The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste

imagine that your uber driver has

multiple secondary degrees in

engineering and could have essentially

designed the car you’re in

your local pharmacy employee has a

medical degree and your convenience

store cashier actually spent years

working as a banker

for many immigrants employed in the usa

this hypothetical is the life they lead

except their degrees aren’t from harvard

or yale or any random us university

they have been educated in their country

of birth and licensing barriers in the

united states have strongly restricted

any sort of career mobility

this epidemic known as brain waste is

the under utilization of foreign

educated professionals in the workplace

despite their high qualifications

nowhere is more evident than in the

united states

first let’s delve into what topics we’ll

be exploring here today

career mobility connotes how free

someone is to move the ranks of his or

her job

or to switch occupations entirely

licensing barriers are what prohibit

endless career mobility

as they set requirements in place for

certain professions in one’s country of

residence

brain waste occurs when licensing

barriers lead to the underemployment of

foreign professionals

which results in a loss of human capital

that is counterproductive

to society overall foreign educated

workers are often put at a disadvantage

because of occupational licensing

as their training sometimes does not

translate so to speak

to other countries brainwasted also

occurs

when foreign when employers are

skeptical or question the quality of a

foreign degree

while this is found throughout the west

it is definitely most evident in the

united states

it is evidently due to unfounded

american elitism that xinhua university

ranked higher worldwide than yale or

colombia is seen as lesser than in the

eyes of the american job market

i’m allen holmgren and through my

father’s diplomatic career i’ve met many

incredibly talented incredibly capable

individuals

native to our different posts seeing

that these incredibly talented

friends of mine who were highly

accomplished in so many ways

weren’t afforded the same opportunities

that americans take for granted

ignited a lot of passion in this topic

for me when we lived in padres in

montenegro

our school secretary marina roganovic

who is one of the smartest women i’ve

ever met

lamented how widespread foreign exchange

programs were for any middle class u.s

teen with rudimentary knowledge in a

foreign language work

yet for her in montenegro only the most

elite students with near native fluency

in their target language were permitted

to study abroad in high school

not surprisingly for as smart as she is

marina secured one of these spots

yet it didn’t end up helping her all

that much

even with her impeccable smarts her

nearly perfect english ability

she was still relegated to working as a

secretary in montenegro

not by choice but by because of lack of

opportunity afforded to her elsewhere

because of her

montenegrin university degree it struck

me as incredibly unfair that the gifted

people i knew weren’t given the same

opportunities that the average american

took for granted

having met many teenagers here at local

mexican schools through volunteer

opportunities

i’m consistently astounded at how these

students have to work 10 times as hard

as the typical american high schooler

to have even a sliver of a chance at

attending an american university

yet for these students they think that

all that work is worth it because they

think it’s their only pathway to having

a career in the u.s

when i lived in moscow my half-russian

best friend sophia

laughed in my face when i asked her if

she’d ever consider going to school in

russia

she’d always plan to live and work in

the u.s and even though le monso of

moscow state university is consistently

ranked

among the top 100 universities worldwide

she still didn’t think that that degree

would be enough

international students to attend even

an average or mediocre us university for

international students

this acceptance often comes as a result

of formidable effort and achievement

it’s normally reported as being two to

three times harder

for international students to get into

top american universities

because it’s widely speculated that

admissions officers

for these top universities will cap

their international admissions

one of the reasons that these

international students are at such an

unfair disadvantage

is because admissions officers are often

needlessly skeptical about the rigor of

non-american-style high schools

having personally seen students come to

american style high schools

and be highly accelerated because of the

elevated education standards in their

home country

i find the implication that local

institutions are automatically written

off as lesser than

deeply disturbing there’s a vicious

cycle at play that will turn away

international university applicants

because obviously admissions officers

are needlessly skeptical of a foreign

education

but then also turn away international

job applicants because of their lack of

an american university degree clearly so

much of brain waste can be attributed to

the detrimental belief

that a non-american secondary education

is inherently worse

despite the us being ranked behind 26

nations worldwide for its education

quality

in order to minimize brain waste it is

vital that we rectify this misconception

of western superiority

that has so deeply penetrated the

mindsets of american employers

brain waste also comes at a severe

detriment to the american economy

in a in an analysis by the migration

policy institute

statisticians found that the under

utilization of immigrants professional

skills

causes the us to miss out on an average

of 39 billion dollars per year

which means in turn federal state and

local governments

lose out on more than 10 billion dollars

per year in unrealized tax receipts

the fact that there is a shortage of

doctors and teachers in the u.s despite

the thousands of qualified non-american

teachers and doctors residing in the u.s

clearly underscores how much employers

need to reassess their priorities in an

increasingly diverse and integrated

society

the us literally can’t afford not to

hire these people when not doing so

is detrimental to both economic economic

and societal welfare

even within asf there are numerous

examples that underscore how

sorry even within asf there are numerous

examples that underscore how limiting

brainwaves can be

one teacher i spoke with miss bailey

shared with me how many obstacles there

are for foreign-born teachers who wish

to work in the united states

miss bailey was educated almost entirely

in mexico say for a year in in the uk

and her education culminated in a degree

from the unam

her resume posts an impressive boasts an

impressive list of past careers

including employing her philosophy

degree working at a museum

owning her own translation practice and

working at the unam language department

miss bailey is a special case

particularly because of how aptly

qualified she would be to teach in the

us

through asf she was able to attain a

master’s in multidisciplinary studies

from suny buffalo

however this didn’t necessarily provide

her with the necessary teaching

licensing

her experience teaching at a university

makes her super overqualified to teach

at

any k-12 institution and since her

husband is american

she isn’t barred by any of the typical

visa restrictions she’s considered

moving to the u.s but is fearful about

the job opportunities especially as

compared to the work she’s been able to

do in mexico

this isn’t just anecdotal either in

another study by the migration policy

institute

statisticians found that foreign

educated teachers

one one in three foreign educated

teachers

was likely to be employed in a

low-skilled job which makes them three

times more likely than u.s

educated teachers to be employed in

low-skilled jobs

in the u.s being employed as a k-12 ins

being employed as a k-12 teacher is not

held in the same esteem as it is almost

anywhere else

where it’s held at the same level as

being a doctor or a lawyer

in finland it’s actually harder to

become a practicing k-12 teacher than it

is to become a doctor

and speaking of doctors mexico requires

far more years of schooling

than in the us to become a practicing

doctor there’s no reason these

professionals should have to

jump through so many hoops and expend

the effort to be qualified for jobs that

they wouldn’t even be able to practice

should they move so on the topic of

professionals

miss bailey also had a lawyer cousin

who was incredibly successful in bolivia

and yet when he moved to the u.s

it was as if his years of education and

experience had been scrapped

if he wanted any chance of a similar

career he had to pass the notoriously

difficult washington dc bar exam

which does little to measure your actual

skill as a lawyer and rather

tests a minute obscure understanding of

american legal knowledge

while he did eventually pass the exam

according to miss bailey

it was not without struggle something we

can all agree is useless for someone

with years and years of real-world legal

experience

if such highly educated talented

individuals can feel so disheartened by

the job opportunities afforded to them

in the u.s what does that tell you about

all the other hopeful immigrants to the

us

anti-immigration advocates will argue

that we should only be allowing the most

skilled

knowledgeable well-educated foreigners

however if these individuals are demoted

to inferior positions

then the us does not deserve to rob

nations of their citizens skills and

knowledge while refusing to make use of

it themselves

unfortunately when 1.6 million or 23

percent of the 7.2 million

college educated immigrants aged 25 or

older are affected by brain waste

the prospects look rather grim anyways

fortunately one woman i spoke with had

the opposite experience

my father’s former serbian teacher at

the foreign service institute

was educated entirely in serbia which

culminated in a

degree from the university of novi sad

she’s currently employed teaching

diplomats on their way to former

yugoslavia

fluent serbo-croatian in under a year

for her it is specifically because she

has such a high level of serbian

knowledge

and such a high level of education in

serbian that her skill set is so

valuable

other institutions in the u.s have a lot

to learn from the foreign service

institute here they specifically value

how where you were schooled adds to your

skill set

rather than focusing on perceived

prestige and name recognition

it’s not everyone’s goal to work in the

united states and nor should it be

in nearly every case the opportunities

in one’s home country

are far better than any possibilities

elsewhere

however that being said for those who

believe that their skills would be

better off

better applicable in another nation

these individuals shouldn’t be barred

from opportunity just because of where

they were schooled

peking university national taiwan

university and university malaya

are all ranked in the top 100

universities nationwide and you probably

haven’t heard of half of these

but you have heard of harvard oxford and

the university of toronto

while the english-speaking world’s

equivalents aren’t necessarily higher in

quality we’re often indoctrinated into

thinking so

when this sort of thinking permeates the

minds of american employers brainwaste

proliferates

american occupational licensing serves

as a form of discrimination that i’ve

personally seen limit the opportunities

of many highly talented and accomplished

individuals

so what can be done to mitigate brain

waste

everyone i spoke with agrees that one of

the ways to mitigate brain waste is to

put less emphasis on name recognition

and university prestige and more

recognition on years of real world

experience

in nearly every case a refugee doctor

with 20 years of experience will be far

more skilled than a newly minted

med school graduate ms bailey also

astutely pointed out

that job interviews that require your

potential employer to assess your

problem solving and teamworking

abilities

are infinitely more insightful than

looking at any slip of paper would be

within asf we should start stressing

what a specific university or program

could actually gain you skill wise

rather than focusing on perceived

prestige

we should also try to foster the sort of

team build teamworking and

problem-solving abilities that know no

licensing barriers

lastly we can all agree that lastly we

can all agree that there needs to be a

paradigm shift

from thinking an american education is

the only pathway to working in the us

starting here today we should start

valuing skill knowledge and real world

experience over name recognition

thank you