The brain drain in its simplest form is the movement of intelligent educated people from one country to the other, leaving that original country without that individual who could have made a difference or improved society there. This is a problem that first came to my attention when I was able to meet the president of Slovakia and at this event, there was a young girl giving a presentation on this topic. I suddenly became very intrigued because of the personal connection it ensued. My dad immigrated from Slovakia to America in the 80s and depending on your standards, I would say that he is a fairly successful person. Raising a family of 4 and living in Naperville cant be easy. As soon as I made this connection to what the speaker was telling me, I couldn’t help but think that my own father might have contributed to the brain drain in Slovakia. It’s not like I’m holding it against him or anything, I love my life and everything I get to do, but this was just fascinating.
I was able to use this connection that I made in my final project first-semester junior year, I loved what I was learning and was very motivated to work on it, figuring out more and more of what I could do and the origins of this problem.
What I learned when doing my research was pretty fascinating. As I defined earlier, the problem is that people are leaving the country, without making any sorts of economic improvements. According to the Slovak Spectator, “‘more than 300,000 Slovaks work abroad either short or long term, while an additional about 30,000 Slovaks are studying abroad’ (Slovak Spectator). With this many educated people leaving the country, there is no certainty that they will come back. Joining the workforce is very common and ‘almost 70 percent of the respondents are preparing to stay abroad indefinitely’ (Slovak Spectator)” (Jakub Siska). Because all these intelligent working people are leaving the country, they won’t be able to contribute any growth to the country, and that’s really a shame. I’m all for people going on and creating the best experiences for themselves, but it’s just sad to see a whole country take the consequences.
The main solution that I have come up with is to spread awareness and promote business exchange from Slovakia to other countries. This way, there will be more people getting better jobs and opportunities in Slovakia so there will be no need to move. There’s a ton of resources there and plenty of space so land isn’t the problem except that it is landlocked. But Slovakia’s lead export is automobiles and they build for tons of different companies like Land Rover, Jaguar, Kia, etc so especially with the uprise of electric cars, Slovakia could fit pretty well into this system.
But on the other hand, this is an almost unsolvable problem, people are going to chase their dreams and its unfortunate that people are leaving their home country, but it’s hard to put myself in those shoes since I was born and raised in America, the place where most people want to end up.
“Brain Drain Of Slovakia Goes On – Spectator.Sme.Sk.” Spectator.sme.sk. N. p., 2019. Web. 14 Dec. 2019.