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The Role of Universities in Decreasing of the Brain Drain

The main objective of this research study is to survey the role of universities in preventing brain drain from the viewpoints of academic staff, experts and managers in different levels of management and to suggest a number of remedies for it. To this end, a main criterion i.e. "establishing relationship among local and foreign universities" with four sub-criteria of "exchanging academic staff and students", "embarking on international joint research projects", "establishing branches of foreign universities" and "holding joint courses with other universities abroad" were hypothesized and 9 research questions were formulated to test them. The design of the present research is a survey, employing questionnaire and interview as its research tools. The participants were 650 academics, experts, educational managers and heads of departments. A validated questionnaire was distributed for collecting data. The research findings, derived from the questionnaire, showed that certain factors such as individual characteristics, existing realities known as local structure, specific university elements, international relationship and its consequences have special impacts on reducing the current wave of brain drain. It seems that cultural concerns and priorities in the society were very important to the participants. That is why external factors and the external structures were not confirmed as significant factors for reducing brain drain. Besides, the finding in the interview section showed that despite the awareness towards the threat of the brain drain phenomena and conducting a number of research studies in universities concerning this issue, no strategic planning or regulations have been done in this regard. It is true that instead of "brain drain", we can use euphemistic alternatives such as "brain immigration" and "immigration of educated elites, but this will not alleviate the bitter reality.