Original scientific paper
Young Scientist's Dilemma: To Remain or to Escape
Branka Golub
; Institut za društvena istraživanja, Zagreb
Abstract
In the Croatian social context where employment for the vast majority of the population, especially its most vital pan, remains a far off goal - a recorded trend of almost two thirds of young employed scientists to abandon their scientific profession (68,0%) or emigrate (63,3%) is of special concern.
A potential and actual brain waste and brain drain of young Croatian scientists is marked, above all, by certain external factors: the pull of the scientific field (greater demand for technical and natural scientists as well as a demand for experts in the technical and biomedical fields) and, on the other side, the push of social and living standards caused by extremely low investment and remuneration. Within the scientific subsystem itself, no components of a working-professional position have been found which would significantly differentiate the young scientist population and, from within, form a specific profile of potential waste or drain.
In separating the actual level of brain waste of young Croatian scientists from its potential dimension, incompatibility between wishes and possibilities has been observed. The number of young scientists wishing to leave science is far greater than those wanting to emigrate. However, in reality’, based on our survey, more of them succeed in emigrating than finding another job in Croatia! Those individuals who go abroad represent the elite of a scientific new generation and later, to a great extent, continue in their chosen scientific career. Most of those discontented individuals wishing to leave the scientific profession continue to remain there as high unemployment in the country acts as a deterrent. There is a real danger that in a marginalized and poorly rated science, there may be more and more left behind individuals
Keywords
young scientists; brain drain; brain waste; emigration potential; abandoning science
Hrčak ID:
154083
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2001.
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