Worrying about the brain drain

DANIEL McCABE | Should we be worrying about the brain drain? Principal Bernard Shapiro sure thinks so. In a recent address to the Association des économistes du Québec, Shapiro said the ongoing loss of top academic talents from McGill and other Quebec universities to the U.S. and elsewhere "will relegate our society to a very mediocre future." Pointing to a recent Conference Board study, Shapiro noted that 98,000 Canadians left in 1998 for the U.S., as compared to 17,900 12 years earlier. The principal also mentioned a recent speech by Alcan president Jacques Bougie, who stated that PhDs were eight times more likely than the average person to move to the United States. Shapiro referred to the Institut de la Statistique du Québec which estimates that 30 per cent of those who leave Quebec hold university degrees. "If you figure that only eight per cent of Quebecers hold any university degree at all, that 30 per cent represents a staggering loss." To a certain extent, it's natural that many talented Quebecers are attracted to the U.S. "One of the occupational hazards of living in Canada is that we live right next door to the most powerful nation in the world. "The real problem ... is that we are not replacing these talented individuals either from within Quebec or from elsewhere." The brain drain is contributing to a crisis in the making at McGill, Shapiro said, noting that, within 10 years, half of McGill's current professors will probably have retired. "This is shocking, when you pause to think about it, because it means that unless we begin to hire at a dramatic pace, who will teach our children? "To build the intellectual capital we require to sustain the quality of our teaching and research in five to 10 years from now, we, at McGill, should be hiring, on average, 75 to 80 faculty members a year. Instead, because of our budget constraints, we are in fact taking on less than half that many. "Recruiting only 50 per cent of what is needed for an institution of 20,000 undergraduates ... is a catastrophe, not only for McGill, but for the Quebec community," Shapiro said. "Our outstanding students have plenty of choices" and while they have been opting for McGill so far, "it will be a different story if our hands remain tied by unproductive government policy." Better funded, better paying U.S. universities aren't the only competition McGill faces in holding on to talented young professors. "We now have plenty of evidence that the high private-sector demand for IT (information technology) and other sophisticated knowledge workers is siphoning off too many graduate students and faculty from universities." Another factor, suggested Shapiro, is the heavy workload and lack of respect that university professors face. University work entails several responsibilities -- pressure to publish, undergraduate teaching, graduate student supervision, grant applications -- that knowledge workers outside academe don't usually have to contend with. Despite this, academics are often viewed by the population at large as having cushy jobs. "If, on top of all this, your efforts are belittled and misunderstood, why stay in universities at all?" He noted that professors at McGill are demonstrably underpaid in national terms. A study comparing academic pay rates at Canada's major research universities indicated that McGill would need to spend $9 million more a year to match the average salaries paid at these institutions. "The situation is almost as bad for the other Quebec universities." Quebec universities are also at a marked disadvantage with sister institutions in other provinces in terms of their over-all funding. Ontario universities have between $13,000 and $17,000 to spend on each of their students -- money that goes into libraries, student services and other important areas. Quebec universities receive only $9,000 per student. "Our faculty members do not leave out of greed, but when you combine low salaries with low infrastructure support and little community recognition, it's not surprising our stars are tempted to go elsewhere." Shapiro stated that the loss of even a handful of top academic performers from Quebec could be damaging. "Just as in the private sector, one Daniel Langlois, one Laurent Beaudoin can create an entire revolution with major industrial spinoffs, generating many other businesses and a vast number of jobs, so one academic superstar, one researcher at the very cutting edge of genetics, biotechnology or artificial intelligence can lift an institution and all its associated networks into a different world of possibilities." Universities weakened by their ability to retain or attract talented faculty will fail to provide Quebec's youth with the kind of high quality education they'll need to succeed, said Shapiro. "We won't be able to educate the next generation of Quebecers in a way that enables them to compete with young people in, for example, Ontario or Massachusetts. They won't be able to apply for the best jobs, they won't be able to synthesize the latest information developments, they won't be equipped to join or launch dynamic businesses and other kinds of enterprise." Shapiro talked about how he has accompanied Premier Lucien Bouchard on trade missions to the U.S. On such trips, "potential investors are told about how dynamic our intellectual infrastructure is, what a flourishing system of university-industry collaboration exists. The reality, however, is that the achievements of the past that lead our politicians to boast of Quebec's future are seriously, seriously at risk." The principal did praise both the Quebec and federal governments for some recent initiatives aimed at stemming the brain drain--Ottawa's creation of a new research chairs program, for instance. But such measures aren't enough. He called on the government to supply higher education with more funding, adding, "I can understand that the Quebec government has competing demands for limited resources." If Quebec City can't afford a large-scale increase in spending on universities, it should at least spend more wisely. "Give us encouragement and incentives, match dollars for every good idea that brings funds from graduates or the private sector, recognize the diversity of our educational system and abandon the notion of the closed envelope in which funding of each innovation takes away from other great ideas." He also called on the government to consider the deregulation of tuition fees. If the government does nothing, Shapiro predicted, "the slide into mediocrity may well be at hand."