The scientific brain drain

Twenty to thirty percent of our science graduates are leaving the country, according to a Waikato University marketing professor. But before the Opposition gets on their high horse about how "high" taxes are driving our best and brightest overseas, something needs to be pointed out: these people aren't leaving because of taxes; they're leaving because there are no jobs for them. Which in many ways makes it a non-problem: if there are no jobs, then their departure is (by definition) not contributing to the skills shortage. Rather we're producing a massive surplus of science graduates with nowhere to go.

Except it's not quite that simple. While there are no jobs for our science graduates today, there will be in a few years' time, as our universities and CRIs face mass cohort retirement. Unfortunately, our graduates can't wait that long: they have to keep current, or else their entire education (seven to ten years) is wasted. And so they go overseas, where there are jobs, and where their hard-earned skills can be put to use, rather than wasted in a call-centre or mindless retail proledom.

Why do we have this problem? As with so many of the problems besetting us at the moment (hospital waiting lists, an understaffed defence force, not enough police), it all goes back to a decade of systematic underfunding during the 90's. Since the break-up of the DSIR, staff numbers at our CRIs have gone one way: down. Restructurings, relocations, and natural attrition thinned the ranks of older scientists, while a virtual hiring freeze meant they were not replaced. Given the funding cuts and vagaries of five-year grants, this was a viable strategy - but it means that in five or ten years when the current staff retire, there will be problems finding enough people to take their place. Universities aren't nearly so badly off, but they have cohort problems of their own.

How can we solve this? If we don't want to face a mass shortage of scientists in a few years time, we need to start hiring them now. And this, more than anything else, will convince talented students that there is a future in science and that it is worth pursuing as a career. Unfortunately, that won't happen in the current science funding environment, and so unless the government decides to invest in the future of science in this country, it simply won't have one.