Essay on Etemad Newspaper May 16, 2022 -
The original text was in Persian and the following translation was done by Ai.
A topic called brain drain, or to put it mildly, the migration of elites, has been circulating since before the revolution. To address this issue truly and expertly, we must first review the definitions: What is commonly understood by “elite” is the winners of student Olympiads, the top ranks of the national entrance exam, etc. But the reality is that in a broader sense, the elite can be imagined as someone who has the ability to pose and solve problems for the country, and this definition may be inclusive of the above-mentioned notion. With the latest definition, an efficient, specialized, and exemplary workforce that can provide solutions to problems may not necessarily be in its youth; especially in macro-topics such as politics, where the age of effectiveness is significantly different from, for example, the field of sports. At the bottom, if we go beyond the elites by any definition, what can become a bottleneck in efficient governance is the skilled workforce that reduces the costs of governance and increases its efficiency.
Regardless of the correctness or incorrectness of macroeconomic policymaking, if we look at the past five decades, we find that whenever oil has been sold in significant quantities, the country's welfare and development indicators have increased significantly, and this has also been tangible in ordinary life. Whether in the 1950s, during the construction and reform era, during the ninth and tenth governments before the oil embargo, and in the post-JCPOA era. In periods when oil has faced price spikes (the 1950s and the formation of OPEC, as well as during Mr. Ahmadinejad's era), this change has been more dramatic. However, it is a matter of debate as to what areas of the current and development budget these amounts received from the sale of oil and condensates should be spent on, or how much of it should be saved.
Leaving aside these details, given the news that is being heard these days about the sharp increase in oil prices, its sale and receipt of funds, it is expected that a noticeable difference will be seen in the current and development situation of the economy. Of course, the lack of this change can be reduced to domestic policy issues and used to put pressure on the established government, but it seems that the reality is beyond this.
But if we want to look at the issue a little more realistically and without domestic political conflicts, it becomes clear that even with a fixed income, the cost of running the country is much higher compared to the past, which means that governance is being carried out with lower efficiency and productivity, and these costs of running the country have increased to such an extent that even with the sale of oil, development is impossible and current life is not generally very desirable. Because we have experienced a vacuum in both income generation and per capita income, and as mentioned, the cost of running the same things has increased. But why is this happening? Is this related to general politics? Is it related to the governments in power or are international tensions the main factor?
We all know that in the post-war period, with the increase in the demand for higher education, universities were built in the country, the purpose of which was to respond to this demand and increase the level of education in society: a policy that has largely achieved its goals. Let's leave aside the fact that perhaps if the facilities of the aforementioned universities had been used in technical and vocational education, they would have had a severalfold impact on providing a real workforce, but the reality is that the basis and policy, considering the level of education in these centers, was not to provide the country with a high-level specialist workforce. However, a general look at the output of the country's mother universities shows that graduates are generally not attracted to government and governance executive bodies: some stay at the university to teach and research, some go to the private sector, and others emigrate. Naturally, it is unrealistic and excessive to expect that someone who, for example, graduated from Sharif University of Technology with a master's or doctorate in mechanics, would participate in a centralized employment test for employment and compete with those who are not at the same level in terms of quality. Therefore, such a person will either find his escape in the private sector or, more importantly, think about emigrating. Therefore, this unrealistic view of employment will have two damaging consequences for the country: first, this person will not be recruited by (for example) the Ministry of Industry, and the country will be deprived of this force in the field of policy-making and implementation, and someone who studied at a university with a lower degree will take his place, and second, in the event of emigration, the country will suddenly lose millions of dollars in expenses and decades of time that it has spent on this person.
If the governance system turns a blind eye to real differences in human resource recruitment policy and puts everyone in the same row and line, regardless of their quality, it will only lead to the exclusion of more qualitative forces from the ranks and the recruitment of medium and low-level forces, and nothing else. The shrinking of the government seems to be the right policy, but what we have been and are neglecting in this policy-making is the qualitative reduction of this small government. In fact, small governments that are highly efficient are supposed to bring low costs and high benefits, and this is only possible by recruiting the most qualitative forces from the most qualitative universities into the government, not by being satisfied with formal degrees and education and turning a blind eye to qualitative differences in policy-making.
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