Brain Drain Among Palestinian Educators in the west Bank Universities

This study aimed at investigating seven factors related to Brain Drain of the Arab intellectual people. These factors were identified by Arab researchers, from Palestinian Universities in the West Bank. They were: psychological, technical and professional, administrative, economical and financial, social and political, academic, and scientific research. A questionnaire was designed to investigate the effects of these factors on the Brain Drain of Palestinian scientific skills from the six universities of the West Bank according to their staff view points. This questionnaire was distributed to twelve staff in order to Obtain a validity and then modified according to their opinions. The reliability factor was pre _ determined to be (0.84) according to Spearman and Brown formula. This value is satisfactory for testing the credibility of the questionnaire. After that, the questionnaire was distributed to a random sample of 370 members of the instructors working at the universities of the West Bank during the second semester of 1992. 323 staff or (87%) of the sample answered the questionnaire. Thus, these factors were investigated in order to study the following objectives: 1. Define the most important factors which influence Palestinian academic professionals to emigrate from the universities of the West Bank. 2. Define the relationship between the seven demographic variables mentioned above (p:7), for those who responded and the factors which result in the immigration of academic professionals according to the staff opinions. 3. Compare the results of this study with the results of other studies discussed in the literature. 4. Provide recommendations and the suggestions to high officials in the high educational institutions in the West Bank to improve academic and administrative policies. A statistical analysis was used to test the hypothesis of the study. The following statistical tests were utilities: a) One Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to test hypotheses 1 through 9. b) Least Significant difference (LSD) to test hypotheses 1 through 9. c) Pearson Cross Correlation Coefficients to test hypothesis Number 10. d) Factor analysis method was employed to interpret the results for hypotheses Number.11. The results of those hypotheses were: 1. The first three factors (psychological, professional, and administrative), had the greatest effect on the Brain Drain according to the staff opinions of the West Bank Universities. 2. Professional, economical, social and psychological factors had statistical significance in the seven faculties in the West Bank. 3. There were no significant differences in the importance of administrative, scientific research, and academic factors with demographic variations in academic. 4. Academic degree (Ph.D. or M.A.) had a significant effect with the professional factor on Brain Drain. 5. The place (country) of graduation had a great psychological effect on Brain Drain especially for those graduated from Western Countries. 6. The Social factor had a relationship with the psychological factor on the Brain Drain especially for single instructors. 7. The psychological factor was negatively correlated with the other six factors while these factors were positively cross _ correlated. 8. From the results of this study, the researcher recommends the following: a) Provide suitable psychological environment for the academic skills in the West Bank. b) Provide a scientific and professional atmosphere which helps academic skills to work in accordance with their specialists. c) Implementing modern administrative systems to establish relationships between administrators based on democratic principles. d) Provide suitable care for instructors in the university from psychological, professional, and administrative aspects which correlate with their high responsibilities to encourage them to stay in the West Bank.