Skopje, 22.06.2022 – ‘Mother Teresa’ University in Skopje took for the first time the initiative that aims to return Albanian emigrants with academic degrees to their homeland. The MTU initiative took the first step through the roundtable discussion on ‘REVERSE BRAIN DRAIN’ (Return of educated or professional people to their homeland). In this discussion participated the Minister of Education and Science Jeton Shaqiri Ph.D., and the Minister of Information Society and Administration, Prof.dr. Admirim Aliti.

In his presentation, the rector of MTU Izet Zeqiri Ph.D., informed that brain drain is part of the general outflow of citizens, while the reasons are non-economic, conditioned by political, individual – psychological, family, medical, climatic reasons, etc., and all this outflow imposes a slowdown in economic development.

“If in recent years, as it is said, 2000 doctors have left the country, while medical education costs the state about 50,000 euros on average, then our losses on budget as a result of doctors who left the country are 100 million euros. We invest in the education of our staff and they emigrate to other countries educated. The average cost of education is 28,934 euros in Macedonia, 10 times lower than in Germany, while Germany benefits a lot from our educated staff, ‘said Rector Zeqiri.

Minister of Education and Science, Mr. Jeton Shaqiri said that we are all aware of the brain drain and we remained silent for so long. MTU and Rector Zeqiri broke this silence, so the ministry will support this initiative with all its capacity.

‘At the Ministry of Education and Science, we are compiling the list of graduates, masters and doctors of science in the 100 best universities in the world, who are financially supported by state scholarships, because the migration of the population is a great loss for our country, in contrast to big and developed countries’, said Minister Shaqiri.

The Minister of Information Society and Administration, Admirim Aliti, congratulated MTU, and said that many large initiatives have started with such debates.

‘I have not heard of such an initiative so far, as the one programmed by MTU. The experiences of countries that have launched such initiatives show great success, for example, the case with China and India,” said Minister Aliti.

A roundtable debate began regarding the initiative, which was attended by many professors, and it was said that the main factors that cause brain drain in North Macedonia are unemployment and the duration of unemployment.

In North Macedonia there are a total of 147,917 unemployed, of which 2,625 are waiting for a job offer for 2 years; 13,874 are waiting for 3 years; and 75,589 unemployed are waiting for a job offer over 4 years. In addition to that, there are 22,351 people with higher education who are unemployed.