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