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In the last three decades, there has been a rush towards internationalizing higher education. The international double/joint degree programs are one of the drivers of internationalisation activities. Many African universities have evolved to offer their students these opportunities for academic mobility. This study is a phenomenological understanding of the experiences of African students in Canada on exchange partnerships for international double/joint degree programs (IDDP), using Bourdieu's toolbox. The result shows a gap between the ideal expectations and the instrumental aspects of the programs. Students seem satisfied, despite the challenges faced by participating in these programs.

The Chinese government has been actively recruiting foreign-trained Chinese scholars to return to China since the Chinese brain drain began. Japan is among the most popular destinations for Chinese scholars seeking to receive doctoral training. This study explores the factors contributing to the stratification of Japanese-trained Chinese PhDs' academic career attainments using the Mertonian norm of universalism. The results indicate that the norm of universalism can partly explain the stratification of Japanese-trained Chinese PhDs. The reason for this is that their higher pre-graduation productivity enhances the chance that Japanese-trained Chinese PhDs have of obtaining an academic position at a top university in China. In addition to pre-graduation academic productivity, other factors, including the prestige of the university attended, the duration of the academic sojourn in Japan, and the ethnicity of the supervisor influence employment outcomes.

To explore scientific mobility patterns, we leverage a rich bibliometric dataset on Taiwanese academia. We investigate the movement and productivity of 21,051 highly active researchers who published while affiliated with Taiwanese higher education institutions based on 30 years' worth of publication and affiliation records from 1991 to 2020. The analysis shows evidence of brain drain in Taiwan since the 2010s, with the U.S. the top destination for researchers moving from Taiwan (as well as the largest source of inbound researchers). China comes a close second to the U.S. as the top destination for outbound scholars. Studying how Taiwan's universities recruited talent after the country adopted the 2005 excellence initiative, we discover that the numbers of scholars recruited by World Class Universities (WCUs) and non-WCUs surprisingly converge with WCUs exhibiting a dramatic decrease in new recruits. Our evidence uncovers that inbound scholars, after their move, are more productive than non-mobile colleagues; however, this effect declines over time. We discuss implications for the study of excellence initiatives, their (un)intended consequences, and mechanisms of talent circulation that greatly impact research production and research university development.

Globalisation of labour has led to the migration of skilled workforce; known as 'brain drain'. To our knowledge, this paper is the first study which analyses brain drain from Türkiye through administrative register evidence of non-return bachelors' degree graduates. The analysis micro dataset in the paper is based completely upon administrative registers of public institutions of Republic of Türkiye. These public institutions including Ministry of Interior, Directorate-General for Population and Citizenship Affairs for residence abroad data, and Council of Higher Education of Türkiye (CoHE) for higher education data. The results were analysed through descriptive statistics. The results indicate that brain drain rate of bachelor's degree graduates is 3.23 per cent in the year 2020. The rate is calculated through considering 55,918 non-return graduates out of total number of 1,730,955 graduates. The most popular destinations to brain drain from Türkiye are the United States of America with 22.4 per cent, Germany with 14.3 per cent and the United Kingdom with 11.6 per cent. When it comes to gender distribution, brain drain rate of males is 3.62 per cent and it is 2.84 per cent for females. The results indicated that brain drain rate of bachelor's degree graduates increased more than 50% between the years 2011 and 2020. Therefore, future research is need to investigate the reason behind the high increase rates in brain drain from Türkiye. Residence abroad data used in this paper is based on the statements of Turkish bachelor's degree graduates reside abroad. Therefore, the actual number may even be higher than the figures here.

Although the crucial role of the diaspora in scientific research and postgraduate training in Africa has been well documented, much less is known about their role in undergraduate STEM education. In this case study, we reflect on our experiences of i) adapting the content of training in order to complement local expertise and needs; and ii) adopting active learning pedagogies in an undergraduate laboratory workshop a during a short-term diaspora fellowship. For diaspora scholars, we find that it is important to align foreign and local curricular objectives at the program and course level, to adopt and adapt local models and reagents to the extent possible, and to leverage expertise in host institutions to co-teach courses. Undergraduate participants valued the active learning approach and hands-on training with equipment. A case is made for academic diaspora to begin to consider undergraduate teaching as a high-return investment when collaborating in the global south.

Nowadays educational migration is still one of the most relevant topics for Russian and foreign scientists and an understudied topic at the same time. Despite the many published sources including quantitative and qualitative aspects of the process, the set of topics under consideration is quite limited (adaptation of foreign students, brain drain, demographical characteristics of migrants, etc.). The article using scientific principles of systematicity and general scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, comparison, classification, etc.) considers the dynamics of the changes in the amount of foreign students from the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States to the Russian Federation (including which countries they are from), correlation of the process with forming-up Common Education Space in Russia and CIS. The study conducted led to the conclusion that the actions by government agencies of the Russian Federation, higher education institutions and scientific organizations allowed stopping the negative process of foreign students drain, which took place in 1990s, promoting and increasing the educational migrant influx from the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States from 2000 to 2007. Among the leaders in the number of students studying at Russian universities, in early 1990-s there were Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belorussia and in 2017 there were Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

This paper aims at highlighting and interpreting current empirical facets of the Greek educational pathogeny through a sociological approach. Especially, the paper tries to investigate the relationship between education and employment in modern Greece based on the annual statistical report of KANEP/GSEE, choosing both selected facets and sociologically interpreted issues such as public and private expenditure, trends on specialties, outcomes of initial training teacher's profile etc. According to this data, the main political challenge is based on both the decrease of public expenditure and the maintenance of significantly high levels of household expenditure. Additionally, current trends, such as «brain drain» or migration of highly educated people, prove that Greek public universities' learning outcomes remain competitive and effective through the framework of a global labour market, notwithstanding the harsh critique blaming them for «statism» and mismatching with the labour needs.

Taking the migration-higher education nexus as an analytical entry point, we address the question: How can we account for different internationalisation outcomes? We focus on three actors involved in the global race to internationalise higher education activities: higher education institutions (HEIs), states, and migrants. We argue that the migration-higher education nexus enables us to begin describing and explaining differences in internationalisation outcomes (i.e. greater, limited, or none) by focussing our empirical attention on the interaction between HEI internationalisation strategies, state policies, and migrant agency to move/stay. We delineate various configurations of these interactions and how they determine internationalisation outcomes.

Democratisation in Turkey collapsed in the wake of the 2016 failed military coup and the crackdown that followed, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan launching a widespread rollback of academic and other liberties, systematically purging civic institutions of political opponents and critics that significantly harmed intellectuals, students, and educational rights. This paper analyses the narratives of Turkish citizens who were prosecuted, dismissed, abused, tortured, victimised, and imprisoned during the State of Emergency (OHAL) initiated after the failed coup attempt in July 2016. This narrative approach examines the transcripts of in-depth interviews about the experiences and critical life stories of 20 individuals now living in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Also included are field notes and documents that reveal the authorities' violations of their educational human rights. These included the denial of education, unwarranted dismissal, elimination of academic freedom of thought, and harassment of academics and their children. Such violations have created a brain drain of educators fleeing the country. These deleterious changes in the Turkish education system have had severe social and political effects and have produced an education system that fails to meet the country's needs, which, if not remediated, will ripple through the generations, dimming the nation's future.

Many scholars from developing countries receive financial incentives to go to Western countries to study and are then expected to return to develop their home country's research capacity. Given the common assumption that diasporic study will be beneficial for local research, the repatriation of these academics is an issue worthy of exploration. In this article, we propose that tension can result from the relationship between the expectations of scholars who have studied in the West and the practices of their home universities. We draw on in-depth data from three Vietnamese universities and four academics all affiliated to these institutions. The degree of congruence between the specific Vietnamese universities' policies and practices and participants' understanding of research was found to be a conspicuous influence on their repatriation decision. We discuss the implications of this on academic mobility and apply these implications to develop a framework for scholars' sustainable repatriation.

Methodological nationalism (MN) pervades higher education scholarship and practice, particularly in the arena of globalisation of higher education (HE) (Shahjahan and Kezar 2013). MN refers to the assumption that national boundaries define the natural category or unit of analysis for society. Drawing on affect theories, this conceptual article aims to problematise how the 'nation state' as a natural category (or container) pervades global HE practices and policies. Affect refers to emotions, responses, reactions and feelings that are relational and transpersonal, and an object's (e.g., nation-state) continuous emergence and unfolding in a world driven by intensities and feelings. Based on three real-life examples in/about South Asian HE, we demonstrate how the 'nation-state' category comes into being (and becomes 'sticky') through the experienced and imagined encounters among: (a) individuals, (b) national policy and (c) transnational actors. We show how, through imaginaries and practices, the 'global' manifested through using the 'nation-state', indicating a strong and evolving relationship between the two categories, informed by emotional and imaginative futures. We argue that an affect lens illuminates how MN is perpetuated as the nation-state becomes a naturalised container for (potential) encounters in the enactments of HE globalisation and moving beyond MN requires an ontological shift.

Previous research has conceptualized and investigated internationalization of higher education in relatively stable and peaceful environments. Studies on internationalization in the context of war are largely absent. Using interviews and survey responses from Ukrainian professors and administrators affected by the Russian invasion of 2014-2022, this paper re-examines the premises of internationalization, and outlines key dilemmas facing universities in times of existential crisis. The study reveals that the transformative powers of crisis-driven internationalization redefine ontological and axiological foundations of universities. University stakeholders readjust their responsibilities to reduce human vulnerability, while international solidarity helps them mitigate fragility in the war-affected academia.

Contributions to home country after international higher education (IHE) have long been considered within the traditional frameworks of brain drain or brain circulation. However, recent scholarship has hinted at more nuances into this issue than what has been predominantly discussed. This study focuses on IHE graduate agency to investigate the contributions of studying abroad to a home country. It builds from international-comparative fieldwork that included interviews with 50 recent Turkish IHE graduates who studied in four purposefully selected countries--Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Germany and the UK--and who either stayed or returned to their home country afterwards. The findings highlight the role of agency in IHE graduates' contributions to their home country. Returning to the home country does not equate to contributing to it, as some participants expressed that they contribute better from abroad while others refuse to contribute even after returning. The study also demonstrates that combining individual agency with push--pull factors emanating from the home country provides a more holistic explanation, as the home country dynamics have been found to be influential on agential stances regarding contributions.

Following the relevant literature on higher education services, the objective of this study explores how the higher education perceived value outlines students' satisfaction with the service and their migration intentions. Data from 1,150 university students in Macedonia was collected and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling. The results showed that functional, emotional, conditional and image value perceived about the degree are significant incitements of overall satisfaction, while social influence by reference groups minimizes satisfaction. In turn, students' satisfaction decreases their intentions to leave the country. Moreover, the year of study acts as a moderator by delivering higher satisfaction, hence reducing brain drain intentions, for students in higher courses. The conclusions of this research emphasize the need for universities to increase appreciation of the higher education system's quality, efficiency, and reputation. Since the beginning of their studies, students should be able to recognize and experience their education as beneficial for their professional future in the country, reducing in this way one of the major concerns in Western Balkans, the brain drain intentions.

The main goal of this study is to determine the extent to which academically successful students studying in secondary schools in Turkey that only accept students scoring in extremely high (94th-99th) percentile on standardized tests harbor intentions to emigrate from Turkey in the future. In addition, a secondary goal is to examine why they intend to carry out the various academic work, scientific work, cutting-edge technological research, and/or plans, patents, and discoveries related to R & D that they have already designed or plan to do in the future in different countries, i.e. why they intend to emigrate. The study was designed in accordance with qualitative research methods; three different groups were defined in order to obtain three sets of data. The first set of data was collected from 40 students from a school in Ankara that only accepts students who score in the 99th percentile or higher on the LYS-TEOG [LYS=Undergraduate Placement Exam; TEOG= Transition From Primary to Secondary Education Exam), the second set of data was obtained from a total of 98 students from a school that accepts students whose scores range from the 97th to the 99th percentile on the LYS-TEOG, and the third and final set of data was collected from a total of 56 students from a different school, one that accepts students whose scores range from the 94th to the 96th percentile on the LYS-TEOG. NVIVO 11, a qualitative data analysis computer software package, was used during the analysis of the findings; content analysis was the preferred research method. The findings of the study indicate that a large percentage of the most academically successful students in Turkey intend to emigrate as a direct result of the lack of trust in their own country, nonmerit-based hiring standards & administrative decisions, the perception that science and research are not highly valued in Turkey, and concerns over the lack of support for workers and researchers alike.

Context: The topic of this paper is how mass emigration of skilled workers affects national policies, and employers' willingness to invest in Vocational Education and Training (VET) in Poland. In the wake of EU enlargement in 2004, Poland became one of the biggest sending countries for skilled labour to Western European countries. These massive outflows of skilled labour, not compensated by adequate inflows of equally skilled workers, have led to serious skills shortages, especially in the construction sector. The paper investigates whether emigration and immigration constitute a driving force for institutional change of the Polish VET system, by analysing policy development and the attitudes of VET stakeholders towards contributing to VET. Approach: The paper focuses on the emigration of skilled construction workers in Poland. Drawing on Hirschman's (1970) framework, when faced with massive skills deficits construction companies are confronted with different options: i) withdraw from the VET system and find other training and recruitment options (exit), ii) attempt to improve conditions by turning to policy makers (voice), and/or iii) remain loyal to the VET system. The analysis is based on an interview study of decision makers responsible for VET policies, employers, chamber of Craft and trade unions, principals of vocational schools, teachers and representatives of regional examination boards. Findings: After years of inattention, VET has been regaining a strong position in national policies. We find that construction companies are mostly more willing now, compared to 5 years ago, to take on learners for practical training and to contribute to improving school equipment. The study showed that one of the most significant obstacles to employers investing in the training of VET learners is the fear of losing a young skilled employee through emigration. Yet, dependent on skilled labour, employers of big construction companies saw no other option than to continue investing in training young learners. However, smaller companies seeking the short-term benefits of employing low-cost labour are less interested in investing in VET. Conclusion: Despite a range of recent policy actions and legislative efforts, several major challenges in the Polish VET system remain unresolved. Continued effort to institutionalise and enhance dialogue between the education system and the labour market appears as the most pressing need. It is currently too early to determine the degree of "institutional stickiness" of the activities observed on the policy level and among employers regarding their increased interest in VET as a response to mass skilled emigration.

The problem of regional migration is treated in the article. The development of the Far Eastern territories is a priority now. The government has developed many large-scale projects aimed at supporting the remote region, but the problem of emigration of the economically active population has not settled since 1991. The problem of the outflow of promising young personnel from its territory is particularly acute. The purpose of this research is to study the reasons for the migration of young people from the Primorsky Region - one of the regions of the Far East. "The main tasks" were to obtain visions of migration moods and motivation of migration behavior of students. The study used a psychological verbal-communicative "method"--a survey in which a specially designed list of questions was used as a means to collect information from the respondent. The survey covered about 1,000 respondents between the ages of 15 and 30. The research has shown that the main reason for emigration of school graduates is the opportunity to progress, studying in prestigious domestic and foreign universities, working in the largest Russian and foreign companies, that not enough represented here. Excellent and good rated school graduates prefer to enter Moscow and St. Petersburg universities. This means that most prospective workers in the future want to leave the territory of the region. Analysis of the responses of the university graduates revealed the prevalence of negative expectations about their future and the future of the territories. The data indicated that the main reasons to leave the country and the Primorsky Region are low job prospects for university graduates, lack of self-realization possibilities, low wages and the instability of the region's political and socio-economic situation. In addition, the situation is exacerbated by the fact that respondents, for the most part, do not know about the projects that are being implemented in the region and do not see career prospects, which confirms the implementation of many strategic projects of the region only on paper. The lack of measures to prevent the emigration of young people will have a number of negative economic and social consequences, one of which is the reduction of competitevness of the territory. Creating favorable conditions for young people in the region, active public policy to attract young skilled professionals in Primorye is a prerequisite for the development of the region's intellectual capital and a guarantee of its dynamic socio-economic development.

From the perspective of peripheralised countries, internationalisation is imbalanced and hegemonic, as it is predominantly constructed by universities in the Global North. We explore the imbalanced internationalisation from the cases of sub-Saharan Africa through the dominance of Western knowledge systems and brain drain; China through isolation and playing 'catch up'; and Indonesia through the financial crisis, the bailout conditions of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank and marketisation. By taking the cases of sub-Sahara Africa, China and Indonesia, this article problematises the idea of internationalisation and argues that it further relegates universities from the peripheralised countries to the margin.

The emigration of skilled and able workers from Russia markedly increased in the last five years, prompting Russian scholars to reassess the phenomenon of brain drain, its definition, scope, consequences and causes. This article finds that the perceived connection between increasing 'brain drain' from Russia and the internationalization of higher education in Russia has played an important role in recent debates. From an analysis of Russian scholarly articles and transcripts of interviews with Russian educators directly involved in internationalization, this study finds that despite the evident concern amongst the Russian academic community about the nexus between internationalization and brain drain, emigration is still seen as a perfect choice for an individual who is skilled and able. This ambivalent attitude towards 'brain drain' has created a situation where some Russian academics use it to justify their resistance to internationalization assuming a causal relationship between the two, while others, by word and deed, support internationalization as a means of curbing emigration. In the context of controversial educational reforms underway in Russia since the 1990s, such perceptions have helped internationalization survive.

Volumes of research studies, surveys, and census data document the "brain drain," the phenomenon of highly educated and highly skilled workers migrating from their hometown to an urban or metropolitan area that promises a better life. Early indications of brain drain begin with high school graduates determining where to attend college. There is a pervasive belief that it is a measure of success and part of a process of upward mobility to go away to college, and therefore an implied failure if one remains in their hometown or region while earning a degree. This mentality and encouraged brain drain behavior is reinforced by a K-12 education system that sorts students early in their academic careers and invests in the best and brightest, while paying little attention to the majority of students (Harmon, 2010). This is a skewed approach and leaves many individuals, and their hometowns, with few opportunities and stifled upward social and economic mobility. The needs of the workforce are rapidly changing. Some form of post-secondary education is required for the majority of entry-level jobs in the United States (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017). Yet, higher education is being faced with increasing competition and growing skepticism regarding the value of a college degree. By collaborating and partnering with the region in which an institution exists, urban, suburban, or rural, colleges and universities can cut through higher education's competitive noise and growing skepticism, while addressing the changing workforce needs and redefining students' pride about where they earn a degree, and begin their careers, close to home. We call this paradigm shift the "Brain Remain," and it has the potential to significantly alter the way higher education, K-12 districts, businesses, and community leaders work, operate, and collaborate in the new economy. This, in turn, can create bold new opportunities for students where they least expect them: right in their own backyards.

International Student Mobility (ISM) is progressively becoming a significant aspect of the higher education scenario. The universal higher education milieu has undergone a tremendous change due to ISM as the number of students going abroad for higher education is growing incessantly with every passing year. Pakistan is a developing country that has experienced increasing ISM in the last forty years. Despite all academic and professional opportunities available to students, they desire to go abroad for higher education and settle down there, causing brain drain in the country. This research study attempts to identify the determinants of international student mobility from the perspective of either students, who are in the process of enrolling in international universities or those who are aspiring to go abroad for higher studies. This study used qualitative research approach based on interpretivism paradigm. A total of 14 students from different public and private sector universities participated, out of which nine were male and five were female with ages between 18 and 24 years approximately. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the subjective data. The findings brought to light key academic, professional and social motivations of individuals for studying abroad. These findings can act as a guideline for higher education institutions and national policy makers to draft policies and strategies that might enable reversal of the vicious phenomena of brain drain.

Internationalization in Arabia higher education space is expanding rapidly. It has taken different shapes with no systematic approach to evaluate its success and impact. By analysing patterns of mobility; trends; and forms of academic cooperation in Arabia, a framework for internationalization is introduced. The purpose is to guide efforts towards a strengthened position of higher education in the international dimension. Internationalization promotes the idea of making the university a dynamic cross-boarder educational environment. The higher education space in Arabia is analysed mainly in the internationalization perspective. The German Jordanian University is presented as an illustrative example. The objective is to draw on its experience as a benchmark for devising a workable scenario for implementing internationalization as an important dimension of higher education. The results show the importance of the derived benefits of study abroad, program cooperation, partnership, internship, and research collaboration as essential ingredients of internationalization in higher education systems.

This article reports a study that investigated prospective and current Vietnamese international students' motivations to study abroad and their immigration intentions. Analyses of 55 intercept interviews and 313 responses to a survey revealed 12 push and pull factors that motivated students to pursue overseas studies and 18 sociocultural, economic, and political factors that influenced their immigration intentions. Independent samples t tests indicated that there were statistically significant differences in the influence of motivations on decisions to study overseas between groups of male and female students and prospective and current students. The analyses, furthermore, suggested that students' immigration intentions depended on their personal attachment to the home country and (perceived) adaptability to the host country.

This article aims to examine the employment prospects of graduates from Sino-foreign cooperative universities (SFCUs) compared with those from local Chinese universities. Drawing on the annual employment quality reports released by six SFCUs, the findings indicated that SFCU graduates had distinct advantages in terms of both further study and direct employment. Specifically, the overall employment rate reached 95.84%; over half of the graduates pursued further study abroad in world-class foreign universities, close to one-third continued further studies in elite domestic universities, and one-sixth were employed by transnational or local large organizations. These results suggest that SFCU graduates were equipped with distinct competitive advantages for employment, further supported by an affluent family background and the high-quality requirement for admission. Meanwhile, the findings also raise concerns about brain drain, economic flows, overeducation, reduced entrepreneurial passion, and unemployment dilemma for graduates from lesser known SFCUs.

Approximately one-third of countries in the world are regarded as small states. There are also subnational jurisdictions, or small territories, that share similar characteristics of small states. Their small size renders them vulnerable to changes in the global economy, and this, in turn, has an impact on trade, business, and employment. In this paper, we review the characteristics of small states and territories with reference to Macao and the influences on people's career development. Career paths in small states and territories tend to be characterised by the need for greater flexibility and readiness for adaptation. For this reason, career development practitioners in those settings are recommended to embed the notion of career adaptability within the services and training they provide.

The outward migration of skilled migrants has disproportionally affected the Global South, particularly in countries in Africa, producing what is commonly referred to as 'brain drain'. Within this literature, there has been considerable focus on the future migration intentions of international students, who symbolise skilled migration. However, much previous literature assumes international education must be obtained through physical mobility, despite the growing provision of internationalisation at a distance, whereby students remain 'at home' while studying online or distantly from an institution based 'abroad'. This study has unravelled the future migration intentions of students studying through online distance education, using a questionnaire of 607 South African, Namibian, and Zimbabwean students in relation to four sets of factors: academic and social adjustment, educational and work experience, socio-economic variables, and individual demographic characteristics. Our findings indicate a complex picture of international distance students' future migration intentions and significant differences between students based on country of origin, socioeconomic status, and demographic variables. These findings have particular relevance following the increasing shifts to online distance learning following the COVID-19 pandemic.

This article evaluates the potential for rebuilding tertiary education in Guinea-Bissau focusing on the reconstitution of the Universidade Amílcar Cabral, the operations of Universidade Lusófona da Guiné, and the development of the Bissau Campus Project through the West African Vocational Schools (WAVS) project. The article considers available resources and contextual constraints in the face of underdevelopment, structural violence, neo-colonialism, and a context-specific educational legacy. In the face of considerable barriers to rebuilding tertiary education in Guinea-Bissau, how can it be done? Achievements in other contexts, and specific recommendations for Guinea-Bissau, are aggregated to demonstrate how collaborating stakeholders can amalgamate knowledge and develop viable educational programs that are contextually sensitive, appropriate, and sustainable.

Brain drain is a context-based issue and has direct impact on the quality of higher education for institutions where a significant number of instructors migrate to take up work in other countries. This is a critical problem in Yemen where higher teacher education programmes still lack teachers. Interpretive analysis of in-depth interviews with two university administrators and ten teacher educators revealed four key factors affecting the occurrence of brain drain: ineffective application of sabbatical leave regulations; failure to equalize returning teachers' salaries with those of their colleagues; lack of resources to support research; and the presence of internal and external conflicts. The study also provides insights for decreasing brain drain in Yemen.

Rural youth are now graduating from high school at rates comparable to their peers in urban and suburban schools, however far fewer rural youth pursue postsecondary education. Using a comparative case study method, we explore postsecondary preparation efforts at three rural school districts. Each case represents a different classification of rural: fringe, distant, and remote. We find that while all three districts offered similar postsecondary preparation programs, the amount and array of available course offerings and levels of additional support provided by the community differed. We also explore how the values and philosophies of school administrators shaped the postsecondary preparation efforts. These findings are considered through the lens of previous research on factors that influence the educational outcomes of rural youth, including literature on rural brain drain.

Purpose of the present research is an investigation of the most recent personnel reforms of higher education institutions in China and in Italy. A one-to-one comparison between the two realities would have been unrealistic, given the enormous differences between the two Countries in size and historical development. We focused our analysis on some basic issues common to both higher education institutions, such as the degree of the academic autonomy from the political power in the academic governance and the quality of the knowledge production and transfer to the society. The Sun Yat-Sen and the Guangzhou Universities in the Guangdong Province of China, and the Universities of Padua and Ca' Foscari in the Venetian Region of Italy, have been chosen as case studies. In China the personnel reforms introduced by the central government in the period 1995-2014, were accompanied by a relevant financial support by the central and regional authorities, which helped the national universities to attain high standards of excellence in the technological domain. Those remarkable financial investments by the central and regional authorities are paying off, contributing to the technological advancement of the Country. As for the Italian public universities, a very innovative reform law was introduced by the "Ministry of Education, University and Research" in December 2010, which granted a high level of governance autonomy to those institutions. Unfortunately, the great financial crisis that hit the Country in the same period of time caused a strong reduction of the public funds to universities and a consequent brain drain of young post graduates toward Northern Europe and North America. In spite of this temporary shortage of funds, Italian public universities have maintained their high level of excellence in science, technology and humanities, as evidenced by the increasing number of their bilateral cooperation agreements, concerning student mobility and joint research activities with foreign universities all over the world, China included.

The mobility of the highly skilled, summarized as brain drain, brain circulation and brain gain, remains a contentious issue for policy. Even so, the evidence base to inform policy remains poor. This gap is of particular importance to policymakers in countries that experience brain drain. This paper reports on the findings of a tracer study of international African doctoral graduates of South Africa's leading universities. Since access to student records was problematic, the sample frame was developed by the inspection of library holdings of dissertations. This approach allowed for a representative sample to be surveyed. Contrary to the expectation that the majority of graduates would depart from Africa as a brain drain, it was found that the majority returned home on completion. Some 10% remained in South Africa as a brain gain to the host country, with but 5% leaving Africa. The outcome of their temporary migration was brain circulation and talent development.

Creating world-class universities (WCUs) has recently become a significant policy and practice in higher education in China under the Double World-Class Project. However, some negative effects have encouraged decoupling from the policy goals. To identify the reasons, we conducted policy document analysis and purposive interviews at three elite universities, focusing on financial funding, discipline development, and human resources. First, the uneven funding plans by central and local governments shape non-competitive environments for universities, hindering the dynamic adjustment of the Double World-Class Project. Second, universities have closed or merged programs in weak academic disciplines to gain legitimacy and stability in conformance to WCU guidelines. Last, as a result of the unbalanced development of universities in east, middle, and west China, universities in the west are facing a serious brain drain. To achieve a higher level of performance, an increasing number of 'shadow academics' are being recruited by Chinese universities. These decoupling responses and manipulative strategies result from the dominating constituent in WCUs, ambiguity in policy contents, hierarchical control systems in higher education, and uncertain environments for universities.

In a globalising world, the international mobility of academics and researchers is important for their career. However, increasing migration of academics in the form of an academic brain drain is becoming a major challenge especially for Europe due to an ageing population. The issue of brain drain has been addressed usually through quantitative studies that fail to explore the in-depth reasons behind it, and present standard outcomes. Through a synthesis of qualitative literature over two decades (2000-2020), this paper presents a new perspective of the root causes of academic brain drain in Europe. After careful examination of the qualitative literature, five factors have been found to be responsible for the outflow of human capital. These include: (1) attractive salaries outside Europe; (2) short-term fixed contracts for early career researchers; (3) unfair recruitment procedures; (4) attractive migration policies and (5) the indirect role played by internationalisation policies to encourage permanent mobility.

Early childhood education has received attention from philosophers, educationists and psycho-analysts such as Plato, Avicenna, Locke, Pestalozzi, Whitehead, Carl Jung, Binet, Piaget, Montessori, Sigmund Freund, Howard Gardner, among others. In Africa, the backdrop of poverty, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in strife-torn countries, among other threats, have deprived many children of quality education. Some have missed valuable education because of poor and bad government leadership. Lack of good governance has impacted negatively on education delivery. The emergence of ICT has worsened the quality of education as many children have lost touch with the 3 Rs of reading, arithmetic, and writing skills. Many interventions are needed to support single mothers, latchkey children of busy working parents, among others. The cost of education is too burdensome for some families. Our local governments are weak on the ground to offer support. Differential learning is not possible in schools with untrained teachers, paucity of learning and instructional materials etc. Social interventions are needed to support vulnerable children to be in school and not to become street kids and potential social outcasts and misfits. We need to revive strong religious and moral education in schools to arrest social and moral decay. There is need to create sense of wonder, creativity, imagination, discovery, and activity in children by touching their hands, hearts, and minds through drama, art and crafts, story-telling, physical exercise, STEM education, action-research, thematic studies, units of discovery, excursions, and other multi-learning channels. Precocious and gifted children need challenging programmes. Autism and physically-, socially- and emotionally-challenged children need additional school support in inclusive education where no child is left behind. Local curricula need to be integrated and attention paid to issues of multiculturalism.

The arena of 'English-Speaking International Schooling' continues to grow, reaching almost 12,000 schools in 2020. The growing teaching arena attracts 30,000 new entrants each year and continues to be dominated by British-trained teachers. Little is actually known about the motives or subsequent experiences of this body. However, the narrative about this 'brain-drain' tends to be negative and condescending, referring to teachers 'fleeing' Britain and 'escaping' neoliberal performativity and accountability, and finding 'refuge' overseas. The reality is that many may enter an equally difficult, insecure, and precarious environment. This paper explores the emergent terrain and shows how it has changed over time, revealing the reality of teaching in a new arena of profit-driven activity in mainland China, aimed mainly at local Chinese parents. A resultant new narrative is proposed, based upon positive notions of 'resistance' and 'self-care', which helps to explain why the exodus tends (at present) to be largely one-way.

This paper describes three eras of state building and higher education in Canada. Higher education in 'Old Canada' before WWII was mostly a small collection of colleges that bore imprints of American and British institutions and provided personnel needed to develop a vast and sparsely populated territory. The 'Hey Day of Canadian Nationalism' from 1950 to 1990 greatly expanded universities and colleges in a broader project of modern state building and social uplift, borrowing organizational models from mass-access American state colleges. The third era, 'Transnational Nation-Building,' spanning the past 20 years, uses Canadian degrees and diplomas to lure selective immigrants who seek Canadian citizenship and entrée to an emerging transnational class of English-speaking professionals. That strategy, along with a series of converging forces, is leveraging Canadian colleges and universities to implicitly adopt a new institutional path. We end by discussing insights that the Canadian case may provide for comparative understandings of higher education and state building.

This paper examines the relationship between the politics of Higher Education access pertaining to longstanding practices of patrimonial authoritarian politics and the narration of collective trauma. Building on an empirical study of Syrian HE during war, we suggest that a "narrative disjuncture" within HEIs has a damaging impact not only upon the educational process, HE reconstruction and reform, but also upon the possibility of social reconciliation. This is especially true when access to education and post-graduation opportunities are directly linked to patrimonial favouritism; widespread social inequalities in access and retention; a violent turn in the purging of oppositional academics; a severely exacerbated brain drain linked to political views; and significantly sparser employment opportunities. Building on the study findings, we show how these challenges are linked to ethico-political positioning vis-à-vis the mass movement of 2011 and related cultural trauma narratives. In closing, we suggest that understanding the relationship between HE access and cultural trauma can inform decision-making on HE reconstruction and future reform.

This paper explores the contemporary relationship between international student migration and diaspora formation. It argues that international students have been largely absent from recent discussions of 'knowledge diasporas', where migrants' 'home' states attempt to harness and co-opt the skills and knowledge of their émigrés. This is surprising, given students' evident role in knowledge circulation and exchange. In this paper, we foreground the significance of international students but also explore their relationship to diaspora formation from a different angle. We argue that some states are increasingly engaging in (sometimes seemingly contradictory) policies designed to "obstruct" overseas diaspora formation, and these policies centre on their international student populations. Through a number of case studies and drawing on the secondary literature, we demonstrate the ways in which states are strategising to repatriate international students following their studies overseas. More broadly, we argue, this represents an alternative to popular notions of brain circulation and knowledge diasporas, chiming with a far more long-standing concern with 'brain drain'.