Malaysian brain drain – don’t go chasing waterfalls
The topic of brain drain has been increasingly becoming the talk of the town for Malaysians during the last few years. However, mass media and researchers have been highlighting that this global phenomenon is very real for Malaysia since more than a decade ago. The policymakers were aware of this too.
Already a decade ago, the National Economic Advisory Council (Critical Occupation List, occupations requiring high skills and knowledge related to ICT, electronics, engineering, and research have been consistently listed as "hard to fill” since 2015 until now.
In other words, our education was in a hole for almost a decade in terms of its relevance to the fast marching 4IR. Do you think we could address such a gap within a short time? It would take at least one more decade, provided we radically reform our education system today.
Therefore, in a situation like this, returning the lost to the foreign lands high-skilled and talented individuals will become our best bet to jump-start Malaysia’s industry.
Meanwhile, the global empirical research links the persistent brain drain issue with various structural problems for its home country (Figure 3), such as ageing population, low intellectual and academic standards, starvation of talent replacement, low aggregate creative potential, poor governance and policymaking, middle-income trap, low industry development (less breadth and depth), poor quality of life, poor economy, low foreign direct investment, fewer job opportunities and corruption. What does not Malaysia have out of this list by now?
From Figure 3, we observe not a linear but rather an exponential increase in the number of individuals, including high-skilled, leaving Malaysia over the last 40 years.
The projected figures indicate that by 2022 global Malaysian diaspora should be around 2 million, while the highly skilled 25 years old and above category probably constitutes about half a million by now.
According to the same estimates, slightly over a million Malaysian-born individuals live in Singapore (about 50 per cent of the total Malaysian diaspora worldwide), out of which close to a quarter of a million are highly skilled individuals.
Of course, the geographic proximity of such a highly developed nation as Singapore makes it a perfect destination for migration.
And it also makes it easier for Singapore to headhunt our brainiest compatriots.
And there is hardly anything we can do about this unless we seriously change how the future of our country is shaped --- the policymaking and governance process.
Noteworthy, as revealed in the details of the yearly Critical Occupation List by TaletCorp, the vacancies for occupations that require high skills and knowledge related to ICT, electronics, engineering, and research are difficult to fill even when the employers offer higher salaries to attract the critical talents. Also, as some employers disclose, there is steep competition for these critical occupations from abroad.
In other words, for the Malaysian brain drain, this is no longer even about the high salaries. Even though an attractive salary could be one of the major factors, undoubtedly impacting many spheres of the individual’s life. However, how about general climate and culture, lack of innovation, lack of excitement from newness and progressiveness, lack of meritocracy, but overabound of complacency, corruption, social injustice and outright racism at times etc.?
Remember again, the Malaysian brain drain is voting with the feet against the overall Malaysian setup of governance and policymaking, which is the single most critical variable we need to change before we see everything else start falling into place, not only brain drain.
Dr Rais Hussin and Dr Margarita Peredaryenko are part of the research team at EMIR Research, an independent think tank focused on strategic policy recommendations based on rigorous research.