RI's hidden brain drain

Yohannes Samosir, School of Land and Food Sciences The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, y.samosir@mailbox.uq.edu.au

Peter Doherty, a professor and a 1996 Nobel Laureate, will be returning to his home country Australia after spending many years in the United States. He also brings back a team of Australian talented scientists who have previously moved overseas. He is very concerned about brain drain in Australia as more and more eminent scientists and lecturers have moved overseas for a better career and support in research and develoment.

However Australia, one of the main destinations to skilled migrants, may rather experience brain gain. But this suggests that the country may lose high quality scientists and replace them with lower quality talented migrants.

While Australia, one of the leading countries in the development of science and technology, is worrying about brain drain, Indonesia is really suffering from brain drain. The point is not the number of Indonesian well-trained scientists and lecturers moving overseas, but rather the high number of them who are underused. Many of them hold Masters and PhD degrees from respected universities both domestic and overseas.

Having high-qualified talents is essential for R&D and teaching. For decades the lack of Masters and PhDs, particularly overseas (western) graduates is mostly to blame to why our R&D higher education are so poor. Each year hundreds of lecturers and scientists both from government research institutes and state universities go abroad to undertake postgraduate studies. This includes more than 100 of them going to Australia under the AusAID public scholarship scheme.

Studying overseas is costly to us; a masters degree course in science in Australia is Australian $69,000, equivalent to Rp 310 million. The cost for a PhD is roughly double that figure.

Physically Indonesia does not suffer from brain drain since most of the students return home after finishing their studies. The drain is that we do not continuously nurture and put them to work.

When they return to Indonesia, most of the graduates are disappointed with the system and facilities. Many of them could only do research and teaching just to get credit points for promotion.

Some are fighting for bureaucratic positions while some others are busy moonlighting to help pay the bills and have a decent life. Interestingly, more and more go into politics. Only a few would likely be doing quality research and teaching.

Science and technology develop very fast. Scientists and lecturers are most likely out of date after three years unless they are continuously exposed to the pace of their field. Unfortunately, keeping up to date in these fields is not cheap.

Sadly, we do not have our own Nobel Laureate to ring a wake up call. Nevertheless, the message from Doherty to his nation, our neighbor, can be heard from Indonesia. His concern must be tapped, articulated and translated into actions for the benefits to Indonesia.

We need to review our higher education and R&D systems and policies in relation to the development of science and technology. Focusing on having a large number of postgraduate degrees of S2 and S3 at the expense of poor continuing support for their expertise and work is bad policy. Talents then run out of date after three years; our scientists will never reach a world-class standard under this cycle.

Necessary review should cover the commitment of government on R&D. With the current budget our R&D are going nowhere. High inefficiency makes the budget even worst. Inefficiency is caused by high overhead cost, highly regulated and bureaucratic, and overlapping functions. Not to mention corruption, collusion and nepotism.

We need to merge some institutions at the national and local levels to increase efficiency. This approach is common in business but also in R&D, as has been applied in Europe, Australia and Japan. The idea of merging has been raised years ago in Indonesia, but no significant progress has been made. Perhaps this is not pleasant for some people.

Reviewing is very hard, especially when it is about our ignorance and comfort zone. But it must be done. However, we shall not stop at the reviewing stage if we do not want the brain continue going down the drain.