The impact of overseas postgraduate education on Bangladesh
Dr. Nasim Ahmed :
Over the last few decades, a steady stream of postgraduate students from Bangladesh has completed advanced degrees abroad. This trend underscores increased global mobility, the internationalization of higher education, and students’ ambitions for better training, resources, and career opportunities. While studying abroad can offer significant benefits to individuals and their home countries, the overall impact of ongoing outflows of postgraduate talent raises important questions for Bangladesh’s development.
The main concern is the risk of brain drain, where highly skilled individuals leave, resulting in a net loss of expertise and productivity that could have contributed to local growth if they had stayed. However, modern mobility is more complex: many students return home, and others stay connected to their home countries, creating brain circulation or a diaspora knowledge network.
Bangladesh’s outcome depends on net return rates, the quality of connections between migrants and domestic institutions, and the absorptive capacity of the national economy, including jobs, research infrastructure, governance, and other factors that enable the employment of advanced skills.
Postgraduate students are a crucial source of research output and innovation in any country. When many leave and don’t return, universities and research institutes experience shortages of supervisors, research-active faculty, and doctoral instructors.
This can reduce the quantity and quality of locally produced research, weaken graduate training pipelines, and sustain reliance on foreign expertise. The shrinking domestic research base also hinders the development of local solutions to specific issues like agriculture, public health, and climate resilience because those with the technical training and comparative advantages are abroad.
The immediate fiscal cost is complex. Public investment in pre-secondary education and, in some cases, subsidized higher education helps develop human capital; however, if graduates emigrate, the taxpayer does not fully benefit from the long-term returns of that investment. At the same time, migrant remittances are also relevant when postgraduate graduates pursue higher-earning careers abroad.
Remittances can support families’ consumption and investment, but do not necessarily substitute for the lost contribution of skilled professionals within domestic industries, public administration, or academia. Moreover, the private economy may suffer from shortages in high-skill labor, driving firms to recruit foreign experts or relocate certain functions, reducing local value capture.
The private sector’s ability to move up the value chain into high-tech manufacturing, research and development-heavy services, and knowledge-driven entrepreneurship depends heavily on advanced skills and specialized expertise. A consistent outflow of postgraduates limits firms’ capacity to innovate, adopt complex technologies, or oversee research projects.
This has multiplier effects: fewer domestic start-ups with world-class technical leadership, less foreign direct investment directed toward knowledge industries, and slower productivity growth. The lack of well-trained professionals in government and regulatory bodies can weaken policy design and implementation in technical areas, such as environmental regulation and digital infrastructure, leading to governance gaps that further discourage returnees.
The emigration of educated youth transforms social structures. It benefits families economically and socially through higher incomes, international exposure, and global networks. However, communities, especially smaller towns and semi-urban areas, lose potential leaders, teachers, and professionals.
This can widen the urban-rural divide if returnees concentrate in capital cities abroad or if those who stay inside the country migrate toward the few high-opportunity urban centers. In the long term, patterns of selective emigration focused on the best-performing students can increase inequality within the country and create leadership gaps in local institutions.
However, not all impacts are negative. A well-connected diaspora can be a valuable asset by providing remittances, attracting foreign investment, creating professional links, and transferring technology. Postgraduates who remain abroad can serve as bridges for collaboration, including joint research projects, knowledge exchange, and business partnerships.
Skilled migrants may also return after gaining experience and bringing new practices and networks. However, leveraging the diaspora requires deliberate policies, clear incentives for return, streamlined recognition of foreign credentials, funding for collaborative research, and institutional platforms that connect overseas experts with domestic needs. Without such mechanisms, the potential of the diaspora remains underused.
Mitigating the negative aspects of skilled emigration while leveraging its benefits requires following multi-pronged approaches:
1. Increase funding for universities, upgrade lab and library facilities, expand doctoral supervision capacity, and create appealing research fellowships so that postgraduate training and research careers remain viable at home.
2. Public and private sectors need to provide competitive career opportunities, clearer advancement routes, and targeted incentives for researchers, teachers, and technical specialists to stay and develop careers within the country.
3. Establish formal diaspora engagement units, research collaboration grants that pair overseas and local scholars, sabbatical programs, and digital platforms for mentoring and project cooperation.
4. Provide startup grants, research seed funding, tax breaks, or fast-track public appointments for returning postgraduates, especially in priority sectors such as health, climate science, and ICT.
5. Simplify the process of recognizing foreign degrees and experience to lower bureaucratic barriers that discourage return or reintegration into domestic systems.
6. Foster an innovation ecosystem by supporting incubators, technology parks, and industry–university partnerships that generate high-quality domestic opportunities for advanced-skills employment.
The outflow of postgraduate students pursuing higher studies abroad poses risks and opportunities for Bangladesh. If left unaddressed, the ongoing emigration of highly trained individuals can weaken research capacity, hinder innovation, and lead to economic and social costs. However, with deliberate policies aimed at strengthening domestic institutions, creating attractive career options, and engaging diaspora networks, Bangladesh can transform mobility into a form of brain circulation that promotes national development.
(The author is an Associate Professor of Public Policy, Bangladesh Institute of Governance and Management (BIGM), Affiliated with the University of Dhaka).