Brain drain: 100 graduates a week flee to find work

THE number of college graduates leaving the country for work has doubled to proportions last seen in the mid-1990s as student leaders accuse the Government of failing to stem a major brain drain.

The Union of Students in Ireland said billions of euro of investment in education from primary to third level will end up benefitting the Australian, Canadian and other economies where hundreds of graduates are now moving in the hunt for jobs every week.

The provisional figures from a Higher Education Authority (HEA) survey of last year’s graduates in March and April show that almost one-in-10 of last year’s honours (level 8) degree recipients is working overseas. The 9% figure is up from 5% a year ago, more than double the rate for 2007 graduates, and the same as those of 1996 graduates.

With just over 40,000 students getting a level 6, 7 or 8 award last year, the figures suggest more than 100 people a week took up work abroad in the nine months after graduation, along with equivalent numbers who qualified here in previous years and thousands more looking for jobs overseas.

USI president Gary Redmond said the Government could stop the outflow of high-skilled talent by expanding work placement schemes that allow graduates keep social welfare payments, while building up experience. “They could also meet employers halfway by paying the equivalent of welfare payments and asking companies, who might not otherwise afford to take on graduates, to match it. Plenty of small and medium sized businesses looking to expand could do so with such a scheme.

“A year or two ago, it was mostly people like architects, engineers and quantity surveyors leaving Ireland, but now those with a much wider range of qualifications are walking into jobs abroad.

“Some will inevitably come back but many will start families and homes elsewhere and be lost to this country forever,” he said.

A spokesperson for Enterprise Minister Batt O’Keeffe said emigration during the recession in the 1980s resulted from slow restoration of order to public finances but the Government’s tough decisions will lead to quicker recovery. “The Employer Job (PRSI) Incentive Scheme will create up to 10,000 new jobs in one year by saving employers taking on a worker unemployed for six months or more €3,000, and the minister is examining how barriers to graduates or others taking up offers of job placements can be removed,” he said.

The figures emerge as competition for third level places intensifies, with Leaving Certificate students getting higher points than in any previous year and points needed for most courses up from 2009, as school leavers feel the squeeze from applicants seeking to boost their job chances.

While graduate unemployment at 7% is more than double the rate for 2007 graduates, it is down from 10% a year ago and just over half the national jobless rate of almost 14%. But the 45% of graduates working here or abroad nine months after finishing college is down from 50% a year ago and 55% for the class of 2007.

COLLEGE GRADUATES WORKING ABROAD

* Class of 2009 – 9%

* 2005 – 5%

* 2000 – 7%

* 1995 – 10%

* 1987 – 23%