Text response: Brain Gain in the Western Balkans

Brain Drain is one of the biggest problems in this area. How to stop young, highly educated people
leaving their native countries and moving to foreign, mostly Western countries, in pursuit for better
life? The fact is that we can’t really stop them. Those people are seeking a place to live where they
would be able to show all their qualities and, of course, be deservedly paid for it. What we can do,
however, is try to bring them back by certain initiatives. This attempt is popular under the term Brain
Gain and it is currently quite popular in countries like Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Albania etc. In other
words, Brain Gain is nothing but a conception designed by public institutions in order to win back
their former students and in that way improve the reputation of educational system in their countries.

We have to start from the very beginning and ask ourselves why Brain Drain is even present in this
area. Why do all those prominent and well educated students have the necessity to leave their homes
and build their careers somewhere abroad? Why don’t they stay here and try to develop new strategies
and methods which will, step by step, make our country a desirable place to live? I guess that the vast
majority of those young people really did make a certain effort and tried staying here for long as
possible. I do believe that they were planning to stay here where they would eventually build a
successful career and then a family. But what happened? We live in a country where it is very difficult
to achieve a thriving job in relatively short period. For example, if you are a potential investor who is
eager to build a hotel somewhere on the Croatian Coast within a year period, your plan here would be
seen as extremely pretentious and in general less likely to happen. You need to have a huge number of
licenses and authorizations which will, while you were collecting them, literally drive you crazy.
Everything is postponed and these interminable processes eventually take all your enthusiasm and
excitement you initially had. This is, to my point of view, the main reason for leaving this country and
deciding to start a new life somewhere abroad. Young people, who just received their diplomas, are
normally very passionate and want to accomplish their dreams as soon as possible. The system we
belong to is, unfortunately, being a dream killer rather than motivational and inspirational. So how can
we change it? What can we do in order to improve working conditions and keep all those young,
enthusiastic people here? I believe that we have to start making profound changes regarding not only
educational aspect of the system, but also politics, trade etc. We need new, young, people who will
come up with fresh and innovative ideas and lead our country in progress. The fact is that changing the
whole conception of a certain country requires a lot of time and effort. We must be aware that we
cannot immediately become as thriving as Finland for example. It is not an overnight task, it lasts few
years or even decades, but once we accomplish it, we won’t regret it. So young and educated people
must be prepared to sacrifice themselves and spend their whole lives here working something that
would, somewhere on the West, probably be more appreciated. They must stay here and help building
a better system for the future so that one day their children and grandchildren would be happy and
satisfied in their native countries and wouldn’t even consider going abroad and creating their future
there.

Even though this may seem a bit too idealistic and naive, I really do believe that these things are going
to happen. We can’t continue living like this. Our system is going from bad to worse and we must stop
further deterioration, unless we want to crash completely. Certain changes must be done and the
sooner we realize it, the easier it will be to get our country out of this crisis where it seems to be stuck
for quite a while.

Darija Turković