JO Magazine

Is Jordan bucking the brain-drain trend that's debilitating the Middle East? Discussions with outgoing students suggest it may well be so.

Words by Caddie Nath.

EVERY YEAR THOUSANDS OF young Jordanians go abroad to attend universities in Canada, the US and Europe. The question economists and politicians (not to mention parents) are scrambling to answer is: will they ever come back?

Despite growing concern over the impact of brain drain on the Arab world, there are numbers to suggest that Jordan, at least, is able to entice some of its international students to return home after completing their degrees.

Statistics from the United Nations’ Arab Human Development Report show that the Arab region is one of the areas hardest hit by brain drain. And the Gulf Center for Strategic Studies reported in 2001 that nearly half of Arab students who complete their higher education in the West will not return to their home countries.

But while the number of Jordanian students that attend Western universities for their undergraduate or postgraduate studies appears to be increasing, there are some indicators that a majority of students do return to Jordan after finishing university abroad.

The Amman Baccalaureate School, renowned for furnishing Western universities with Jordanian scholars, reports that 88 percent of its alumni return to Jordan to work after completing their degrees. And in a recent online straw poll carried out by JO, 77 percent of Jordanian alumni of Western universities surveyed said they returned to Jordan immediately after completing their degrees.

Of those poll respondents that did not come home immediately, more than 40 percent returned to Jordan within five years, and all of those still living abroad said they planned to come back eventually.

Representatives from the Modern Montessori School and the Amman National School, both of which send a large proportion of their graduates to Western universities, said the majority of their alumni did eventually return to Jordan to work.

“Over 95 percent of them do come back,” said Rasha Husseini, the academic counselor at ANS. “Many are sent back by international corporations because of their knowledge of Arabic and the culture.”

About half of the nearly 50 Jordanian graduates surveyed by JO said they never intended to remain in the West after finishing school. An additional 40 percent said they returned because they thought they would be able to make important contributions to Jordan’s future with their Western degrees.

“It’s love,” said Lina Khamis, who holds both a master’s degree and a PhD from universities in the UK. “It has nothing to do with duty. As a graduate you always think you’re going to change the world. You think: Why shouldn’t I develop this in my own country?”

And according to Ghassan Omet, a professor of economics at the University of Jordan, many graduates return because of a desire to be part of the country’s economic and political elite. “Many of these Jordanians are well-connected and have a high chance of succeeding in taking up important posts in the private or public sector,” he said.

IN RECENT YEARS, THE numbers of student visas issued by British and American embassies have increased, an indicator that more students might be going to study abroad. From 2006 to 2008, the number of student visas issued for Jordan by the United States rose from 557 to 760. The number of visas issued by the United Kingdom rose only slightly.

Many of Jordan’s international graduate and postgraduate students are alumni of the country’s competitive private secondary schools. By and large, they perceive Western higher education as stronger than what is offered in Jordan, and more likely to land them a good job after graduation. Some cited poor, or a total lack of, academic options as an important factor in their decision to leave the Kingdom.

“I never considered staying here, to tell you the truth,” said 17-year-old Elias Tsikhlakis, an ABS senior. “Let’s be frank—the [educational] opportunities available to people here aren’t as numerous as the ones available abroad. Overseas they’re more respected than here. [Graduates abroad] are more likely to get better jobs with higher starting salaries.”

This perception is particularly strong for students interested in studying law or medicine, said Kay Mukhar, the university counselor at the Amman Baccalaureate School.

Lynn Affarah, a 17-year-old senior at ABS who is currently applying to universities in the UK, is one of those students.

“For medicine especially, it’s very tough getting into Jordanian universities. They don’t consider the [International Baccalaureate] program. There’s only one seat for an IB student for the medical program. It’s very competitive,” she said.

Likewise, about a third of the respondents in JO’s straw poll, most of whom are graduates of British universities, listed sub-par programs or a total lack of programs in their area of study in Jordan as their primary reason for looking to the West for educational opportunities after high school.

But for students like Lynn, the urge to go west after secondary school doesn’t come solely from the strong academic programs offered there. She and her classmates at ABS and other private secondary schools in Jordan, many of whom will attend universities in the US, the UK or Canada, have been groomed from a young age to do so.

The international program at ABS, for instance, trains students in English and offers Western standardized tests such as the SAT, as well as counseling and support to help students with the intense application processes put forward by foreign universities.

The recently established King’s Academy also offers Western standardized testing, beginning with the PSAT in grade nine, and offers counseling and application support as well as college fairs throughout a student’s junior and senior years.

“King’s Academy students are already at an advantage when it comes to studying abroad [as they’re] immersed in an environment where they’re learning to balance an active lifestyle with strong academics,” said Hala Salah, University Counseling Director at the King’s Academy, in an email to JO.

The King’s Academy will graduate its first class of students in 2010.

A Third of those polled by JO, however, said they went abroad simply looking for a sense of independence and adventure. But many say they want to come back.

“This generation, the majority [of our students] do keep in touch and they do come back,” said Reida Baghdadi, an advisor at the Modern Montessori School.

“I really do want to come back and work on things … to help improve Jordan,” said Matthew Beirouti, a senior at ABS. “For example, I know they’re going to start making a nuclear power plant in Jordan. I’m not sure if I’m going to miss that when I’m in university, but I would like to be a part of that if I have time. If I leave university in time, I’d like to come back and work on it and add a bit of what I’ve learned.”

In much of the developing world, a lack of jobs or competitive salaries deters well-trained professionals from returning home after getting an education in the West. In Jordan, with an already-high unemployment rate and about a third of the total population not yet in the work force, the availability of tomorrow’s jobs for today’s graduates is uncertain.

If Matthew, Lynn and others of their generation do return eventually to work in Jordan, whether on infrastructure projects like nuclear energy or simply in the private sector, the Kingdom will continue to reap the benefits of a highly skilled work force with an enhanced world view.

Professor Omet, meanwhile, sounded an optimistic note by way of perspective. “With the extremely large number of graduates from Jordanian universities, no matter how many we lose to other countries, we still manage to keep enough to avoid any serious brain-drain problem.”

It’s hard to say for certain whether the Kingdom has found a way to buck the Arab brain-drain trend and bring back its international scholars. But if the young people interviewed here are really representative of the trend, then Jordan may well be on the right track to more sustained development and growth.