It's time to plug the brain drain

By Tom Clarke

New Zealand is losing its best research brains overseas and few of them ever return, says Professor Margaret Brimble, the new professor of organic chemistry at Auckland University.

She blames the brain drain on government funding policies which, she says, are based on student numbers and result in universities offering large numbers of specialised courses in order to keep up their numbers.

"Universities are really doubling up and competing unnecessarily to get students and are giving them many different degree titles," she says. "But we should be concentrating on quality and producing better-educated students."

New Zealand graduates are already achieving high standards especially in the sciences, she says, which means they are in strong demand overseas.

Professor Brimble says the University of Auckland has always had high standards, and her teaching in Australian and American Universities has confirmed that the sciences, and particularly her field of organic chemistry, is taught to a high level at the university.

The content of the courses she taught in Australia was of a lower standard than she is giving here. She is having to make her lecture notes far more detailed to satisfy the needs of New Zealand students compared with those in Australia.

"We push the students and really extend them, which a lot of universities aren't doing," she says. "Some of the best students I have worked with overseas were from Auckland University and they seemed to have really good training.

"Auckland graduates in chemistry are very good. But the problem is they find really good opportunities to go and do postgraduate work overseas and people are very happy to take them. Then, of course, they face the problem that if they want to return to New Zealand, the jobs aren't as good for them here."

There is a world-wide shortage of well-trained organic chemists, she says, but the effect on New Zealand is far more dramatic, because we are smaller and lack a big scientific base.

Professor Brimble says New Zealand should be fighting to retain its best graduates. While universities encourage students to go overseas to further their studies, such as to complete a PhD, they also encourage them to come back. The problem is it is hard to get them back.

New Zealand is short of people in specialised science areas and already cannot find enough to fill the need, but she predicts the situation will get worse.

"I have people in industrial research here and overseas e-mailing me constantly asking if we've got people coming out in these areas because they're finding it hard to find the skills they need," she says.

"There has been a general turn away from science to commerce degrees in recent years everywhere, and that has resulted in a shortage which means it's hard to recruit good PhD students. Even Australia, which offers fully-funded PhD scholarships, can't find students to fill the vacancies."

Professor Brimble would like to see a greater participation in research by individual companies here, but says that is unlikely to happen because in many technical areas little manufacturing is done here, consequently there is little demand for research.

Professor Brimble, who is 37, graduated from Auckland University with a BSc and an MSc in 1983, and completed a PhD at Southampton University in 1986.

She lectured in chemistry at Massey University until 1993 when she moved to Auckland University as a senior lecturer, and in 1995 moved to Sydney University as a reader in organic chemistry.

She is a researcher in the development of new-generation antibiotics and anti-cancer agents, and one of the compounds she helped identify and synthesise is being tested by the multi-national pharmaceutical company, Novartis.

Only the second woman to hold a chair at the university's chemistry department, she juggles her professorship with caring for her 11-month-old daughter, Rebecca.