Swiss Radio Television (RTS) just reported on “Tout un monde” about a plan the City of San Sebastian has set up to get highly-qualified Basque professionals who are living outside the Basque Country to come and work in San Sebastian.
Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL). Donostia Technolgoy Park: one of the Basque research centers located in San Sebastian
Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL). Parque Tecnológico de Donostia. One of the Basque research centers located in San Sebastian
The truth is that the current situation is quite strange. Basques have one of the highest levels of university graduates in the European Union, which means that, given the size of the country, a good-sized group of them have to go abroad to practice their profession when they graduate.
Despite all the effort being put into developing a research structure located inside the Basque Country, it’s not enough to absorb all the professionals who are graduating. It’s clear that just being about the EU average in research effort isn’t enough. If we want to guarantee the future of our country, and to keep a significant part of the young people we educate, thanks to the hard work of Basque society, and have them work and research here, we need a much “stronger” research sector, which is something the government and especially private enterprise need to get on with.
It’s also a little worrying to see how these efforts to keep our recent graduates seems to be happening at the local level only, in a rather disorganized way. We would hope that the different agencies of the Basque Country would be working hard to coordinate all of this, in order to optimize the effort so that the whole of all these programs would be far greater than the sum of the parts in isolation.
We’ll leave you with the RTS report in French, which talks about this problem and the effort being made by the City of San Sebastian to make itself an appropriate destination for these researchers. We’re sorry we can’t offer a transcription of this report in Spanish. If anyone feels up to doing it, we’d really appreciate it!
Radio Télévision Suisse – 11/4/2017 – Suiza
La ville basque de San Sebastian veut ralentir la fuite des cerveaux
La ville espagnole de San Sebastian, dans le Pays basque, vient d’implanter un programme spécifique pour le retour des talents sur ses terres. Il s’agit d’un programme pionnier pour trouver une solution à la fuite des cerveaux.
