SCIENCE-ARGENTINA: ‘Pathetic Salaries’ Drive Researchers Abroad

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 20 2003 (IPS) - Angeles Zorreguieta, 42, PhD in chemistry, is a full-time researcher and university professor, and the assistant director of an institute that trains future scientists. In the United States she would earn at least 40,000 dollars a year. But in Argentina she earns just one-seventh of that amount.

”It is very sad that there are many young graduate students who want to leave the country, after all that has been invested in them,” Zorreguieta commented to IPS by phone from her laboratory in the Leloir Institute Foundation.

”But you can’t blame them. The possibilities for professional advancement here are scant, and the salaries are pathetic,” she said.

Throughout the 20th century, scientific research was strong in this Southern Cone country of 37 million. Three Argentine scientists won the Nobel Prize: Bernardo Houssay and César Milstein in medicine (in 1947 and 1984, respectively) and Federico Leloir in chemistry (1970).

But due to political developments – successive military dictatorships – and economic problems, Argentina’s scientists began to abandon the country in droves. In the past few years of severe economic crisis, the brain drain has been tremendous, with a renewed exodus of university graduates who have failed to find a niche in the steadily shrinking scientific community.

This year, the government of President Néstor Kirchner decided on a 90 percent increase in the budget for scientific and technical research and development (R&D). But that is not enough, say researchers.

”It is a positive change, and means more money for equipment and for living up to commitments that have already been assumed. But we researchers will continue to earn the same,” said Zorreguieta.

The country’s R&D budget thus grew from 65 to 120 million pesos (from 23 to 42 million dollars), and there have been smaller increases for all public bodies that carry out research.

But the proportion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) earmarked for scientific and technical research remains low, having grown only from 0.1 to 0.2 percent.

The left-leaning Kirchner has made it clear that he sees the brain drain as unacceptable, because the state makes a huge investment in developing human resources – the public university in Argentina is tuition-free – which the country then loses.

He said his government would put a high priority on coming up with solutions to the problem, which compromises the country’s future and its development prospects.

But Zorreguieta said the number of fellowships and teaching and research assistantships made available to graduate students remains small.

”That should be the first thing to improve, because many teaching and research assistants are determined to go abroad as soon as they finish their doctoral degrees, and those resources are never recovered,” said the researcher.

According to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) statistics, between 50,000 and 100,000 scientists leave the developing world every year to settle in industrialised countries.

Argentine researchers now comprise the largest Latin American scientific community abroad.

The state invests between 25,000 and 80,000 dollars in a graduate student who earns a doctorate, depending on the area of study, engineer Agueda Suárez Porto, director of international relations in the Argentine Network of Researchers and Scientists Abroad (RAICES), told IPS.

The state is unintentionally ”subsidising” the training of top quality scientific researchers who are then drawn to rich countries that are able to offer them good salaries and other benefits, said Suárez Porto.

Reports by the Secretariat of Science, Technology and Productive Innovation indicate that some 7,000 Argentine researchers and scientists are living abroad, mainly in the United States, as well as Canada, Europe, and Latin American countries like Brazil and Mexico.

A study by the Centre of Research on Science, titled ”The Talent that Is Lost”, recently warned that Argentina is losing its upcoming generations of scientific researchers.

The country’s scientific community is made up of people over 35, because many graduates leave the country as soon as they earn their degrees.

The 7,000 Argentine researchers abroad is double the number who work on the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), the main government agency in that area.

But taking into account those who work in other public institutions in Argentina, the number rises to between 19,000 and 23,000, added to 15,000 in the private sector.

The state is the biggest investor in scientific research, providing 40 percent of the total funds channelled into that area, while private and public universities account for 29 percent, and the business sector accounts for 26 percent.

RAICES was created on the initiative of the Secretariat of Science, Technology and Productive Innovation with the aim of forging ties between scientists who emigrate and those who stay in Argentina, and to create mutual cooperation programmes, in order to gain at least some return on the state’s investment in talent that has gone overseas.

Besides the low salaries that scientists are paid in Argentina, the work is more demanding and the standards are higher than in some better-paid professions.

Zorreguieta – whose sister Máxima is married to Crown Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands – works nine to 10 hours a day: ”without counting extra work, and the travelling,” she adds.

Her two main jobs, as a CONICET researcher and a professor at the public University of Buenos Aires, pay her a total of 480 dollars a month.

She is also honorary assistant director of the Institute of Biochemical Research at the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences, where she supervises four graduate students doing doctoral and post-doctoral research in biology and biochemistry.

In addition, she sits on the panel that selects lecturers and professors and evaluates doctoral theses, which takes up even more of her time. And she must remain on her toes, because her position as a CONICET researcher depends on an evaluation that is carried out every two years.

Her husband, Adrián Vojnov, is also a scientist, who received his training in Argentina’s public education system, where he earned an undergraduate degree in biology and a PhD in chemistry. He currently works as a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, where he earns just 320 dollars a month.

Four years ago, Vojnov was granted a scholarship to continue his studies in Britain, financed by the World Bank and the University of Buenos Aires. On his return, he began to look for work again. CONICET is reluctant to hire him, because he is over 40.

Feeling increasing pressure as a father of three, this year Vojnov contacted a colleague who had emigrated to the United States.

His former classmate had a five million dollar grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health to carry out research on skin cancer at the University of North Carolina, and he hired Vojnov.

”I spent four months there, earning around 3,000 dollars a month,” he told IPS. But he preferred not to talk about the difficulty of living apart from his family and friends.

Vojnov plans to continue taking part in the research from Argentina, with periodic trips to the United States.

He also obtained a grant that will allow him to hire two research assistants to study cancrosis, a highly contagious bacterial disease that attacks citrus crops. Although he will receive no salary, he will remain active in his research.

Vojnov knows he will never earn an impressive salary in Argentina, and for now he merely has the possibility to continue his research, although it involves shuttling back and forth between two countries. Nevertheless, he said, ”I was worried in the past, but now things are looking up.”