The media has recently emphasized the importance of talent to ensure the global competitiveness of the U.S.; and the relationship between talent acquisition and immigration policy, including international student policy. But how does one describe and measure talent, given the key role highly skilled individuals play in a country’s prosperity?
A wise professor of mine at graduate school once told me, “You can see and feel talent when you develop even a cursory relationship with another individual.” But this is an impossible policy basis for identifying talent in both public and private endeavors. An obvious example: Who would have predicted that Dr. Stephen Hawking, a scientist in a wheelchair, communicating through a computerized voice synthesizer, would revolutionize the world of physics?
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD) is an international organization that shapes policies that foster prosperity, equality and opportunity for all. OECD countries increasingly compete to attract and retain talented workers, notably by adopting more favorable migration policies for the best and the brightest. This global competition is primarily focused on the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines.
OECD recently developed the Indicators of Talent Attractiveness. It is the first comprehensive tool to capture the strengths and weaknesses of OECD countries regarding their capacity to attract and retain three specific categories of talented migrants: highly educated workers (those with master’s and doctoral degrees), foreign entrepreneurs and foreign university students.
The U.S. is ranked 7th using this tool, behind Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland. According to an article in Forbes, 33 of the 85 American Nobel laureates since 2000 have been immigrants. Impressively, of the seven U.S.-based Nobel laureates in 2016, six were not born in the U.S. If you restrict the numbers to science and economics, six out of six were immigrants.
Thus, many countries are focusing on talent as a national priority. OECD is helping to examine the policy implications of international flows of human resources in science and technology; extend countries’ understanding of international mobility; and address the government policies required to manage and shape this mobility.
But OECD is not alone in studying the crucial nature of talent. In Switzerland later this year, The Times Higher Education organization, based in London, England, is sponsoring the 6th World Academic Summit 2019 with the topic “How Talent Thrives.” This three-day summit will “explore key questions for higher education on issues of lifelong learning, industry partnerships, meeting the skills gap, research consortiums, and talent recruitment and management.”
