(Withdrawn) Human capital circular migration and international student enrollments: the case of Jordan

Rasha Istaiteyeh, University of Kassel-Germany

Student mobility is a particular type of migration and graduate students decisions concerning either returning home or remaining in the host country or relocating to a third country, are related to the arguments of brain drain, drain gain and brain circulation. Jordan has supported its human capital circular migration, through government policies in sending Jordanian graduate students abroad to achieve their PhDs, where eventually many of them return back to Jordan to serve into different Jordanian universities. Hence, Jordan managed in building strong reputation of Jordanian universities among Arab countries in the Middle East region. Consequently, a regional demand on Jordanian higher education services started to appear in the 1990s and afterwards, especially from Arabic neighboring countries like: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, West Bank and others. Rather, the political unrest situations in some countries lead to uncertain environments’ for top destination countries for some Arabic international students. A survey among academic staff at Jordanian universities detecting reasons for retuning back to Jordan was explored, and another survey among international students at Jordanian universities was preformed to highlight the reasons for choosing Jordan as a destination country. Finally, a regression analysis was computed to test the relationship between international students’ enrollment and academic staff human capital formation in terms of their PhDs sources. Preliminary results indicate that political, social and familial factors are responsible for Jordanian students retuning home, and the same determinants apply to international students’ choice of Jordan. Hence, Jordan managed in turning brain circulation and human capital gains associated with its graduate students while abroad into benefits to their home countries, and in attracting international students, whom in the end will upgrade their skills and either stay in Jordan, or migrate again to log into other labour markets, depending on economic opportunities in occupations which they majored in.