Tertiary scholarship schemes as institutionalised migration of highly skilled labour: The mixed evidence of development effectiveness from the Czech Republi

Abstract

Providing scholarships has become an integral part of the global higher education and so has research on its impacts. This article examines the tertiary scholarship scheme of the Czech government for providing scholarships to students from the global South as a part of its development cooperation programme with a double goal. Firstly, it examines the programme’s development effectiveness from the perspective of migration studies, and secondly, it investigates the underlying motivation factors which influence the students’ decisions on where they will stay after their studies. A survey among students and graduates of the scheme was triangulated with quantitative data obtained from official sources. The results show a mean values of 45 percent for brain gain, meaning that almost half of the graduates do return back home after their studies, yet this situation is aggravated by a significant share of brain waste. The major factors that influence students’ migration decisions were established to be economic factors, the utility of the studies and the ease or difficulty with which they can find jobs in their home countries.