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Brain drain and the disenchantment of being a higher education student in Portugal

2016; Routledge; Volume: 38; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1360080x.2015.1126892

1469-9508

Luísa Cerdeira, Maria de Lourdes Machado‐Taylor, Belmiro Gil Cabrito, Tomás Patrocínio, Rui Brites, Rui Gomes, João Teixeira Lopes, Henrique Vaz, Paulo Peixoto, Dulce Magalhães, Sílvia Silva, Rafaela Ganga,

Higher Education and Employability

The efforts made by most countries to accelerate economic development have included a significant investment in education. It has been argued that investment in education, particularly higher education, was itself a potential factor in economic development. Education has become a relatively easy means of improving access to the labour market. However, in Portugal, the recent trend has been reversed, and the country now faces a growing number of university graduates in several fields of education and training that do not have a job based on their formal qualifications. Despite the differences of unemployment by area of education and training, unemployment of the young skilled has been a problem in recent years. Therefore, following this unemployment trend, there has been growing the exodus of highly skilled professionals from the Portuguese economy, leaving it with a reduced supply of skilled people. This article discusses the employability of graduates from several academic areas and discusses the educational and economic policies that generate a real brain drain.