Davos, Switzerland,
22 January 2004 --
The
discussions on the role of the universities were attended by extremely
eminent panelists and resulted in the presentation of many innovative
ideas. Ismail Serageldin, having just completed the inter-academy report
on capacity building in Science and technology, focused his remarks on
three aspects learned from that large-scale review. First, that some brain
drain is inevitable given the age structures in the industrialized and
the developing countries, thus the ability of building special bridges
with those expatriate scientists was an important task for the developing
countries. Second, that the brain drain is as much from Europe to the
US as it is from the developing countries to the industrialized world.
Thus the phenomenon should not be over simplified. Third, that special
efforts by the industrial country universities and research institutions
to facilitate real collaboration with the scientists in the developing
countries, through programs helping their promising talent, from digital
libraries, to on-line course material, to sandwich programs to special
post-doc research grants, would all help transform the conventional brain
drain into a real brain gain.
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