"Brain drain” is a matter of national security

Recently, a young Ayla Aliyeva from Azerbaijan simultaneously enrolled in several of the most prestigious universities in the world. Among these universities, she chose Harvard.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in education abroad among young people in Azerbaijan. But official structures disclose only the number of young people studying abroad at the expense of the state.

At the beginning of the 2022/2023 academic year, the number of students studying under the state line in foreign countries amounted to 1004 people. 35 percent of them are graduates of schools in Baku and 65 percent are from the regions of Azerbaijan. Most of the students study at higher educational institutions in Turkey, Hungary, Russia, and China.

According to research published in local media, many students studying abroad not on the state line do not want to return to Azerbaijan. Although the official authorities recognized that many young people who had previously studied abroad under state programs did not subsequently return to their country.

Dilara Arifulina, who was educated in France, told Radio “Azadlig” that she did not want to return to Azerbaijan after graduating from university: "I have graduated from the French Language Faculty of the University of Foreign Languages in Azerbaijan and continued my education in France at the University of Nantes. I didn't want to return to the country because I couldn't find a job with a good salary and conditions. Now I have built my life here, I work, and I am very happy."

Rufat Guliyev, a member of the Milli Majlis Committee on Economic Policy, Industry and Entrepreneurship, also told Turan that there is a tendency not to return to Azerbaijan after studying abroad: "This trend is observed even among graduates studying at the expense of the state."

According to the MP, such a problem used to exist in the field of medicine, and now graduates of the most prestigious medical universities of Turkey and Europe are working in Azerbaijan: "They are very good specialists and are provided with jobs in the country, because there have been changes in the healthcare system that have allowed them to receive high salaries. After graduating from such leading universities, of course, salaries of 1000-1500 manats are unattractive for these graduates."

Guliyev believes that the majority of people who receive education abroad in finance, economics, engineering, management, get a job in the leading Macro companies of Azerbaijan and receive a good salary: "In addition, almost all people holding high government positions in recent years are graduates of leading foreign universities. They come to these positions from commercial companies, where they have shown themselves in a very positive way."

He stressed that there is a table of the average salary of university graduates ranked in the top 50 of the world ranking: "There are universities whose graduates earn 250-300 thousand dollars a year. Conditions are needed for such graduates in Azerbaijan , in the sense that they are in demand here professionally. On the other hand, their work should be evaluated not by the standards of Azerbaijan and the CIS, but by world standards. And this is already a problem. It is true that some private companies agree to pay high salaries to professionals, but not everyone can do it."

The head of the organization "Tələbə Güc Mərkəzi" Farid Imanov told Radio “Azadlig” that there is always a “brain drain” from developing countries to developed ones: "Azerbaijan is one of such countries. There is also a serious “brain drain” from our country to other countries, which in itself will cause very serious consequences in the future."

According to the expert, the intellectual “brain drain” is a matter of national security: "One of the culprits of this is also the government, whose educational policy is in a deplorable state. In a country where there is no academic freedom, where employment opportunities are so limited that no one wants an academic career."

He stressed that if the government wants to minimize “brain drain” from now on, it should start granting academic freedom and autonomy to universities first of all: "This can be avoided, at least to a small extent, by improving the quality of education and refusing to consider education for commercial purposes."