Internal ‘brain drain’ as students migrate for HE

Migration within India for higher education risks creating a ‘brain drain’ within the country that could perpetuate regional economic imbalances despite rising education levels overall, a study for the United Nations agency for human settlement has found.

Internal Migration for Education and Employment among Youth in India, commissioned by UN-HABITAT's Global Urban Youth Research Network, cautions that if India’s states do not focus on creating better higher education opportunities for young people they will lose out on skilled manpower and economic opportunities.

According to the recently released paper, 3.7 million young people migrated within India to get a degree in the decade 1998-2008. Of those, 620,000 or 17% moved to another state and 1.68 million shifted to another district within their home state.

“Migration is not a bad thing and it is bound to happen. But the most important phenomenon we are seeing today is people moving for education,” said co-author S Chandrasekhar, a professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research in Mumbai.

Winners and losers

“With uneven distribution of educational facilities, some states act as feeder states while others gain at their expense. This trend forces us to address the issue of brain drain at the sub-national level,” said Chandrasekhar.

The study highlights that traditionally underdeveloped states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan in the north and Odisha (formerly Orissa) on the east coast are losing human capital. The Delhi area, the Mumbai hinterland of Maharashtra and the southern state of Karnataka are the largest gainers.

Karnataka, with a huge IT industries and software hub centred around its largest city Bangalore, received the largest number of students from other states – 180,000. The populous northern province of Uttar Pradesh sent out most students – 110,000.

Chandrasekhar said migrating for education was closely linked to employment opportunities. In the 1980s many people moved to where jobs were. But in recent decades “the IT industry decided to locate because of availability of skilled manpower” in cities like Bangalore, Pune in Maharashtra state and Chennai in Tamil Nadu.

“States which are ignoring higher education are not only losing skilled labour but also the opportunity to create employment and expand economically,” Chandrasekhar added.

The UN paper also highlights the issue of equity in higher education access since most states losing out on human capital are less developed, with a large concentration of socially disadvantaged groups, including members of the lowest castes – also known as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

Migration to other towns and cities for higher education is also closely related to shrinking urban spaces, according to Chandrasekhar.

“With real estate prices escalating you cannot afford to set up large campuses in cities. Moreover, the pressure on urban ecosystems is immense and states should look at setting up higher education institutions in lesser developed regions,” he said.

Government efforts

Notably, over the past five years the government has set up 12 new central universities, many of them in states with a large tribal population including Jharkhand and Odisha.

The older Indian institutes of technology (IITs) and Indian institutes of management (IIMs) – India’s premier engineering and management institutions – are all located in urban areas.

But new IITs and IIMs, established after 2008 have come up in small towns including Rohtak in Haryana, Raipur in Chhattisgarh, Ranchi in Jharkhand, Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu, Jodhpur in Rajasthan and Mandi in Himachal Pradesh.

Six new health institutions modelled after the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, are also being set up in states with limited capacity for tertiary health care and education.

The central government has faced a lot of flak over choice of location since faculty are unwilling to go to these areas to teach.

But Chandrasekhar backs the policy. “In the United States there are several university towns where the ecosystem has been built around universities. The same should be done in India,” he said.

The migration towards better higher education opportunities also has implications for women’s educational opportunities. The UN study found that 2.6 million young men moved to pursue higher education compared to 1.1 million women – more than double the number.

“Socially women have not been able to travel as much for either education or employment,” said Deepti Mehrotra, a trustee of the Sampurna Trust, an NGO in New Delhi working towards the empowerment of women.

“It is up to the state governments to provide access to quality higher education locally. This has to become a policy if you want to increase the gross enrolment ratio of women and their participation in the job market.”

The paper concludes that, from a national perspective, migration for higher education and employment may not be a problem, but these movements can affect the growth trajectories and potential development of certain underdeveloped states and hamper inclusive growth.