent).

The number of students in Serbia has increased in 20 years—such that in 1991-1992 in the entire republic there were 100,124 registered students, but there were only 130,235 in the 1996-1997 school year. That is a decrease of 10,163 students.  The decrease in the number of students who graduate and the flow of young people abroad basically comes to an illusionary decrease (officially) of unemployment in this category in Serbia.  In 1991, for 360,000 officially registered unemployed, 15,958 of them had Seven Step Expertise, but in 1997 for every 426,230 unemployed there were 14,929 highly educated.  For example, in 1992 there were 261 unemployed, graduated electrical engineers, but only 120 in 1997.  Unemployment from 1993 in university centers was around 53.5 percent of those unemployed with high skill training, stated Dr. Secibovic, who considers that a large part of Serbia (not counting Belgrade and to a certain extend Vojvodina) already suffers from a deficiency of qualified personnel and that this condition will dramatize itself due to immigration and demographic reasons.

At least a directory:  Now we don’t even have exact evidence of how many educated people have left the country.  There were some sporadic attempts to make a so-so directory of our experts.  The federal government tried something, but state institutions simply weren’t capable of handling that job.  At some faculties, there exist efforts to collect the addresses of those who left.  One such directory, not very complete they say, exists at Belgrade’s Electro-Technical Faculty.  The Communication/Traffic Faculty made a similar attempt in order to keep contact with their graduates and maintain some form of professional solidarity.

Professor Vojin Topsic of the Communications/Traffic Faculty says that from around 500 students who graduated in 1964 from the air department, around 70 (12 percent) are abroad, of whom have some high professional position, and there are those who don’t practice the profession they received training for.  JAT, as the main domestic employer, hired around 100 traffic engineers from this section.  Last year they hired about ten students, and this year they intended to hire more, but now it looks doubtful.
Dr. Tosic, who received his doctorate at Berkeley, believes that our educational system demonstrates positive momentum and that, judging by the demand for our people abroad (at least where it concerns students who demonstrate success) really produces solid personnel.  Under existing conditions, it is similar to a special paradox—teachers who are paid half as much  don’t teach two times worse.  He considers that young people need to enable themselves to go temporarily abroad and work, study, or train so that it would be possible to practice different fields of expertise and actively participate in professional life.  It would help them establish and hold professional ties with the world because, as they say, the possibility of departure for training increases the chance that they will stay.  One should add to that that they must have a monthly income that enables them to begin an independent family life (not at their parents’).

In the 70’s, when about one million “guest workers” left the former Yugoslavia to work in Western Europe, a typical title of some sociological studies read, “Peasants on Europe’s Crossroads,” (Dr. Zivan Tanic).  Today’s immigration is characterized by other phrases—brain drain, exodus of minds, flow of reason, flow of minds, or after the fall of the Berlin Wall, more adequate phrases appeared:  brain flight and massive intellectual migration.

What others do:  International organizations for migration stimulate political brain re-gain which potential scholars who emigrate use in countries to which they immigrate.  Mainly, they use tow strategies:  STAS, Helping of Short-term Consultative Roles and TOTKEN, Transfer of Knowledge Through Expatriate Nationals.

This country, isolated from the outside and inside, and having come through the war and the creation of new states, such that in the near and far past it has called for the flight of a large number of people, depends on the ?low-tech? export of raspberries, but doesn’t have the faintest idea about the development of a strategy concerning the export of intellectual services.  After all, the authorities that treat scholarship and education as some disruptive factor, as an enemy, most often pass laws that try to force control upon universities by means of incompetent administrative representatives.  One such law concerning the university was announced recently, but its contents weren’t recognized by any of the deans of the faculties.  There are assumptions that it will be a restrictive, commissar’s law which will probably drive more people from this country.
Recommendations for retraining experts don’t consist of supporting the augmentation of the educational standard, the acquisition of equipment, or for their promotion.  If and when that would be implemented, it wouldn’t be enough.  It isn’t implement because the standard of our creative elite is higher than miserable.

Ruining the mind:  In the West, there’s a standard expression called “brain drain” which describes a condition where scientists are employed in places where they can’t express their potential.  They say in New York that if someone needs to get somewhere in a hurry, they need to stop a taxi driven by a black man; a white driver might be some Russian scientist who doesn’t know the city.  Dzarmus’s film, “Life On This Earth” has one such story.  When a reporter from Vreme mentioned it to a professor, the professor depressingly noticed that the ruining of the mind is already considerable.  That day some friend had told him that he’d been driven in Belgrade by a taxi driver who was an engineer (professors rarely drive taxis).  One can count the thousands of sad examples: engineers who periodically leave factories that don’t work.

Paul Klugman, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sites his Russian emigrant neighbor in the article, “Is Capitalism Too Productive?”  “I don’t understand this country.  It looks prosperous, but I don’t see anyone make anything.”  Associates lead to facts that state that in developed countries, the marketing sector dominates (stores, insurance, banking, and computers).  The paradox is that in today’s economy of civil war, some twisted version of the marketing model functions.  Functioning in place of banks are wheeler-dealers, in place of insurance is racketeering, smuggling takes the place of markets, and computing probably takes the place of informative conversations.  In that context, one young mother gloomily says that it seems to her that the result of such an exodus of intelligent people from this country will be that there won’t be anyone to polish the children of the new rich when one of these days they decide to become “respectable citizens.”  Does the exodus of the elite thrill anyone in this corrupt state?  After it was ascertained that the number of researchers in this country decreased, the Serbian Ministry for Science financed action for exchange of experts who left with younger researchers whose number in 1996 reached 1035, but that quick action can’t give an adequate exchange because even with an adequate amount of talent, a preparation of six years is required. Demographic percentages for Western Europe say that the workforce up to the age of 25 will decrease from 27 million in 1990 to 22 million in the year 2000.  That breakdown will bring a search for young experts, above all from Eastern and Central Europe and even Yugoslavia.

This country doesn’t have an adequate counter policy, on the contrary, to dominate by force those who hurry outside.