Geopolitical tensions, visa uncertainties drive global talent shift back to Asia

This has been described as a reversal from decades when the US and Europe were the preferred destinations for higher education and research careers.

In a recent online panel hosted by Dialogues on Asian Universities, Tony Chan, former president of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, described this shift as historic. “The flow of talent is instead going more one way; now it’s going both ways. It’s more multi-polar,” Chan said during the discussion titled “Tectonic Shift in the Global Talent Chain.”

Professor Rangan Banerjee, director of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, said technology disruption and geopolitics are the two major forces driving this change. “The geopolitics are such that this is the right time for Asian universities to play a leading role in nurturing the talent pool and finding solutions to the world’s problems,” Banerjee is further quoted by University World News.

Banerjee explained that while a decade ago most IIT students left India to study abroad, today only about 10% do so. “Most of the people graduating are taking up jobs in India, some of them international jobs, and we are seeing a trend for innovation and startups, there is a booming startup ecosystem,” he said.

In China, Yaqin Zhang, chair professor at Tsinghua University and founding dean of the Tsinghua Institute for AI Industry Research, described a similar pattern. “Twenty-five years ago, the best [Chinese] students went to the US and Europe, but mainly the US, to get their PhDs and to find jobs,” he said. “In the last five years, especially, most of the best students have chosen to stay in China.”

Zhang pointed to visa hurdles as one reason for the change. “It’s harder for Chinese top students to get a visa,” he said, adding that around 90% of Tsinghua’s top computer science students now remain in China.