How often have you met a person who has intentions to move abroad to pursue a career or higher education? This may not surprise you, but according to government data in 2025, 1 in 6 state-sponsored scholars choose to stay and work abroad rather than returning to Malaysia. 1 in 6 may not seem like a lot, especially for government-funded scholarships like the ones provided by the Public Service Department (JPA) for medical, engineering and other students in STEM and technical fields. However, when we put these numbers into perspective, 5.5% of Malaysia’s working-age population (statistically aged 25 years and above) are living and working abroad, and our nation’s brain drain rate is nearly double the global average of 3.3%1.
Brain drain, or more formally known as human capital flight, is the phenomenon whereby individuals who have received higher education in their home country choose to emigrate (to leave) to a different country. This issue is evidently a socioeconomic and political issue as it involves multiple determinants in society. In this article, we’ll be looking at how our nation’s brain drain situation has worsened over the decades, what could have possibly caused it, what’s being done and what we are expecting in the near future.
Fun fact! The opposite of brain drain is a ‘brain gain’ — that is, people actively immigrating (to enter) into a country.
The Numbers
The first approach experts conduct is to quantify the phenomena. That is, to see how many people are leaving the country. Talent Corporation (TalentCorp), a government agency under the Ministry of Human Resources, said in 2024 that there have been approximately 1.86 million Malaysians who have left the country in the past 5 decades.
The TalentCorp office in KL (Picture by Ahmad Zamzahuri)
Many sources, including one by Gregory Foo of Harvard University in 2011, say that the top destinations of Malaysian emigrants are Singapore and the countries of the OECD, such as Australia, the UK and the US. According to Foo, approximately 80,000 to 100,000 Malaysians2 migrated in 2010. However, he highlighted that these numbers are actually lower than expected and that the increase in the figures is in line with the expectations that, as Malaysia becomes increasingly open to global trade, more Malaysians will seek opportunities abroad. 15 years after Foo’s paper, figures from the government and the United Nations point to roughly 135,000 Malaysians leaving per year.
Why?
The paper by Foo also found out about several key reasons for the brain drain here, that is: a sense of social injustice, better career prospects overseas, more attractive salary or benefits overseas, the political situation locally and several others.
In terms of income, the gap between employees in Malaysia and those who are overseas is very apparent. According to the Penang Institute, Malaysians who leave the country earn substantially more in all overseas countries and in all occupations. The institute notes that the average income gain after tax is roughly RM46,800 per year.
Toxic Work Culture and the Female Workforce
Many also prefer to work abroad due to a more relaxed work culture compared to what they may face in Malaysia. One netizen claims that they feel highly anxious at even the thought of having to apply for leave pending their boss’s approval in Malaysia. Another writes that their experience abroad has led them to face severe ‘culture shock’ when they realised that, contrary to what they were used to, they weren’t expected to work overtime and their office hours were, to their surprise, taken into consideration.
Most workplaces in Malaysia have a traditional hierarchy where higher-ups have more control over their subordinates, which may lead to frustration and employee dissatisfaction. Prof Dr Balakrishnan Parasuraman, a Universiti Malaysia Kelantan Professor, tells The Sun, “today’s employees are more likely to quit than tolerate toxic work conditions. Personal well-being is now a top priority.”
Moreover, Talent Corporation research notes that the main losses stem from underemployed female graduates as well as migrants. The population of women in Malaysia’s workforce has been steadily increasing, but according to the World Economic Forum Gender Gap Report 2025, Malaysia ranks 108 out of 148 countries. The report also states that there are notable gaps in economic participation and opportunity (where they are ranked 81st).
Women in managerial and leadership positions are underrepresented about three times less than men, and in professional and technical positions about 1.5 times, writes Adam Firouz, a Khazanah researcher. Furthermore, several leadership qualities, such as assertiveness and decisiveness, are seen as “male-dominated” traits. Consequently, women who adopt these characteristics may face many double standards, with individuals perceiving them as ‘bossy’ or ‘controlling’ due to a system designed to marginalise women, leading to them to feel undervalued in the workforce.
Faced with these conflicts, many female professionals migrate, not as a preference but rather as a rational response. For mothers, their children’s future would also be a factor they would take into consideration. The quality of education abroad is much higher than in Malaysia, where countries such as the US, UK, and Australia all rank 1st, 2nd and 8th respectively. As opposed to Malaysia, which ranks 37th. Moreover, overseas labour markets often offer clearer merit-based progression and a greater acceptance of women in decision-making positions. Australia, for example, has a higher percentage of women in leadership positions compared to Malaysia, as well as a decrease in their gender pay gap. All of which appeal to many working Malaysian women.
Education System Ranking (By World Population Review)
Inequality, Lack of Opportunities and Affirmative Action
In an editorial for Malay Mail, Rueben Anathan Santhana Dass, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, wrote that the lack of career and higher-education opportunities, especially in the areas of research and development (R&D), contributes to the growing problem. He cites that the Malaysian economy is primarily centred around production and manufacturing, rather than research. Furthermore, he states that the job market caters to what he calls ‘traditional’ jobs, such as doctors and lawyers, while those who have studied niche subject areas, such as the pure sciences and arts, have little to no opportunities compared to their mainstream counterparts.
Public Malaysian universities depend greatly on government funding for their students’ research, which, unfortunately, isn’t very high. A Universiti Malaya (UM) Computer Science student posted a video showing how the blockchain lab was gathering dust, even becoming a storeroom for furniture and decorations. They further claim that despite UM being a prestigious government university in Malaysia, there is zero infrastructure to assist the students with their studies. This leaves students frustrated as their expectations are not well met, which stands in the way of students reaching their maximum potential.
Malaysian Public Universities Funding (By Ministry of Finance Malaysia)
Fitch Solutions, a British multinational research firm, said in 2020 that the brain drain here is expected to continue due to affirmative action policies that favour the ethnic Malay population over other ethnic minorities. These policies, implemented under the New Economic Policy (NEP), grant affirmative action in education, housing and even preferential treatment in public sectors. The results from Fitch more or less correlate with what Foo reported in 2011 on the growing sense of social injustice.
Plugging the Drain
In 2011, the Najib administration set up the Talent Corporation (TalentCorp) to slow down the loss and retain skilled individuals and to attract foreign talent to fill professional gaps in some economic sectors.
In the book Higher Education in Southeast Asia: Blurring Borders, Changing Balance by Anthony Welch, he says that efforts such as Brain Gain Malaysia and the Returning Expert programme were largely failures. Welch also notes the government’s efforts in recent years to lure international students as part of the national ambition for Malaysia to be a regional ‘eduhub’, as he cites this 2008 article from University World News:
“An irony does not escape the attention of some observers who have pointed out the continuation of ethnic discrimination in Malaysian higher education, amid the government’s efforts to lure larger numbers of overseas students, including those from mainland Communist China.”
As Foo suggested in his paper, any efforts to curb brain drain face significant failures if they are based on insufficient knowledge of migration, as such interventions end up worsening the situation rather than helping reduce it.
Outlook
As of this article’s writing, we’ve yet to review any statistics on the flow of professionals in and out of Malaysia. But as the deputy health minister reported to Parliament in November 2025 that our nation is now shifting from a brain drain to a “brain circulation”, the outlook may not be as grim. Although other sources say we need more statistics to even make a judgment first.
To Leave or Not to Leave
As written by Rueben Ananthan Santhana Dass in his editorial, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. For some, it is necessary to leave in order for them to find a career that suits their education or particular skill set and to get a job that isn’t offered in the market here, so that they can support their families. When we look at the statistics concerning brain drain, we must not forget the human element behind them; for behind every digit we report, lies a story that tells us the why. A dream, a family or a compromise, it all depends on the circumstances an individual has to face.
It is easy to devise a plan with attractive benefits to lure our fellow Malaysians abroad to come home, but we also mustn’t forget that to fix the root of the problem is to retain highly-skilled Malaysians here, while we still can. By the words of experts, to do this, the government must listen, put aside politics (especially communal ones) and address key issues individuals face, remove roadblocks and promote fair competition.
- Some other sources have placed the percentage at 5.6% and the global average being 3.6%. Nevertheless, our numbers are still double of the global average. ↩︎
- These are the ‘high’ and ‘low’ estimates by Foo in 2011. These numbers refer to the ‘flow’ of Malaysian migrants, that is the amount of people who have migrated from the country. ↩︎
Written By: Sherman Yap & Anjitha
Edited By: Sarah Wong
