Key Factors Determining the Rationale for Brain Drain: An Irony Never Recovered

Higher education has become increasingly international in the past decade as more and more students choose to study abroad, enrolled in foreign educational programs and institutions in their home country, or simply use the internet to take courses at colleges or universities in other countries. The objective of the study is to analyze the key factors of student emigration from Pakistan to industrially advanced countries of the world based on survey data. The survey was to record the preferences of a respondent about his/her perceptions regarding emigration. A self-designed questionnaire is used for data collection. The data was analyzed using the techniques of logistic regression. All the findings are tested at 0.01 and 0.05 levels of significance. The result concludes that a large number of students intend to emigrate from Pakistan and potential migrant was found to be young, male and belong to lower and middle income family background. Our key finding is that, better education system abroad works as a magnet for Pakistan’s students. Pakistan needs to take drastic steps to improve its education system to overcome the student migration.