If you read an Italian newspaper on any day of the week you are very likely to read about cervelli in fuga (Brains on the run, an Italian wording to get the national brain drain problem across the public). As others do in any other country of the world, Italians do look beyond the national borders for their scientific training, particularly for their post-graduate education and Post-Doc. Brain circulation is a well recognized asset, and indeed, EU programs exist to foster circulation, notably, the ongoing People Action.
A problem in Italy is that, once you are gone, it’s going to get harder to come back. The more you get experience abroad, the more you think you have matured as a scientist, the more you are forgotten back home (exceptions apply).
Some initiatives have sprouted over the last few years to bring back the “brains”, including tax breaks and slightly higher salaries compared to conventional fellowships. Since there is so much heat in the media about cervelli in fuga, any attempt, regardless of its mid-term success, to bring Italian minds back to their homeland is celebrated as a profound success.
Much that the brain re-gain incentives are appealing, I want to argue that the problem is hardly solved. If you have trained abroad, you just have a different frame of scientific thinking. Back home, you will be looked upon with suspicion. Your thinking is uncomfortable and, in a nutshell, you are creating a fault in the fragile system of “waiting in line” (see my first post)
But don’t despair. Persevere. Try to open up and offer your knowledge. After all, if you really know better, why not teaching your fellow researchers what you have learned?
What Italy so badly needs is a series of concerted efforts: higher salaries, more meritocracy when selecting staff, more peer-review, and, possibly, tenure-track. Right now nobody can show you where that track is.
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Science in the Bel Paese by Massimo Pinto
Italy has a serious scientific research excellence problem at home. Why there are so few foreign scientists in Italian Labs? Is the Italian academic job ladder closed to foreigners? Something new is happening, just may be, and I feel an urge to report it.
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The brain drain news fashion
- Date:
- Saturday, 24 Nov ember 2007 - 15:22 UTC
Last updated: Saturday, 24 Nov 2007 - 15:22 UTC
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Comments
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Exactly the same thing happens just across the Adriatic, in Croatia. You ask why not teach your fellow researchers what you have learned; perhaps because they don’t want to know. But you’re right in saying one should persevere and offer one’s knowledge to those who don’t refuse it. Perhaps a good start is an online network such as this one or Croatian Connect Znanost
Thank you, Mico, for yout note. I wish I could read Croatian! Perhaps Connect Znanost could have a summary English page about its mission?
I am not overly sure that I understand what you mean when you write “perhaps they (homeland researchers) don’t want to know”. I will try to guess here: they may prefer to stick with the popular framework, as they are aware that otherwise they would be just too little to fight a battle for a more transparent, meritocratic, and bla bla bla, system. Isn’t that a bit like what people do when, tacitly, they back up organised crime?
Uh-oh, I really blew it this time.
As someone who has willfully chosen to do research in Italy instead of abroad (due to a lot of personal reasons), this post prompted me to reply.
In my opinion, a lot of people go abroad thinking it’s way better than here: in some way it IS, but at the same time, if everyone will go out of here, how can the system here improve?
It is a tough decision to make. But I think that with a good skill set and strong will one can find a way to do independent and good quality research, despite the many faults of our research system (by the way, some approaches abroad are equally at fault – “publish or perish” comes to mind).
Ciao Luca,
thank you for your visit and your note. Surely the system would not function if everyone ventured outside of the country.
From what you write, it sounds like you are in a nice working environment. Good for you! There are surely many exceptions to the mediocrity that I have been alluding to. I recall a friend of mine, Massimo Orazi, who ended up working in a excellent research center in Naples. He was very happy to have a boss who was so open-minded. This is so very rare in our contry. Massimo’s story was featured in Science Next Wave, now Science Careers.