Expert opinion from University of Auckland - Waipapa Taumata Rau
Opinion: I’ve been starkly reminded of Sir Paul Callaghan recently, not for his advocacy for Predator-Free New Zealand, and not even for the writing on science-led economic diversification that led to a government agency, Callaghan Innovation, being named after him.
It’s the personal reasons he gave for his outspokenness that I have been thinking of, the reasons he referred to as selfish: the desire to see his grandchildren grow up and thrive in Aotearoa. It might be because he said that when I had just moved back to New Zealand from a job overseas, or because my nana had passed away the year before I moved back: in any case, it’s a message I remember well.
It appears that the ‘brain drain’ is back as never before. Stats NZ tell us that 52,500 New Zealand citizens went overseas in the year to March 2024, most of them to Australia. That loss, the largest on record, is only half the picture: we lost 78,200 people, but thankfully picked up another 25,800 from around the world.
This ebb and flow of people around the world is not itself a bad thing. But Callaghan’s concern was, for good reason, about the specific demographics of who we lose from Aotearoa: the young, the educated, and those ambitious for certain kinds of well-paid jobs that we simply don’t have enough of in this country.
The sociologist Paul Spoonley echoed those concerns this week: it’s the university graduates that we can’t afford to lose. As someone who works in the university sector, and has been paying attention to the financial crisis affecting our universities, I would put the emphasis on that word: afford.
There is a cost involved in training graduates in New Zealand, but the opportunity cost involved in losing them to overseas is the real problem. The OECD calculates the return to the public from investing in education, based on increased income taxes returned to government, social contributions, and the reduced cost of welfare. On average across OECD countries, each dollar invested in tertiary education returns $2-$3 to the public purse. That’s real value.
That doesn’t mean everyone should go to university, and I do understand the ickiness in the idea of a brain drain to the extent it suggests that some people’s contributions to society (those with skills and expertise in particular areas) are more important than others. A few years ago we in the MacDiarmid Institute printed T-shirts for a group of our students with Sir Paul Callaghan’s catchphrase on the back capturing his vision of a prosperous and economically diversified Aotearoa: “Talent Lives Here”.
The students – most of whom had never heard him speak on what he meant by the phrase – refused to wear them. Ick.
I would argue that it isn’t about the importance of individual contributions or individual people, but the fact that the nature of the jobs that attract people overseas means that we struggle to keep particular kinds of skills in this country. That is a problem, and for all of us.
The Government is consulting with the public on the structure of our university system, a process motivated by the financial crisis. The job losses throughout the system over the last couple of years has meant that we risk not having the capacity to deliver what we need for New Zealand.
The University Advisory Group has a call open for submissions, which are due by May 31. I’m thinking through what I am going to say but more and more I am questioning who it is that it really needs to hear from.
The purpose of our university system is not to provide jobs for those of us who work in them. It is also not just about providing a pathway to a higher salary for those who undertake tertiary study.
Our universities are public institutions and financially supported by the public to deliver value to all of us: whether you’re a university graduate or the parent of one or not. Their existence addresses the fundamental goal of making education and a variety of career pathways accessible to all of us.
But our universities don’t operate in a vacuum. The choices made by students of what fields to study and work in – and in which country – are deeply influenced by government policy well beyond the remit of our tertiary sector. Students and those who influence them – their parents, their teachers – must be alert to how the New Zealand economy is diversifying, and the kinds of jobs that this shift is making viable in emerging industries, which are being established here.
Please take a moment to think about how university education affects you, and if you have a moment to write a submission to the University Advisory Group, please do. Our university system wasn’t set up to operate for the benefit of those who are already part of it – it would be valuable to hear from people who aren’t, but who have an idea of what they want it to deliver for New Zealand.
When we talk about ‘brain drain’, we seem to assume that those we are talking about – our university graduates – are only looking after themselves. My experience in working with these people through their studies and afterwards, as they find careers for themselves in our challenging small-world economy, is that that isn’t the case at all. But we need to give our skilled young people reasons – good reasons – to stay and build their careers in Aotearoa.
This is the most important issue that our current university system review has to grapple with.
Universities deal with three things in a community: education, research and scholarship. That last point, scholarship, as a community resource, is usually forgotten, possibly because of the difficulty of quantifying it. Yet in the long run it could prove to be the most important of the three. I’m pretty sure Paul Callaghan would have agreed.