Post-graduation-policy

The mobility of international students is a major trend and highly supported in recent years, not only in the frame of exchange programs, but also in the form of degree mobility. Many foreign students move abroad to pursue a degree: in 1975, 600.000 students were mobile worldwide, compared to 2.8 million mobile students in 2007. Forecasts expect the number to increase to about 8 million by 2025 (OECD, 2009b). Critics claim that international student mobility typically shows a flow from the South to the North, in other words, from developing to developed countries. This may lead to a brain gain situation for developed countries and a brain drain for developing countries. The current article (based on the situation in 2010) explores to what extent four developed countries take measures to develop such a brain-drain brain-gain situation into a situation of brain-circulation.