For China, a reverse brain drain in science?

Several factors are driving the purported exodus – not least of which are prospects back home. India and China have posted electrifying economic growth rates in the past decade. Growth has slowed with the current global economic crisis, but still remains at enviable levels.

Established professionals returning home are drawn by what they see as better career opportunities, a better quality of life, and the chance  of being closer to family, according to a recently published survey by Mr. Wadhwa and his colleagues from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

One significant draw is the prospect of bringing up children in what are seen as better school systems back home, says David Heenan, a visiting professor at Georgetown University. Many parents “see a dumbing down of public education in the US, along with tattoos and pants below the hips,” he says.

When they leave, they often take their kids with them – kids who are brighter than their parents, Mr. Heenan says. He notes that over the past 10 years, 60 to 65 percent of the top high school science research awards – what he dubs “junior Nobel prizes” – were children of first-generation immigrants or foreigners carrying H-1B worker visas.

The impulse to return home is to be expected as economies overseas evolve. But some experts say they are concerned that with its current visa policies, the US is hurting itself. One key need, Wadhwa says, is to boost the number of H-1B visas made available and cut processing times.

For all the angst, the Oak Ridge Institute’s Finn points out that as long as the sheer number of foreign students earning advanced degrees here continues to increase at a brisk pace, the US can still benefit from their intellectual horsepower.

And the US is still top of the heap in scientific clout, says James Hosek, who tracks global science and engineering trends at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif. US scientists still publish twice as many of the most influential research papers as their European counterparts, and four times as many as a group of countries he calls the Asian 10, which includes China and India.

“So, they’re not breathing down our necks,” he says.

But even he cautions that with science investment accelerating overseas, the US cannot take its leadership for granted.

Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar contributed to this report.   

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