Qualified leak in the Arab world

A colleague from the Arab Parliament asked me: “Do you still send students to Western universities?” I replied: Yes, and in large numbers every year. He added: Will the scholarship come back after her assignment ends? I replied: Yes, as soon as he finished the mission. Ali responded and sadness enveloped his facial expressions, unfortunately we have someone going there who is not coming back.

The skills drain is plagued by most Arab countries and third world countries. Dr Hamed Ammar from Egypt described in his biography, “Milestones We Have Taken,” how his son Mustafa, who returned to his home country of Egypt, holds a master’s degree in best institutes of technology in the world, which is “MIT He is a distinguished young man and he was sent there at his father’s expense, and after his return to Egypt his father liked his son to work in Egypt, and to start registering it in the engineers’ union, and among the requirements for this is the equivalence of the certificate, and in the office of the employee responsible for this I looked for the name of the university from where he graduated Only this institute “MIT” found, due to his misfortune over the travel difficulties and high costs, and they have in Cairo what better than him. Then they asked him for a certificate on behalf of course he had studied for four years at the baccalaureate and a copy of the thesis, and immediately the son got up and thanked ié the manager for his information, and promised him he would. complete the required information, and so the bureaucracy thwarted the father’s attempts to induce his son to work in Egypt. The Canadian company “Bell” Communications prompted him to work on his research in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, to recover quickly until he became a team leader and then a project manager, but his father did not. was uncomfortable with this and persuaded him to continue studying and earning a doctorate, while he joined the University of Waterloo, and the university gave him $ 5,000 per month in return for his participation in teaching, and the National Council of Canada gave him $ 10,000 a month to help him until he graduated. doctorate, and when he informed his president along with his desire to leave the company and continue his studies, he thanked him and sent him a letter a week later informing him that the board of directors of the center had decided to grant him an amount of (10) thousand dollars. On a monthly basis, it is not conditional on his return to the center after obtaining his doctorate.

Dr. Ammar mentions in his biography that his son joined the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, the capital of Georgia, to rise through the academic ranks to the rank of professor and then be promoted to a higher degree, which is known as “Regent Professor GIT”, which is a chair for the distinguished professor so that the doctor does not leave until Relax after receiving a professor. A big difference between the frustrations and bureaucracies that third world researchers are exposed to, the waste of time and lack of funding, and what they find in terms of generous encouragement, care and aspirations for people by governments and Western companies, while giving them great freedom to pursue their studies or conduct research without conditions or restrictions.

The world is changing at breakneck speed and human capital, knowledge and technology are the real wealth. After the world depended 80% of its income on materials and 20% on knowledge, the situation changed and knowledge became the one that receives 80% of the income. It has become the human capital controlling the largest companies which have research centers that attract minds working day and night on research and development.

The Kingdom, with its ambitious vision and its multiple programs, must attract more talents and local and international talents, and facilitate the administrative and financial procedures that guarantee their attraction, empowerment and retention in universities, research centers and companies, including the activation of the expanded residency program to attract international skills, with continuous work to raise the level of performance of universities by activating twinning with international universities and their eminent colleges, and the establishment of an electronic platform concerned with attracting the best of the world, as is the case with the distinguished universities of the developed world. As for research centers, they must cooperate with research centers in developed countries to exchange know-how and skills and benefit from their products by manufacturing and marketing them.

The Kingdom is in a great phase of construction and serious work to diversify sources of income, and nothing will help, like the presence of productive research centers and strong universities that attract the best minds in the world, than this either as students or teachers. .

* City of “Riyadh”