When Paolo said in another thread http://my.lifeinitaly.com/showthread.php?t=1550 that he thought there is a mjor problem with Italy suffering a brain drain it got me thinking.

My personal experience relates only to Sardinia, but I believe this happens elsewhere.
Sardinia is the second largest island in the Med, fractionally smaller than Sicily, yet with a population much smaller (Sicily has about 5 million inhabitants compared to Sardinia with about 1.5 million).
When I lived in London I was surprised how many Sardinians live there(let alone Italians generally). Now I live in Sardinia and teach English as a foreign language. Probably about 50% of my students are university students or young professionals studying English to improve their job prospects. Yet they have little prospect of finding a job in Sardinia, and so most of them accept that they will have to leave, not for the Italian mainland, but for other countries, such as the UK, the US and Australia. The causes for this are:

1. With such a small population there is little investment by major companies in Sardinia. Tiscali, the media and telecommunications company, has its corporate HQ just outside Cagliari, yet it only employs about 800 people.
2. There is no movement of people. Once someone has found a job, even if it isn't particularly interesting, they stay put because there is little chance of them finding something else. And those who work in the public sector basically have a job for life which is relatively well paid.
3. Salaries in Italy are among the lowest in Europe (look here for a league table http://europa.tiscali.it/economia/news/200605/05/stipendi2.html ), and coupled together with a high cost of living it makes surviving in Italy difficult.
4. The selection process to get a job is a nightmare: from the education qualifications required to the experience demanded makes getting a job almost impossible, yet thousands apply for the same position.
5. Higher education is a problem. While the quality of education is good, the average degree course is 5 years, compared with 3 years in most other countries. One major issue for students is what to study. There appears to be no support for school children in their final year guiding them towards a degree course. As a result so many students either drop out or change course, therefore adding years onto their life and putting them so far behind other nations. More and more people have degrees so that if you want to get ahead of the race you have to do a Masters, but even that isn't good enough in many cases!

Faced with so many hurdles is it any wonder that the young people of today are saying "Basta! me ne vado!"

What's your experience?

Yes there is a brain drain from Italy that started 100 years ago. They do not even tell you in school about it. Nobody ever told me when I studied in Italy that Marconi (from Wikipedia) “Finding limited interest in his work in his native Italy, in early 1896, at the age of 21, Marconi traveled to London, England, accompanied by his mother to seek someone who could support his findings. (Marconi spoke fluent English in addition to Italian.)”.... In school, they taught me that Meucci invented the telephone but they do not mention that he was in New York when he did it. Fermi was in the US when he won his Nobel price for physics. Many Italians are now coming to the US but most of them are not the hungry and the poor like 100 years ago. Many of them have higher education ( Masters, Phd ) and they move here for better opportunities. After conversion from the lira to the Euro, the prices of housing doubled or tripled. With a normal salary in Italy, it is difficult to live in major city and unless your family helps you to buy a house. Forget owning an apartment in Rome or Milan with a scientist's salary! You cannot even afford to rent much of a place ... so what do you do ? Perhaps Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raffaello, Galileo would have to emigrate if they were living in these modern times.

Unfortunately Italy has become a society in which connections are more likely to bring you a job, than your individual merits. ... And now just to talk about Life in Italy as an example: It might not be the greatest website in the world but the Italian government did not give 1 Euro to this website. Unknown websites that nobody reads receive fundings from all sources ... provided they have the right connections. I am taking about hundreds of thousands and even millions of Euros spent on some sites (Italia.it reportedly cost the Italian government 40 Million Euro).

Many Italians emigrate to Australia, but, believe it or not we have a brain drain too! Wages are low here compared with the UK, US and Europe, so many Aussies travel there to work. There are also more opportunities in the Northern Hemisphere, generally.

We are also suffering a dreadful drought here - some areas of the country haven't had any rain for six years! It's all 'gloom and doom' on the radio, except for the mining boom in WA. The economy is depending on that and if you really want to earn good money the answer is: "Go West, young man!"

Lisa
www.webwritereditor.com

Yes there is a brain drain from Italy that started 100 years ago. They do not even tell you in school about it. Nobody ever told me when I studied in Italy that Marconi (from Wikipedia) “Finding limited interest in his work in his native Italy, in early 1896, at the age of 21, Marconi traveled to London, England, accompanied by his mother to seek someone who could support his findings. (Marconi spoke fluent English in addition to Italian.)”.... In school, they taught me that Meucci invented the telephone but they do not mention that he was in New York when he did it. Fermi was in the US when he won his Nobel price for physics. Many Italians are now coming to the US but most of them are not the hungry and the poor like 100 years ago. Many of them have higher education ( Masters, Phd ) and they move here for better opportunities.

I'm not in a position to comment about what they tell the kids in school, although I did teach English for 5 months in a high school here in Cagliari. What amazed me was how the pupils who were approaching the end of their final year had no idea what they were going to study at university, they just knew they were going there. However many go on to get good degrees and more, yet this isn't enough to get a job here. Many of my students ask me for information about British and American universities with a view to going there and giving themselves a chance in life.

I honestly believe that one of the major factors is the size of the population in any given place. The population of the UK and Italy are almost identical at about 56 million. I believe Rome is the biggest city in Italy with about 2.8 million people, followed by Milan with about 1.3 million. London at 7 million is the largest city in Europe. The movement of people in the work place is therefore much greater in London, giving people more opportunities, there is also greater investment by private and public industries. Compared to Sardinia salaries in London are about 3 times the amount for an equivalent job, and the cost of living is cheaper in relation to the salary. Go to London, and apart from the tourists, most people come from other parts of the UK or from other countries (with lots of Aussies!! :D). And I hate to say it, but the language makes a difference: English is the world's business language.

My wife went to London after university for 3 months to study English. She stayed for 11 years. Yet when she returned to Sardinia it took her 2 years to get a full-time job.

Unfortunately Italy has become a society in which connections are more likely to bring you a job, than your individual merits.
How true that is, especially in the smaller cities and towns.

Paolo, can I ask you why you left?

I left Italy 20 years ago. I met my wife to be who was American while she was studying in Italy and I was really interested in studying computer science. 20 years ago there was no Computer science faculty in Rome. (At the time computers where expensive and the Italian government did not allocate enough money for computer use by students ). So I decided to come here and finish my studies. I ended up with a master in Computer science and living here. I did miss Italy anyway so i started going back and forth. Now dute to this website I can feel much more in contact with my culture.
Paolo