Brain Drain

This week I spent some times in the Lab to do some experiments. Don’t want to bore you with the details. And that reminded me of an interesting discussion on the web on ‘brain drain’ in Brunei. What's interesting to know is that we have a ‘lost generation’ of past student achievers who seemed to ‘disappear’ and are not very prominent in the present Government set-up.

Back 20 years ago, Brunei Government embarked on special scholarship programme by sending the best and brightest to study 'A' level abroad and later to selected universities. Literally hundreds were involved in this programme. These students came back and later served as what has been planned for them - as doctors and other specialists. In the meantime, their lesser achieving counterparts have been sent to mainly ‘art-stream’ courses. Whilst the doctors and engineers are fulfilling their jobs, they remained stagnant in their jobs for years and saw their salaries vastly not competitive compare to working outside. Their counterparts returned to the country to become administrative officers and progressed very quickly in the Government organization. And this caused a bit of tension. Some of the doctors started to abandon their skill and move to become administrators to improve their job prospect. Some just quit the country for better pay abroad. Just look around in the government hierarchy right now, do you recognize any of your colleagues who have done very well in their school days being up there. More likely after all the hard works they put in those student’s years, they are likely to be working in a quite corner, tending their attention to sick patients. So that is what an imbalance education and scholarship policy does to the country 20 years later.