Accelerating The Brain Drain

The Asian Studies Centre programme is being designed to encourage New Zealand's "brain drain" by discovering promising students at Victoria University and then channelling them to American universities through the East-West Centre of the University of Hawaii. The Victoria University Calendar [1967, p. 157] features the East-West Centre In the following announcement: "The East-West ,Centre of the University of Hawaii offers Scholarships to students from East, South, and Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Islands of the Pacific, who have at least a Bachelor's Degree with an average of B. or second division standard, for graduate study in a wide range of subjects covering applied, social and pure sciences, and the humanities. Courses are offered at both the masterate and doctorate level. The giants are for 21 months, and include travel to and from Hawaii, tuition and living expenses. An unusual feature of the grant is that it gives qualified students an opportunity to supplement their studies at a selected University in the United States on an academic tour of one semester."

Even students who return to New Zealand will be given a strong American orientation — seeing Asia through American eyes, which are not necessarily New Zealand eyes. Moreover it is not in the best interest of New Zealand to lose too many of its finest minds overseas. A local New Zealand industrial leader has calculated that New Zealand annually loses $36,000,000 of production due alone to the brain drain. (NZBC interview Taylor].

The British Minister of Education. Mr. A. Crosland, has declared the brain drain to be so serious that it had "probably counteracted the whole of America's foreign aid in recent years." (Evening Post: 27 Feb, 1967). Moreover, it is extremely interesting that a former Asian Studies lecturer at Victoria University, Dr. Brijen Gupta, wished to return to New Zealand to lecture on the brain drain problem but was refused admission here. It would be interesting to find out who recommended that Dr. Gupta should not be allowed to enter the country.

I would rather see a programme which would harness the interest of young New Zealanders in Asia for New Zealand's own economic and cultural development. I do not think the current Asian Studies programme has been designed to advance New Zealand's national in-terest.

William J. Hall, MA, Lecturer in Asian Studies, Victoria University (Wellington).